Scenario
Think up a hypothetical emergency or large-scale disaster scenario that affects a large population of people and a vast area of response. The scenario can be natural or manmade in nature; it’s entirely up to you so you are free to be creative. Some examples of natural disasters could be hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, tsunamis, floods, infectious disease outbreaks and pandemics, asteroid strikes, landslides, forest fires, etc. Some examples of manmade disasters could be suicide bombings, workplace or school shootings, radiological, biological, chemical or nuclear attacks, poisonings, water supply contaminations, mass power outages, arsons, building or bridge collapses, and infrastructure or food, water and heating supply sabotage, cyber attacks, data leaks, financial collapses, hyperinflation, etc. Use your hypothetical scenario to answer the 5 broad Disaster Recovery Assignment Questions below. Questions
1) What are the initial steps that must be taken before recovery operations can take place? Why is disaster recovery so important? Should we strive to make the area better than it was before the incident/disaster? Explain.
2) How can public sector or private sector and nonprofit organizations and churches work together to assist in recovery operations? Should volunteers be sought and utilized? How could public donations be collected? How could debris be recovered and removed? Explain.
3) Is the management of public relations crucial during the recovery process? How could information be relayed to the public to assure them that everything that needs to be done is being done? How could some of the survivor's mental health have been affected by the disaster? Should crisis counselors be sought to deal with the survivors and victims of the disaster? Explain.
4) How important is it to promote an overall culture of vulnerability reduction and future hazard mitigation to try to prevent disasters from occurring in the first place or at least mitigating their consequences if they do occur? Explain.
5) How can technology be harnessed to smooth the disaster recovery process? What are some tools available to emergency managers for disaster recovery operations? Could the lessons learned from this disaster response and recovery be used in the future to better help communities respond to and deal with a future unforeseen disaster? What are some new and possibly unexpected threats that could arise in the future that we may not conceive of at the present moment? Explain.