Disaster response kits

Citation

Levinson, D.J. and Amar, S. (1999), "Disaster response kits", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 8 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.1999.07308dab.002

Disaster response kits

Disaster response kits

Keywords: Disaster management, Forensic science, Police

Defining the problem

During the wave of suicide bombing which confronted Israel in the mid-1990s, disaster response uniformed officers had to grapple with the problem of rapidly deploying forces with appropriate equipment to the disaster sites.

Operations policemen were quickly dispatched to cordon off the affected area and re-route both pedestrian and vehicular traffic. The equipment that they required, such as road-blocking fences, tended to be for the co-ordinated use of the team, rather than for the private, professional use of specific policemen. Thus, it was sufficient for fences to be brought from a district warehouse or other nearby facility and left at the disaster site under the responsibility of the commanding officer. Other Operations officers were called to the area merely to show police presence and engender a perception of control. This served as an inappropriate model for the Division of Identification & Forensic Sciences (DIFS), whose evidence technicians needed professional tools for each person to perform his pre-assigned job. Without such tools the technicians are essentially ineffective.

Large boxes of basic equipment had been put together without real experience and for other purposes; they proved inappropriate, both in terms of bringing them to the field and having the correct supplies reach the technicians. It was found that cumbersome packaging has one of two results:

1. 1.

   it effectively delays the arrival of forces to the disaster site as they become preoccupied with loading boxes onto special vehicles[1]; or

2. 2.

   it causes the technicians to hurry to the site as they leave their working tools behind.

Given either scenario, technicians could not begin to document the disaster site properly (a job that must be started quickly before other responders move victims and evidence) without the required equipment.

Basically, the technicians realized that most of the emergency supplies were irrelevant to their assigned function in the new situation created by suicide bombings. Although improvised solutions might be found for the short term, it was clear that a new approach was needed for equipment at the disaster site.

The solution: individualized kits

As experience accrued, a new approach of supply kits individualized by job function was developed. Although this method had the managerial disadvantage of requiring much more record-keeping and tracking of equipment, negative aspects were greatly overweighed by increased facility for the field. Since the kits were of manageable size, generally a small trunk, an attache case or valise, technicians could keep them at hand's reach and literally throw them into a car or carry them as they ran off to an incident. In the case of lifting fingerprints, a case with new equipment for specialized disaster situations was designed/selected. This approach gave better coverage to fingerprint problems which otherwise could not be handled.

Advantages

This new approach of individualized kits increased effectiveness in several different ways, each of sufficient importance by itself to warrant the change:

• •

  Very often equipment, not written job descriptions, determines work function. Building the kits brought into better perspective exactly who does what in a disaster, and as a result the decisions were certified not only by a bureaucrat's rubber cachet, but also by a clerk's purchase order. It is interesting that whenever there was a contradiction between previous theoretical planning and work procedures dictated by equipment analysis, the latter always won out.

• •

  For example, previously evidence technicians were supplied with both ante mortem and post modem information forms; in the equipment-oriented approach with only essential supplies put into the working kit, these same technicians were given only those post mortem pages relevant to their work. Ante mortem pages were no longer included in materials given to scene technicians.

• •

  The benefits of the system were removing excess functions from the technicians and better defining of work responsibilities by giving specific job functions forms that define the work to be done. Since the kits were stored under the responsibility of the intended user, technicians began to care about the contents. They also showed concern that the materials they needed were included and in proper working condition.

• •

  In planning the fingerprint kit it became immediately obvious that differentiation had to be made between the lifting of prints and their comparison. The result was that for the first time in the Israel Police a proper portable kit was designed for fingerprint comparison. This included, for example, both illumination and magnification equipment.

• •

  Planning the content of the kits meant a general examination of existing equipment and potential purchases. This had the desirable side effect of examining and eventually improving equipment and its availability used not only in disasters, but also in routine cases.

• •

  The entire effort to build kits encouraged a serious general reconsideration of disaster planning.

Implementation

The first step in the effort to supply kits was to outline the job responsibilities of the police unit involved, in this case the Division of Identification & Forensic Sciences (DIFS).

This highlighted several discrepancies with previous theoretical planning, however differences were always resolved in favour of equipment-based thinking. For example, previously both ante mortem (AM) and post-mortem (PM) information forms were placed into the general supply box given to evidence technicians. In the equipment-based system, technician kits were supplied only with those PM forms dealing with body recovery and scene documentation; medical description forms were stored in the mortuary, and all AM paperwork was assigned to investigators.

The Israel Police is divided into districts and sub-districts, the latter each having an evidence technicians office. In certain cases technicians from one sub-district are called upon to reinforce technicians from another area. To facilitate such movement of technicians, it was decided to totally standardize DVI disaster kits. Thus, technicians throughout the country would have a "familiar" kit. This was deemed to be of importance since work at a disaster is often under pressure and stressful; in such cases familiarity with equipment is desirable. In practical terms this meant selecting required equipment, choosing a carrying case of adequate size and of appropriate material, and designing an interior configuration which would house supplies in the same convenient, standard and accessible place in every kit.

Another aspect of implementation was training. Professional responsibility dictates that it is insufficient to send materials to the field with a cover letter, then hope for the best. A schedule was drawn up to visit the field to check on the storage of kits and to ascertain that all technicians know where the kits are kept and what they contain. Separate exercises are being held to make certain that all technicians know how to use the materials in the kits.

Conclusion

It is hoped that this approach will provide a better answer to bringing equipment to the field in a disaster. It is a general problem in disaster management that plans cannot really be tested until disaster strikes. Although exercises are necessary, the true measurement of effectiveness is in an actual situation. For this reason during a disaster one of the assigned functions in this program is evaluation, so that lessons can be learnt from the disaster and be applied, once again for future contingency planning.

Dr Jay Levinson and Shimon AmarDivision of Identification & Forensic ScienceIsrael Police National HeadquartersJerusalem, Israel

Note 1. In several of the incidents in downtown Jerusalem technicians literally ran by foot to the site due to very short distances. Even when the incidents were slightly further away, traffic congestion made walking much quicker than driving.