Things You May Want To Know About Disaster Preparedness

Any disaster situation is characterized by its ability to cause destruction to the properties, damages to infrastructures and losses of lives. In such situations, your safety depends heavily on your preparedness for the disaster.

The disaster preparedness can be defined as:

“A continuous cycle of learning, preparing, planning, equipping, training, evaluating, and taking corrective actions in an effort to ensure an individual, group or organization has developed a state of readiness to minimize loss or contain the effects of a disastrous event to life, injury, and property.”

A few other things about disaster preparedness are as under:

• Disaster preparedness refers to the actions that you take in order to prevent any damage which can occur as a result of a disaster situation. This preparedness includes physical preparations (such as stocking up emergency supplies, and following building codes while constructing a new building in order to prevent earthquake damage) and training for emergency actions.
• Disaster preparedness measures are different for different people based on a number of factors. For a private citizen, the disaster preparedness measures may be different from a healthcare worker, an emergency responder, police officer, or a firefighter. Each of these types of people has its own priorities and concerns.
• Disaster preparedness is not a one activity. Rather, it is a set of actions which are meant to ensure safety of a person or group of people during an emergency situation.

Other Disaster-Related Terms

You need to know about several disaster related terms in order to have an understanding about what every term basically refers to.

• You may have heard the term ‘Disaster Prevention’. It mainly refers to the set of activities that you perform to get permanent protection against disasters. It is worth mentioning that these actions do not guarantee complete protection against all of the disasters. However, the risk of loss of life and injuries can be mitigated.
• Another term is the ‘Disaster Relief’. This term refers to the actions performed to reduce the impact of disasters. These actions include rescue, relocation, provision of food and water, preventing illnesses which tend to occur during disaster situations, bringing functionality back to the telecommunication systems, restoring transportation, and emergency health care.
• Disaster Recovery is another common term that needs to be explained briefly. This term refers to the actions performed in a post-disaster scenario. Rebuilding of infrastructures, and health care and rehabilitation are the actions that fall under the category of disaster recovery.
• Disaster Management refers to the strategy of organizing and managing the resources and responsibilities to deal with certain aspects of emergencies.