Emergency Incident Response: Principles, Examples, and Recovery Stages

This essay examines emergency incident response, focusing on the National Health Service (NHS) as a case study. It explores the principles of effective emergency incident response, including mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery phases. The essay describes the recovery stage following an incident, outlining key steps and legal frameworks like the Civil Contingency Act. Furthermore, it identifies various examples of emergency incidents both in the UK and internationally, such as earthquakes, fires, and gas leaks, and analyzes their impacts on organizations. The essay demonstrates the need for informed future planning and response strategies based on lessons learned from past incidents and evaluates the collaborative agency working involved in real-world scenarios. The essay emphasizes the importance of proactive measures, training, and risk assessment in ensuring the safety of employees and maintaining business continuity during crises.

ESSAY 1

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................3
P5 Principles of effective emergency incident response...................................................3
P6 Describe a recovery stage following an incident.........................................................5
P7 Identify a range of examples of emergency incident, both in UK and International...6
M3 Demonstrate the need to inform future planning and responding..............................8
M4 Role of public service in real world emergency incident...........................................8
D2 Evaluate the collaborative agency working involved and lesson learned from real
world emergency incident.................................................................................................9
CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES....................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Emergency incident response refers to the efforts of business operations to face
any natural disaster. It basically include group of volunteers who plan the ways to deal
with any incident before it pertains (Zhang, Li and Liu, 2012). However, it is necessary for
every organisation to make proper availability of equipments and resources to deal with
emergency incidents for improving safety of employees. For the better understanding
National Health Service which is a public organisation has been selected. It basically
provides various health services such as dental treatment as well as optical care at a very
minimal charge to the local residents of UK. This report covers following topics such as
principles of effective emergency incident response and recovery stage of at emergency
incident. Further, various examples are coded on emergency incident in UK and
internationally.
P5 Principles of effective emergency incident response
Public sector organisation must predict the emergency state and accordingly they
should response against any hazard whether it is related to natural disaster, technology
hazard or terrorist attack. Thus, management of any disaster require the partnership among
various sector such as public, private or voluntary organisation. There are basically four
phases to effectively manage emergency incident responses which are defined below
(Wang, Luangkesorn and Shuman, 2012):
Mitigate phase: Within this stage most hazardous risk are identified, once those
risk are bought into the knowledge then efforts are made to mitigate the chances of risk
that can occur in near future. Herein, NHS organisation adopts this stage to maintain
smooth functioning of Business even in upcoming years as well. Like there could be the
chances of getting existing technology obsolete so here internal department and staff
voices on those measures that can reduce the chances of damage. However, it mitigation
phase can be considered as most cost effective techniques in order to decrease he impact
of hazards in NHS organisation. In addition to this, it is very important to conduct risk
assessment which helps to determine risk factors and hazardous earlier which facilitate to
prevent dangerous emergency incidents in company. Moreover, it is favourable for

boosting up secure working atmosphere in organisation which increase comfort level of
workers.
Preparedness: At this stage training and development session are provided to the
internal staff. It can be known as a continuous cycle of several steps such as planning,
organising, training, equipping, exercising, evaluation and improvement procedures fort
preventing hazardous incidents in an organisation. Meanwhile, it is necessary for given
organisation to make sure about appropriate cooperation as well as coordination among
employees that helps to enhance capabilities of preventing dangerous incidents. Moreover,
it is also suitable for staff to improve their abilities to protect them from hazardous
accidents through responding and recovering with the same in correct way. In context to
NHS organisation this phase helps in building the crises team that look for different action
to deal with risk. Along with this staff participates in any natural disaster programme such
as storm ready program or rescue operation to save the lives of people. Therefore, this
helps by remain prepared before the existence of any emergency.
Response: Organisation must operate its business in such a manner their
performances or development should not hamper the environment. It consist the criterion
of mobilisation of determined emergency staff involving first responders in order to an
external or internal events that can affect on patient care operations or the campus.
However, it is known as predetermined process in which methods or techniques are
selected that can help to deal with desired incidents to overcome with them. Herein, NHS
each public department gives importance to environment health and safety along with the
interest of society. On the basis of planning roles are assigned to both men and women
that include actions such as ways to save the lives and prevent damage. It includes actions
such as posting emergency telephone number and installation of smoke detector that helps
at the time of emergency.
Recovery: The role of recovery stage starts after the emergency to get back to
normal state which was before the existence of any emergency. It involves different kinds
of effective recovery efforts that are concerned with desired issues and decisions which
can be established after contingency requirement for fulfil them for addressing specific
problem in an organisation. Meanwhile, it consist re-employment or re-building the

