Monday 23 September 2013

Communicating In A Crisis Is Essential And Requires Specialized Emergency Communication Equipment

By Dawn Williams


Dealing with the chaos, fear and danger of a major contingency relies on preparation and knowledge. Those charged with managing such crises must have the training to understand the unique challenges that crop up when the normal operation of society are interrupted. As with most things human, coherent discourse is essential to action, and that depends in large part to emergency communication equipment.

Even in the wild, creatures have figured out that when things do not go as expected, they have a greater chance of survival by following a leader. Primates like the great apes follow the ranking silver-back to find food and avoid danger. Elephants follow the senior female as she seeks out water during severe droughts, and human beings also naturally look to those in a position of authority to get them through crises.

Leaders of every community have a responsibility, legal and moral, to prepare for the unknown, to help each group be as ready as possible to survive and recover. Whether a crisis is a natural phenomenon like an earthquake or wildfire, or of human sourcing as in war, preparation is an inherent responsibility of leadership. As human settlements became more complex, it meant that there is much more to prepare for and protect.

In the US, each community develops a method of dealing with the chaos and fear that crises generate. Sharing ideas with other cities, studying past problems and including the experience of long time residents help create a working framework. There are also large companies in a community or military bases with expertise and processes already set up.

For most cities, it is the elected officials, flushed out with some local business experts, who handle the response control positions when bad things happen. How well this group of individuals handles the crisis has less to do with how well they work together than with how much training they have had. Running exercises that simulate disasters can also pay great dividends.

If there are military organizations in the community, they have experience in handling all manner of disaster, through a detailed exercise program designed to keep their abilities honed and practiced. Their ability to help in civilian crises is limited by policy, but with proper precoordination, an understanding of how they can help is easily accommodated. Unfortunately, cities, military organizations and private corporations usually develop their systems without much coordination.

A large scale response in any community will likely be more than any single organization or population center can handle alone. Working together with neighboring communities is the natural conclusion, but because it happens rarely, this can be a difficult endeavor. It is in these times that the problems with each group developing their own methods makes it painfully difficult to work together.

After recent enormous disasters like the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma, a national effort to resolve the problems of coordination began. The resulting national incident management system has made it easier for communities to work together. At the center of this system is the ability to make each group able to talk together, a benefit of standardized emergency communication equipment.




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