Types and causes of emergencies

Employees required to be protected from any activities that may result in them getting injured. This may occur during work period and therefore the safety and health regulations ensure that the employees are protected while conducting their work (?nan, Gül, & Y?lmaz, 2017). Emergencies are the scenarios whereby an individual’s health, property, and the environment are at risk of damage. The emergencies are grouped into various parts and they include:

• Life emergencies.

These are emergencies that cause danger to human life, it is considered of the highest priority by most of the emergency services (Steel, Godderis, & Luyten, 2018). The danger to human life may range from a single individual’s endangered example in a car accident that cause severe blood loss to a range of many individuals’ lives endangered example emergencies due to earthquakes and fires in workplaces or residential buildings where the persons involved in the incidents have been severely injured and require immediate medical services.

• Health emergencies.

These are an emergency is the second in rank of priorities after the life emergency. Most incidents to do not immediately result in life-threatening (Gopang, Nebhwani, Khatri, & Marri, 2017). The continuously build up to life-threatening scenarios as they are left to escalate with time. Therefore it is highly important for the emergency teams and services to respond in time, therefore, preventing the incidents from further escalation.

• Environmental emergencies.

These type of emergency does not cause harm to human life or an individual’s property but it causes harm to the creatures living in a natural environment such as wildlife. Therefore due to this, it is considered of the least degree of emergencies (Jespersen, & Hasle, 2017). It is also considered of the least importance by the emergency team but the emergency teams respond to it. An example of this type of emergency is when a wildfire breaks out in a forest.  These will cause damage to the natural wildlife and the animals’ within the habitat (Lingard, 2017).

For proper emergency evacuation process, there must be procedures to ensure that every individual in the workplace is assisted and knows his or her way around the workplace. The rooms of the workplace should be well light and all the signs of the escape roots should be labelled. The site of the workplace should always easily accessible to the road networks and the organization should always lie with the proper service responders to ensure that during emergencies the service providers can easily access the incident area. Various protocols should be included as per the expectation of different incidents. This will avoid confusion during an incident a proper response to the incident and help to save plenty of lives. It should also be known that the assembly point of the workers in the building should be well accessible to both the workers and the emergency service responders as per the health and safety act.

The Australian healthy standards and safety require that employers should provide a safe environment for their works and they can do this by engaging the workers on the training, providing the required gear for working and giving the workers the proper procedure if any incident may occur (Mohammadfam, et al., 2017). There are a range of emergencies that are responded to by the emergency teams, they include; an emergency that an individual is injured this requires little resource to handle but there are incidents where there are a large number of people involved in the incident and it requires plenty of resources such as a fire in a workplace.

Developing emergency response procedures for the work site

Different service providers rank different emergencies as the most prioritized are those that endanger the human life first and then those that cause injuries to the humans but are not life-threatening and then finally those that cause damage to the environments and the natural animals in the habitat. The input of stakeholders highly influence the resources required for the emergency response resources. The highly prioritized emergencies always have the highest allocation of resources at their disposal and the resources decline as the prioritization decreases.

The various source gives detailed information on how to respond to emergencies and health and safety. Occupational Safety and Health Regulations 1996, Occupational Safety and Health Regulations 1984 and preparing for the emergency evacuation at the workplace (Cooklin, Joss, Husser, & Oldenburg, 2017). This gives information on how to properly evacuate people from emergency and how also to respond to emergencies. Organizations required to have emergency advisors who have the responsibility of training the employees on how to respond to emergencies and also to assign various responses to various people in the organization in order to avoid chaos during incidents. Also, risk registers are required in an organization and their task is to evaluate and find any risks during the daily routine of the organization their work is to address and manage the issues as they arise.

There are various resources that are required to implement emergency procedures and they include;

• Medical supplies.
• Auxiliary communication equipment.
• Power generators.
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• Chemical and radiation detection equipment.
• Mobile equipment.
• Emergencyprotective clothing.
• Firefighting equipment.

