Hurricane Americana features
Introduction
Communities with structures designed to respond to disasters often face an uphill task in standing the pressure against their capabilities and goals. Mistakes of the past are always never far from repeating themselves unless excellent communication between the responders and the community is instilled at the early stages of preparedness. Hurricane Americana is expected to make landfall this Saturday morning as reported by Dragon County emergency department. Since the start of the tropical cyclones season, Dragon County residents have had enough reasons to worry following a long week of strong winds blowing from the south -the projected path of the storm- of the county where it borders the Atlantic Ocean-. The eye of the storm has been located just 200 km away from the coast. The tropical storm is gaining momentum with winds of up to 150 mph and approaching the coastline with a substantial storm surge of well above 15 meters height.
The above statistics gives Hurricane Americana features of a category four storm with the ability to graduate to category five, which is usually catastrophic. Coordinating the emergency efforts could be hampered by the rampant communication breakdown experienced before when the county was hit by a category 4 Hurricane Mamba a year ago. As Hurricane Americana nears landfall, it is ideal for relooking at the communication strategies and structures that should be in place to aid emergency response efforts.
Goals and capabilities of the Dragon County community
The core capabilities of the community are pegged on their resilience to prevent, protect, and respond to threats. The capabilities that define the goals of the population are critical elements in registering success. The use of existing preparedness networks, improving training, coordinating emergency groups, and leveraging on science and technology supports these capabilities. The capabilities are interdependent to each other, which calls for coordinated improvement from the previous response to hazards of a similar degree (Gorbil & Gelenbe, 2011). The outlined capabilities serve as both tools of preparedness and templates of action implementation. Individual preparedness within the community is essential to the overall outcome of the response efforts. Functional communication structures within the community would help fabricate those capabilities to create a mesh that would cushion the county from the impending disaster.
Interoperability
Communication is essential for the execution of the core mission areas of a disaster, which include: prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery. A slight change in communication could change the course of the emergency response and result in an unwanted number of casualties and damages. Interoperability ought to be maintained throughout the emergency period to ensure the capability structure of the community is utilized to the latter. At the prevention and protection stage, intelligence and information sharing are channeled through authoritative structures for the message to get home effectively. To a greater extent, the federal agency in emergencies provides intelligence and shared information. In this juncture, the authorities in Dragon County have no choice but to coordinate with the federal agency overseeing the progression of events. The level of risk and resilience to disaster is assessed at the mitigation stage to give direction on what response is appropriate at specified moments. Recovery is the last bit of the emergency mission that deals with broader concepts like economic recovery, housing, and restoration of healthcare services. Communication at each stage of emergency response should be in line with the community capabilities and goals.
Communication breakdown
Human factors often aid communication breakdown in an emergency. Panic and anxiety lead the way as the main factors that influence a partial or near-total collapse in communication. Communication teams should not cave into the pressure of rumors and personal fear to mislead the public with inaccurate information. When panic gets to the responders, it sends the communities in a confusion mode, and some of the less prepared would be caught in the middle of the danger (Ranke, 2016). The counter-response is that anxiety may lead to people responding way too far important that necessary. What the county authorities ought to do is to establish systems based on the capabilities and goals of the community to ensure communication doesn’t fail anyone instead help people make the perfect decisions. Human error is another factor attributable to the breakdown in communication during times of emergency (Woods, et al., 2017). The spokesperson may misquote figures and other data patterns to send people in a craze. These errors in transmission can be eliminated with an astute team at the spokesperson’s desk, steering the events as they unfold.
Emergency communication requires a knowledgeable spokesperson that can be trusted with giving accurate public information and promptly. Emergency responders usually face the challenge of getting various feeds from available communication channels, ultimately missing out on the key actions to take at the most heightened moment. Training of communication equipment handlers is also essential, especially given the numerous avenues of information that needs to be earnest.
Conclusion
The county should have a designated spokesperson entirely with an equipped information desk team throughout the disaster. The spokesperson needs an adequate stock of communication equipment that would allow emergency broadcasting of events as they unfold. The county emergency chapter has outlined the characters and other requirements for the position of the spokesperson and the roles described. However, with the county getting ready to face a near-catastrophic event, it would be necessary for the spokesperson to go beyond just announcing but also providing relevant information to contain anxiety. The information desk should also have a hotline where distressed community members can call to get assistance and all the information they might require at the time of need. Lastly, the spokesperson should have an information verification system that would ensure the only actual situation is reported and not rumors. Dragon County could avert the mistakes of earlier disasters if the right communication capability structures are utilized to the very end in the wake of the anticipated category four storm named Americana.