damaged property in order to overcome with the particular emergency incidents
accordingly. In relation to NHS if faces any incident such as flood or snow storm can
adopt this stage like use of financial resource to repair things in order to get back to safer
situation
P6 Describe a recovery stage following an incident
Recovery stage gets activated after the existence of any emergency or disaster to
save as well as protect the lives of people by bringing it back to the normal state. Some
hospital caught by fire few years back because of some natural calamity and because of
that those hospital suffers heavy losses, they didn’t have any plans to overcome the loss or
to compensate it (Lewis, 2012). Six steps need to be followed during a recovery stage. If a
company is following those steps properly the damage can be minimized. First step is
known as preparation plan in which the company trains their employees. After that the
company needs to identify the emergency incident and its implications as quickly as
possible. Company should try to contain the damage so that the loss can be minimized. A
company should employee every possible thing so that the loss can be minimized.
Eradication means eliminating the root cause because of which the loss is occurred.
Company should implement steps so that the loss can be recovered and company can
operate smoothly. Company should learn lesson out of the incident or disaster, they should
observe everything and make sure such thing is not repeated again. Moreover, there are
various laws and legislation such as Civil Contingency Act which include guidelines
related to coordination, information sharing, business continuity planning as well as
guidance for risk assessment which needs to be followed by NHS public organisation.
Therefore, the aim of recovery stage is to develop following guidance which is stated
below:
 There should be understand amongst various organisation to deal with any incident
even at local level
 Further, there should be understanding between local as well as national level
which helps them to function simultaneously at recovery stage.

There are various kinds of incidents that can occurs in NHS which are required to
recovery in proper manner. It includes the criterion of following number of steps
according to particular hazardous incidents in terms of overcoming with them properly. If
the IT incident can be taken as an example then response plan can be established regarding
number of circumstances including information data breaches, denial of service attacks,
firewall intrusion, virus or malware infection, insider threats, damage to equipment or
premises and loss of power or other technology failures. For example, IT incident
recovery procedure stages for NHS is given below:
 Initially, it is necessary to conduct preparation of employees and managers to
improve their abilities in terms to handle potential incidents raise in company.
 Secondly, it includes to identify that whether it is a security related incident or an
IT failure situation.
 Thirdly, it is required to consist an incidents and preventing further damage to
equipments as well as systems (Xu, Zhang and Wang, 2015).
 However, it is essential to find out the reason behind specific hazardous incident
along with eliminating affected systems in an organisation.
 Meanwhile, it is important to recover damaged IT systems after eliminating the
desired threats in NHS.
 Moreover, it is very important to conduct documentation and analysis of particular
condition in order to update, modify or boost up processes.
P7 Identify a range of examples of emergency incident, both in UK and International
Emergency incident hampers the working of the organization. Emergency incident
can occur due to natural disaster, technological failure or terrorist attack. Like for example
a terrorist attack can hamper that area where the attack is done, plus it can hamper the
business of companies due to the political factors after the terrorist attack. Natural
disasters are uncontrollable and it can affect the working of organization. It can cause
physical damage to the property of the organization. Technological factors are also
another case of emergency incident (Pfeffer, Israelife Foundation, 2012). A company

