When an emergency happens, you will need to know how best to use
your Community Plan and volunteers. In any emergency, having an
Community Emergency Plan is not a substitute for calling 999. You
will have made your local emergency responders aware of your plan
as part of your planning process, so in most circumstances you
should activate your plan in response to a call from the emergency
responders. It is important that any actions which you carry out
are co-ordinated with the wider emergency responders' efforts. You
should work with your local emergency responders to identify how
they will contact you, and how you should contact them.
In some circumstances, the emergency responders may be unable to
contact you. Therefore, you should develop a series of triggers you
can use as a Community Emergency Group to decide whether to take
action.
For example:
- Have we been able to contact our local emergency
responders?
- What messages are being put out in the media?
- What can we do safely without the help of the
emergency responders?
Action 9: record the process by which you will
activate your plan, using the Community
Emergency Plan template.
What to do when you put your plan into action
Using your list of skills, people and resources, you will need
to decide what you can do to safely work with the emergency
responders in the immediate response to an emergency, and a
potentially long period of recovery.
Action 10: record first steps to take once a
plan is activated, using the Community
Emergency Plan template.
Your first Community Emergency Group meeting
It may be possible for your group to meet briefly once the Plan
has been activated. If so, an example of a draft agenda you can use
for the first meeting can be found on Page 44 of the template. The
draft agenda is intended to be a guide only. You may find that your
team and volunteers are already getting on with helping but it is
important to make sure everyone is safe and working in a
coordinated way.
Evacuation
During the initial response to an emergency, it might be
necessary for some members of your community to be evacuated from
their homes to a safe place. Speak to those coordinating the
response (normally the police) to see what role your group can play
in this.
You may be able to assist with:
- door knocking or delivery of emergency messages;
- looking after people in a rest centre; or
- identifying those who may need extra help to move to
safety.
Action 11: use the Community
Emergency Plan template to record actions agreed with your
local authority in respect of evacuation.
Communications
Your group should discuss how it will cope if communications are
disrupted in the area. You may have access to walkie-talkies or
amateur radio groups like the Radio Amateurs' Emergency
Network (RAYNET), or other radio amateurs, that you can use to
communicate with each other.
Your group could also consider door knocking as an option to
communicate with the public and get the emergency responders'
messages across if it is possible to do this safely. You should
work with the emergency responders to ensure any messages they are
delivering to the community are consistent with those from the
emergency responders.
Action 12: record alternative communication
methods to use during an emergency using the Community Emergency Plan
template.