Roles and responsibilities
Having organisations respond to a disaster/emergency event is all well and good, provided that they have a role to play in combating the event.
Roles and responsibilities of organisations involved in the response to a disaster/emergency event are determined in a number of ways and can be located in a variety of documents.
In the earlier topics of this subject, you will have examined various pieces of legislation, policy and accepted practice in respect of what should happen in the event of a disaster/emergency event occurring.
Hopefully in addition to legislation and policy documents, you have identified such documents as plans, procedures and agreements that might contain roles and responsibilities of response organisations/agencies.
Pay particular attention to the description of roles and responsibilities contained within these examples.
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Read Textbook: Carter, Chapter 17. |
Watch video
Take a moment now to watch an excerpt from the video presentation, "A coordinated response to disaster – The Clapham rail crash".
The Clapham Rail Crash that occurred in the United Kingdom on 12th December 1988. The investigation highlighted the importance of determining roles and responsibilities before events occur and how familiarity between agencies and their respective roles and responsibilities can positively impact on the management of the event. On the 12th December 1988, two passenger trains carrying over 1500 people collided just outside one of Britain's major rail junctions, Clapham Junction in west London. A third empty train then collided with the two trains. The result was 35 dead, 69 seriously injured and about 415 minor injuries. The response involved British Rail, the London Transport Police, London Metropolitan Police, London Ambulance Service, London Fire Brigade, Department of Health, Wandsworth Borough Council, Salvation Army, St John Ambulance, Women's Royal Voluntary Services, British Association for Immediate Care, St Georges Hospital. This was one of the UK's worst rail disasters and required a massive coordinated response by all involved.
Having completed these Readings and sections from your textbook and watched the short video, you should now be able to identify some of the tasks and associated roles and responsibilities that need to be undertaken in the response to a disaster/emergency event.
What I would now like you to do is complete the table for this activity in the Activity Table document provided in the link below. Complete the first column first. When you have identified all the agencies and organisations who had roles and responsibilities in response to your selected emergency/disaster event, then complete column 2, column 3 and then the final column. When you have completed the task, save your work to your Learning Portfolio. This activity will assist you in analysing the roles and responsibilities of major agencies and organisations during the impact phase of your selected event.