Five Components of the Emergency Preparedness Cycle.

The Emergency Preparedness Cycle
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The Emergency Preparedness Cycle
The Emergency Management Preparedness phase is a recurring process focusing on proactive actions and behavior aiming at reducing the different effects of a catastrophe. Preparedness should occur at individual, community, organizational and state levels. The IS-1 toolkit of FEMA suggests that preparedness enables people to respond to the difficulties of most disasters by deciding what actions to take beforehand. Emergency preparedness involves activities undertaken before the happening of a catastrophe by the different social units. Various social groups have different ways of preparing for a disaster. However, there is a general process that ensures that the different social units respond to a disaster effectively. The main purpose of writing this paper is to discuss the various preparedness cycle components, and explain why they are dependent and repetitive to each other.
The first element of the preparedness cycle is planning. Planning makes sure that it is possible to handle the entire cycle of a would-be crisis, decide which capability are required, and assist participants to learn their responsibilities. Planning involves the gathering and analyzing of information and intelligence. It also participates in the development of plans, procedures, policies, strategies, assistance agreement and mutual aid, and additional requirements to be able to execute missions and other tasks.

Likewise, planning improves effectiveness by describing the required capabilities clearly, lessening the time needed to have control of an incident, and facilitate the exchanging of information quickly about the situation.
The second component of the preparedness cycle is organizing. Organizing to carry out the different response activities involves the development of a complete organizational structure, ensuring that leadership at all levels are strengthened, bringing together a well-qualified team of volunteers and paid staff for vital reaction and recovery duties (Tierney, Lindell & Perry, 2001). The personnel and equipment could be organized to offer a particular mission or function capability. The National Incident Management System regularly provides management structures and standard command that can be used to response. This system helps responders from various disciplines and jurisdiction to be able to work together to react to different incidents.
The third component of the preparedness cycle is Equipping. The different jurisdiction namely local, state, tribal and federal should establish a shared understanding of the unique of response equipment capabilities (Phelan, 2008). This would help facilitate planning the incident before it occurs. Also, it would allow room for rapid flexibility and scaling to ensure that they can meet the incident’s needs. A significant element of preparedness is the procurement of equipment that will perform to standards that have been established, including the ability to be compatible with equipment being used by another jurisdiction or participating companies. Effective preparedness dictates that authorities be able to classify and have strategies to enable them to acquire major equipment, facilities, systems, and supplies in adequate quantities to execute assigned tasks and missions. Logistic systems need to be in place to ensure that the mobilization, use, tracking, demobilization and sustaining of human and physical resources are effective. The chosen system should support both the teams and inhabitants in needs that are supposed to respond to the incident. The government should ensure that their personnel has the essential resources to execute the assigned tasks or missions.
The fourth component of the preparedness cycle is training. Building critical response capabilities country-wide needs a systematic program that can be able to train the organizations and individual teams to meet a shared baseline of certification and performance standard. Experience and professionalism are the basis that successful responses are built. Therefore, ongoing training is vital. Teams and individuals, whether volunteers or paid should be able to meet the required local, state, tribal and federal qualifications, performance and certification standards. The methods used for training must conform to appropriate principles and produce the necessary skills.
The fifth component of preparedness is exercising. Exercises create opportunities required for testing plans and better proficiency in an environment that is safe and free from risks. Exercises normally measure and confirm expertise levels. They also familiarize and clarify staff with roles and obligations. Exercises that are well-organized enhance interagency communications and coordination, Identify areas that need to be improved and highlight potential gaps. Exercises should involve Multijurisdictional and multidisciplinary incidents (Phelan, 2008).
The various components in the preparedness cycle are dependent on each other. The reason being there is no way a person or organization may decide to skip an element as they follow each other in the preparedness cycle and continue to execute the next task. For example, there is no way the staff would be able to perform the different exercises, without first having the required knowledge to carry out the task. Likewise, the various components that form the preparedness cycle are repetitive among themselves. The reason being when handling a particular component, the concerned team is forced to address some issues that are found in other elements in the preparedness cycle. For example, when managing the planning component, the people involved must also develop strategies that would be used, which is equivalent to the organizing component. Similarly, while planning, the concerned team should also assist participants to learn their responsibilities, it is an issue that is also, addressed under the training component. Therefore, all the elements in the preparedness cycle are dependent and repetitive among each other.
References
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Phelan, T. D. (2008). Emergency management and tactical response operations: Bridging the gap. Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann/Elsevier.
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Tierney, K. J., Lindell, M. K., & Perry, R. W. (2001). Facing the unexpected: Disaster preparedness and response in the United States. Washington, D.C: Joseph Henry Press.
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