Areas of Focus

SWC’s Emergency Preparedness primarily focuses on response to the following areas of potential attack: Biological Agents, Chemical Agents, Natural Disasters and Zoonotic Diseases.

A number of factors contribute to a strong community facing a successful emergency response:

• Planning (Creating a number of documents that outline responses philosophies, contacts, MOUs, etc.)
• Education (New approaches are created to problems known and unknown on a daily basis.)
• Partnerships (One person/group will not be able to serve as the sole emergency response for a community. It takes a team effort.)
• Repetition (Practice, practice, practice.)

These areas of focus are utilized throughout the management of the four phases of an emergency:

• Mitigation (Reducing the chance of an emergency happening.)
• Preparedness (Cycling of planning, organizing, training, equipping, exercising, evaluating and taking corrective action.)
• Response (Mobilizing the appropriate emergency services into the disaster area.)
• Recovery (Rebuilding to return a community to normal or near-normal conditions.)

NIMS

The National Incident Management System (NIMS) is one of the common tools utilized during an emergency response. This scaleable system provides a universal approach for managing incidents, allowing different agencies or individuals trained in different locations to work from the same core concept and terminology.