Case study

1. Was the legislation in place for your event effective? Did it adequately address the emergency preparedness/emergency management arrangements required for this event?
2. Did this legislation provide those tasked with the responsibility of emergency preparedness/management, sufficient powers to fulfil their statutory obligations?
3. Do you think that the legislation in place may have hindered organisations in fulfilling their statutory requirements?

I hope you found that completing the activity was useful. Although my own thoughts as to what the parameters for the three phases should be may not completely align with yours, the process I use to determine the relevant dates might be influenced by the answers to the following questions:

Pre-Impact Phase:

• When did people settle in the area?
• Did similar events occur previously?
• When was emergency or other relevant legislation enacted?
• When were disaster or emergency management plans developed?
• Have any preventative or mitigatory works been undertaken in the past?
• Have any risk or hazard studies been completed in the past?

 Impact Phase:

• When did the event actually occur?
• Was the event a sudden onset event or did it gradually occur over a period of time?
• When did immediate life saving/harm minimising response actions commence?
• When did those response actions stop?
• When did longer term recovery activities start?
• Was there a hand-over of control functions, if so when?
• Did that hand-over of control signify a change in strategies and directions in the management of the event and focus of emergency management activities?

Post-Impact Phase:

• When did immediate response actions cease?
• When did medium/long term recovery activities and actions commence?
• Was there a hand-over of control from response agencies to recovery agencies or local government and if so when?
• When did all recovery activities cease?
• Are aspects of the recovery process still going on today?
• Has the community completely recovered today – or is recovery still occurring?

The case study was provided as an exercise to demonstrate and highlight to you that it is you who needs to clearly set these parameters and provide some clarification as to why you selected them. You do this in order that whoever reads your report (Assignment 2) clearly understands the period(s) of time your assignment is addressing.

Now that you have established some common ground and differentiated between the phases of an emergency/disaster, let us now look at what you need to do regarding the selection of an actual emergency/disaster event as the topic for your project’s analysis and evaluation.