How do you ensure that your Fire Department is prepared for natural disasters and other large-scale emergencies?

Question

Robert Verhelst · Answer

So this this question is great because it's just like a pro athlete. It's just like going to an office or it's just like going in for a test the way that we prepare for natural disasters. And large-scale, emergencies is the preparation that we do in training. So that the specialty, the, the repetition that we do in training, I was on the rapid intervention team and you can't prepare for all of the dynamic situations and the large scale that you can Encompass. And for myself, at 23 going to September 11th, and being a tunnel, rat, and doing search and Recovery, you can't prepare yourself for that. But what you can prepare yourself to do is be able to adapt and be flexible and those situations. And that's really what natural disasters and large-scale emergencies. You see people doing amazing things and 9/11, it was, you know, Steel. Workers going into tunnels and cutting off rebar, so that you could tunnel farther. The biggest thing that I would say that it to ensure that we're prepared is we train to the nth degree, we're prepared to be prepared for the unknown and also at the same time as a team. We rely on each other, to pick us up in those times when we need it, the most

Dave Robertson · Answer

How do I ensure my fire department is ready for natural disasters and other large-scale emergencies? There's a couple of ways. One of them is we have emergency management in place. When we get a major incident or we foresee a major incident like we know of major snowstorms coming or in California Red Flag Day where it's a you know high chance for a wildland fire, we'll activate the EOC, the Emergency Operations Center. On that you'll have the you know the chief of police, the fire department chief, some other people that maybe have some specialties within that, EMS, somebody representing the school board and busing and public works etc etc. They all come together and they kind of work their little systems but they work very closely and they're guided by some heads, some supervisors within the EOC. So that's one way. The other way is as firefighters we train specifically on heavy rescue and anything really that can possibly or anybody that can be impacted by a major event. It's far more reactionary than what we would like it to be, very hard to train for those huge events but in the end we train as much as we can within the rescue disciplines that as firefighters we have. So the EOC and training firefighters.

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"How do you ensure that your Fire Department is prepared for natural disasters and other large-scale emergencies?"