The fire extinguisher is the emergency equipment and it should be checked regularly to ensure that it is properly functioning and that the power in the cylinder has not expired. This will ensure that in case of an incident the response is effective (Gul, & Guneri, 2017).  Proper signs should be put to inform all workers on how to respond also the alarm should be put and also the lights to show signs of danger. There should also be inclined planes for individuals who are using wheelchairs.

The first phase of emergency response should always involve the assessment of the risks and planning on how best to save lives during the incident (Bianchini, Donini, Pellegrini, & Saccani, 2017). The hazardous the incident the more the need for it to be evaluated and minimize the impact of its effects. During the response to an emergency the responder’s example the firefighters should have the full gear of responding to the incident, proper evaluation of the incident areas should be done before going in to save lives.

Evacuations are the most crucial part of an emergency response as the way the evacuation is carried out it determines the number of people who will be evacuated (Tchiehe,  & Gauthier, 2017). They should be carried out after the hazardous has been contained and none of the workers is in danger. During the evacuation, the most vulnerable should be evacuated first this include the children, the sick and the elderly and then the rest follow.

The second phase of the emergency response deals with ensuring that there is the proper response to the identified hazard and it is curbed to ensure quick recovery and saving of the lives of the individuals within the area of the incident. The workers should be trained to deal with fire emergencies and the drills they should take and also terror attacks where they should find the safest places and hide then call for help.

Reporting and documentation procedures

Before the rescue or the emergency team responds to the emergency they are given a clear outline of what type of incident they are dealing with and the number of people within the incident that is what is referred to as briefing (Kelloway, Nielsen, & Dimoff, 2017). This is important as it keeps the service team up to date with the incident and what their focus should be in order to avoid the incident from escalating.

The organization should regularly monitor their emergency procedure to find out if the procedures are as effective as they should and therefore evaluate the shortcomings in order to ensure that in future that lives are not risked and are saved swiftly. The persons in charge of implementing the procedures require great interpersonal skills so that they are able to communicate effectively with the workers and promote order during the emergency incident through assigning the various individuals with different tasks (Bao, Johansson, & Zhang, 2017).

There are different people in the organization from the security guards who are responsible for the security of the people in the firm. The management is responsible for ensuring that all the requirements by the legislation are available.

References

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Bianchini, A., Donini, F., Pellegrini, M., & Saccani, C. (2017). An innovative methodology for measuring the effective implementation of an Occupational Health and Safety Management System in the European Union. Safety science, 92, 26-33.

Cooklin, A., Joss, N., Husser, E., & Oldenburg, B. (2017). Integrated approaches to occupational health and safety: a systematic review. American journal of health promotion, 31(5), 401-412.

Gopang, M. A., Nebhwani, M., Khatri, A., & Marri, H. B. (2017). An assessment of occupational health and safety measures and performance of SMEs: An empirical investigation. Safety science, 93, 127-133

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?nan, U. H., Gül, S., & Y?lmaz, H. (2017). A multiple attribute decision model to compare the firms’ occupational health and safety management perspectives. Safety science, 91, 221-231.

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Kelloway, E. K., Nielsen, K., & Dimoff, J. K. (Eds.). (2017). Leading to Occupational Health and Safety: How Leadership Behaviours Impact Organizational Safety and Well-Being. John Wiley & Sons.

Lingard, H. (2017). First Aid and Occupational Health and Safety: the Case for an Integrated Training Approach. Burns: Journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries, 111-117.

Mohammadfam, I., Kamalinia, M., Momeni, M., Golmohammadi, R., Hamidi, Y., & Soltanian, A. (2017). Evaluation of the quality of occupational health and safety management systems based on key performance indicators in certified organizations. Safety and health at work, 8(2), 156-161.

Steel, J., Godderis, L., & Luyten, J. (2018). Productivity estimation in economic evaluations of occupational health and safety interventions: a systematic review. Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health, 44(5).

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