CHAPTER 2 Essential 9: Effective Preparedness, Early Warning and Response
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Essential 9: Effective Preparedness, Early Warning and Response “Install and develop preparedness plans, early warning systems and emergency management capacities in your city and hold regular public preparedness drills.”
Why?
Risk and Disaster Scenarios: Start by thinking about the potential impact of a major event of the kind that your community/institution/enterprise has experienced, such as an earthquake, hurricane or flood. To what degree are residential, commercial, health, education and other infrastructure vulnerable to this type of hazard? Where is the infrastructure located and how or why has it become vulnerable? Can this vulnerability be prevented?
Well-conceived emergency preparedness and response plans not only save lives and property, they often also contribute to resilience and postdisaster recovery by lessening the impact of a disaster. Preparedness efforts and early warning systems help ensure that cities, communities and individuals threatened by natural or other hazards can act in sufficient time and appropriately to reduce personal injury, loss of life and damage to property or nearby fragile environments. Sustainability can be achieved if the community itself and local authorities understand the importance of and need for local emergency preparedness and response.
What? Strengthen and improve preparedness • Establish institutional and legislative mechanisms to ensure that emergency preparedness forms part of the policies and actions of all sectors and institutions throughout the city. • Prepare, review and enhance city-wide inter-agency institutional preparedness and response plans, using credible scenarios. • Integrate the results of local-level risk analysis into the design of communication and disaster preparedness strategies. • Ensure that the city’s preparedness plan has effective systems for delivery of immediate relief and survivor support, in partnership with pre-identified local citizens’ organisations.