Tools, Tips & Tricks of the Trade: When your incident starts expanding...start thinking of us.
For a variety of all hazards deeper dives to acclimate yourself and your team to disasters you may face as an IMT or in an EOC, please visit www.ready.gov
Active Harmer / Active Threat / Active Shooter
Active threat situations are incredibly rare...but they do happen. You and your loved ones need to be ready to "run, hide, fight" to give yourself the best chance of success.
Active assailants can take the form of armed gunmen, knife-wielding attackers, vehicle ramming scenarios, or other particulars. For any of the situations, it is important that you maintain solid situational awareness by paying attention, knowing your exits, and having a plan in the places you do life. The common advice is generally all derivatives of the "run, hide, fight" where you're ready (in a non-linear fashion) to run/escape from the threat. You're also ready to hide/barricade to make it more difficult for a threat to find you. And you need to be ready to fight/attack the threat.
Wildland Fires
Wildland fires are a force of nature that can be nearly as impossible to prevent, and as difficult to control, as hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods.
Wildland fire can be a friend and a foe. In the right place at the right time, wildland fire can create many environmental benefits, such as reducing grass, brush, and trees that can fuel large and severe wildfires and improving wildlife habitat. In the wrong place at the wrong time, wildfires can wreak havoc, threatening lives, homes, communities, and natural and cultural resources.
Floods
Flooding is a temporary overflow of water onto land that is normally dry. Floods are the most common natural disaster in the United States. Failing to evacuate flooded areas or entering flood waters can lead to injury or death.
Floods may:
Result from rain, snow, coastal storms, storm surges and overflows of dams and other water systems.
Develop slowly or quickly. Flash floods can come with no warning.
Cause outages, disrupt transportation, damage buildings and create landslides.
Tornado
Tornadoes can destroy buildings, flip cars, and create deadly flying debris. Tornadoes are violently rotating columns of air that extend from a thunderstorm to the ground. Tornadoes can:
Happen anytime and anywhere;
Bring intense winds, over 200 MPH; and
Look like funnels.
Earthquake
An earthquake is a sudden, rapid shaking of the ground caused by the shifting of rocks deep underneath the earth’s surface. Earthquakes can cause fires, tsunamis, landslides or avalanches. While they can happen anywhere without warning, areas at higher risk for earthquakes include Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Washington and the entire Mississippi River Valley.
Landslide / Avalanche / Subsidence
An avalanche is a large amount of snow moving quickly down a mountain, typically on slopes of 30 to 45 degrees. When an avalanche stops, the snow becomes solid like concrete and people are unable to dig out. People caught in avalanches can die from suffocation, trauma or hypothermia.
Landslides occur in all U.S. states and territories and can be caused by many factors including earthquakes, storms, volcanic eruptions, fire and human modification of land. The most deadly landslides are the ones that occur quickly, often with little notice.
In a landslide, masses of rock, earth or debris move down a slope. Debris and mud flows are rivers of rock, earth and other debris saturated with water. They develop during intense rainfall, runoff, or rapid snowmelt, changing the earth into a flowing river of mud or “slurry.” They can flow rapidly, striking with little or no warning at avalanche speeds (faster than a person can run). They also can travel many miles from their source, growing in size as they pick up trees, boulders, cars and other materials. Debris flows don’t always stay in stream channels and they can flow sideways as well as downhill.
Hurricane
Hurricanes are dangerous and can cause major damage because of storm surge, wind damage, and flooding. They can happen along any U.S. coast or in any territory in the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. Storm surge is historically the leading cause of hurricane-related deaths in the United States.
HAZMAT
Chemical agents are poisonous vapors, aerosols, liquids and solids that have toxic effects on people, animals or plants. Chemical agents can cause death but are difficult to deliver in deadly amounts because they dissipate quickly outdoors and are hard to produce.
Tsunami
Tsunamis are incredible disasters that can have major impacts, particularly to coastal cities. They typically occur after some type of earthquake or subsidence activity far out in the ocean.