Main consideration assessment
Identification of incident
The services involved must assess and discuss the situation and determine the factors and severity
of the incident to establish which necessary steps to take. They will look at aspects such as
casualties, damages, infrastructure and ways that it could possibly escalate in order to mitigate these
effects.
Prevention methods
When a hazard has been identified prevention methods are required to be put in place. Agencies will
share information to see the possible options. Category 1 responders will have the main role in
putting a prevention in place to overcome or prevent a hazard from occurring. Not only category 1
responders but category 2 responders are also needed in the prevention because both agencies will
share information and cooperate together about the hazard and come up with various prevention
methods for the issue at hand and to ensure that all personnel have the correct training and resources
available to deal with the situation.
Hazard awareness
When assessing hazards a risk assessment is used which sets a structure when identifying the
hazards and risks of a situation. The risk assessment also sets a guideline of the risks score allowing
users to see which agencies will be required and also lets you determine the chances of certain
threats occurring. All responders will be responsible for this because they all need a guideline of the
risks and hazards which could occur during the scene of a major incident.
Response
A range of agencies respond to major incidents depending on the scale of it. For example Police will
respond, save and protect life along with setting up cordons around the scene and the gathering of
evidence from the scene. Fire service would respond by carrying out search and rescue along with
putting out any fires there may be and assessing infrastructure, Ambulance services primary
response is to deal with the casualties and for most of the category 2 responders their main response
is usually to assist the public whether that be the local authorities sorting out replacement transport,
the media providing live updates of the current situation or the voluntary services providing care to
both members of the public as well as the other services currently tackling the incident.
Recovery
During the recovery phase the services involved must come up with a plan of how to restore
normality as fast as possible. They do this by working on getting any effected areas such as
transport back up and running when its safe to do so, moving debre and pumping water if areas are
effected by flooding, rehousing any victims if their homes have been left unusable, assisting
aftercare to those who have been effected mentally and physically from the incident etc..