Whether it’s medical emergencies, floods, fire, power outage, harmful chemical spills, terrorist attacks, and pandemics- these emergencies hit the headlines every day until the term preparedness is no longer limited to only health professionals. But to everyone, because they are situations, most people experience now and then.
What makes the difference is how we respond to them. The time you take to respond to any unfortunate situation may make it worse or help save it. For instance, any prompt response to a fire outbreak would make a huge difference in keeping it off before spreading to other places.
Therefore, you must ensure you initiate positive actions and steps that would help ensure the safety of others, limit environmental harm, and eliminate property damage, among other safety precautions. This article covers some of the best actions or steps you should take in case of an emergency.
Here are the emergency steps you should consider:
Prevention and mitigation
No matter the type of emergency you may expect, prevention should always be the first step to take towards managing any potential emerging threat. So, prevention is taking precautions to avoid or stop disasters before they can happen.
In other words, preventive measures focuses much on providing more permanent protection against disasters. But to give a precaution against a specific emergency, you must then make a list of risk possibilities you can probably encounter: and that’s the mitigation phase.
During mitigation, you identify those hazards or risks that are critical and may need some serious planning and focus on reducing their chances of occurring soon.
So prevention and mitigation phases involve all the measures you take to reduce or eliminate the chances of emergency occurrence. You can list and rank any potential risks according to their level of anticipation or likelihood. By doing that, you get to know the kind of resources or equipment you need to invest in.
You can achieve prevention and mitigation of emergencies through:
Elimination
This involves the possibility of removing any hazards that may cause a potential emergency. For instance, to prevent any troubles at the construction site, you can keep sharp-cutting equipment off the ground and wear protective gear while working.
Substitution
In cases where you feel a work material, tool or process would result in accidents and emergencies. You must consider changing or substituting it with a less hazardous one.
Administration control and prevention
Some emergencies would be caused by the negligence of some people. In that case, you must consider providing effective emergency or safety training programs, including hazard communication that constantly reminds workers to make their safety first.
Preparedness
The preparation stage entails the activities that improve your chances of responding to a disaster. So, you must ensure you have a well-laid-out strategy that would help you manage any emergency.
Even better, conduct disaster exercises to reinforce all the emergency training programs. Like in the case of a fire outbreak, you can let workers know all the exit doors and practice a mutual understanding of how to respond in case of fire.
So, depending on the emergency, you can:
- Evacuate threatened areas
- Activate the emergency operations
- Provide immediate medical care like first aid and CPR to injured persons.
Anyone can be trained to provide immediate medical care by getting certified online at c2cfirstaidaquatics.com
Response
What you do when an emergency occurs is equally important as what happens in the prevention and mitigation phase. So, the response stage involves the activities of things you do when an emergency occurs or happens. How do you react to emergencies? Are you anxious, or do you freak out?
Whichever the case, you must ensure your response is geared towards protecting life, environment and reducing property loss. This is the stage where you apply everything you have trained and prepare for or anticipated their occurrence.
So, depending on the emergency, you can:
- Evacuate threatened areas
- Activate the emergency operations
- Provide immediate medical care like first aid and CPR to injured persons.
Recovery
Once you have taken control of the emergency, it’s time to begin the clear-up and take things back to normal or near normal. This is where you strive to restore all the basic operations or activities and repair any damages.
Conclusion
You can never know when accidents or emergencies may happen. However, it would help if you always were prepared to handle any emergency should it occur. So, you must strive to prevent or respond effectively and find ways to set things back to normal.