should have a backup plan for this type of emergency incident so that the damage can be
recovered as soon as possible. National health services is a company which is run by the
government so all the loss are compensated by the government as it is a public sector
undertaking. There were approximately five companies suffered heavily at the time of
floods in Thailand. The companies were Toyota, Canon, Ford, Lenevo, Sharp. Toyota had
to stop the production in some countries because of the break in supply chain. Ford also
losses around 30,000 vehicles production due to that natural calamity. Similarly lot of
companies around the globe had to suffer due to terrorist attack. In some of the case where
they can’t do much a reserve for such uncontrollable losses may come handy. So some
companies make reserves for such losses also. The main reasons of losses in such cases
are the wastage of time, the idle time because of that emergency incident. Another
example for emergency incident was cyber attack by terrorist which affected lot of
companies around the globe, the implications was loss in accounts, funds and lot of
valuable documents of the companies.
Range of examples of emergency incidents
Earthquake: It is the natural calamity which can occur any moment and cause lots
of loss to the economy of country and organisations operating in the specified country.
This can be understood by taking an instance suppose earthquake occurred within working
hours of an organsation and all the employees were present there serving their
responsibilities. At this moment it becomes essential to use their mind and be smart so that
life of each can be saved. For such kind of incidents some kind of preventive measures
must be taken like there must be two emergency exists and prehand training must be given
to behave in such kind of situations.
Fire incident: It creates lots of destruction within working premises and might
cause serious injuries. In terms of financial risk it can be a large number and it can be
made again but if anyone loose their life then it will be impossible to have back (Jones and
et. al., 2014). Therefore, NHS need to ensure that they have implemented a program for
prevention as well as recognition of hazards, flammable & combustible materials are
handled with high attentiveness, safe housekeeping practices must be utilised and there
must be fire suppression devices for extinguishing fire before it gets uncontrollable.

Gas Leakage: This is the worst situation which can occur at any moment in an
organisation. This can cause the direct impact on the healths of employees and they may
even loose their life if it is dangerous. So each should be very careful while using such
kind of equipments so that other people do not do not suffer due to mistakes made by
them. For this, it is essential for NHS that pipes are regularly checked for damage, leaks or
corrosion and methane detectors must also be installed along with this pressure must be
measured in lines.
M3 Demonstrate the need to inform future planning and responding
It is essential to conduct future planning and responding in emergency response
because it helps the public sector organisation to gain detail as well as accurate
information about how they will manage during the time of natural disaster or any
technology failure (Woodcock and Au, 2013). As business operates in dynamic
environment so pre planning helps business to achieve its long term growth prospective by
mitigate the chances of risk and respond effectively. However, providing information
about future planning in regard to emergency situations is very important because it is
helpful to improve safety of staff members in an organisation. Meanwhile, it will provide
support to make employees capable to take appropriate actions in hazardous situations
which helps to deal with it properly. Moreover, it has been analysed that people should be
informed about efficient method and techniques by providing proper training or learning
top them so that they can use emergency equipments effectively. Additionally, staff
members of NHS become bale to take immediate action correctly which facilitate to
respond dangerous condition for avoiding nay kind of injury or damage.
M4 Role of public service in real world emergency incident
In order to take measure against any incident such as terrorist attack public
services come into action and help in the recovery of losses incurred due to that. For
instance, terrorist attack which took place in Manchester Arena in UK destruct lot of lives.
To overcome with this public service took various precautions though they cannot
compensate the lives of people who died in this incident but they helped to mitigate the
loss. Additionally, public services provide the benefit of insurance to the employee, give

relief to the company as compensation and rebuild the infrastructure of company (Burke,
2017).
On the other hand, it is observed that public services can help to real world
emergency by providing correct information to people to become individually capable to
deal with hazardous condition for securing themselves. It also consist to provide
instructions to management authorities of every organisation to make sure about
availability of required equipments and resources for staff members to overcome with
such circumstances accordingly (Su and et. al., 2016). However, sources of media can be
used by public services to render information to citizens at global level to take effective
precautions at the time of natural disaster or other emergency conditions in order to save
them.
D2 Evaluate the collaborative agency working involved and lesson learned from real
world emergency incident
There are some losses which are controllable and some are uncontrollable thus it is
simpler to deal with controllable risk in comparison to other risk such as natural hazard. In
past UK has suffered because of natural disaster due to which there around seventeen
public bodies are collaborated to take the measure against natural disaster. Further, this
partnership provides information related to risk assessment to the legal body such as
government (Shan, et.al., 2012). This help to overcome the challenges by maintaining trust
within the society.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been defined that emergency incident response plays a
significant role in public sector organisation to make better policies before the existence of
unforeseen circumstances. This basically helps the company to mitigate the chances of
risk by reminding as per the guidelines that finally helps the busier to remain in safer
situation. Along with that company should follow all the legislation related to environment
health and safety in order to achieve sustainable development and face real world
emergency incident.

REFERENCES
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