The definition of a major incident varies throughout literature. Ultimately, it is any incident where the location, number, severity or type of live casualties requires extraordinary resources and demands a response greater than that of normal procedures (Mackway-Jones, 2012). Throughout history there are a significant number of major incidents that have left towns, states and countries devastated. On September 11 2001, the most devastating act of terrorism in known history occurred when four planes were hijacked, two of which crashed into each of the ‘Twin Towers’ at the World Trade Centre, one into The Pentagon and the fourth crashed in paddocks in Pennsylvania (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 2004). On August 29 2005, one the of most costliest and deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the United States of America made landfall in the City of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, this was Hurricane Katrina (Brown, Knabb & Rhome, 2011).
Tracking of Hurricane Katrina Positioning (Brown, D., Knabb, R., & Rhome, J., 2011)
As seen in virtually all major incidents, the first responders to these disasters were local police, fire and ambulance personnel – all of whom were supported by local emergency management personnel and community government officials (Bullock, Coppola & Haddow, 2010). An evaluation and analysis on the response effort of these services at both major incidents has been undertaken and important aspects such as risk assessment, command and control, communication and triage have been critiqued. Both evaluations reveal that although some aspects of disaster management went to plan, many components did not and as with all major incidents, hindsight allows many areas of improvement to be identified.
*It should be noted that the disaster management cycle, a central concept utilised in the development of disaster management plans will be referred to throughout this analysis and a brief outline of this can be found by clicking the ‘Disaster Management Cycle’ tab at the top of this page.
The Response of Emergency Services to Major Incidents: September 11 Terrorist Attack & Hurricane Katrina 