Emergency Response to Terrorism

 

Decontamination

On a wide scope of meaning, the word decontamination refers to the idea of making a place safe once it has been made unsafe in which ever manner. It involves getting rid of any dangerous objects like bombs or even people that make places unsafe. Cases of decontamination have been very severe as time has gone by mostly encouraged by the fact that there is high rate of technological development.

High School

In society, schools are one of the institutions that carry the highest number of people. They will have so many people or students who have gone to acquire knowledge and this is almost on a daily basis. Some of the reasons why a school could be attacked include;

Many people will die or be affected during the attack due to the high population which is a characteristic of most schools. A terrorist always finds ways of affecting the highest population that he possibly can.

The number of deaths that will be experienced in a school is quite high because the school has young children who may not know how to help themselves or how to offer proper first aid to their injured friends due to panic. This means that the number of deaths will be so high.

The school has students from almost all walks of life or even at times from different countries and races. Attacking the school will mean that the different families where the children come from will be affected. A large portion of the country and state will be affected in the process.

Initial considerations

To make a school safe again there are so many things that I will have to look at;

The nearness of the school to the city

The population of the school is important so that one can prepare and approximate the number of first aid material that will be needed.

The Decontamination

Once we get to the school;

Take all the casualties to the hospital without wasting any time so that we can save as many life’s as possible. This is the very first step to making the school safe by ensuring that the lives of those who have been affected are secured.

Once that is done the facility should be cleared so that all people are kept as far away as possible from the school to avoid any more damages.

Specialists in the area of bombing are then called in to survey the whole school and check if there are any more bombs. Any that is still on should be disarmed in the most careful way.

The school should be then closed till it’s proved to be safe for any further learning.

 Explain why your chosen initial decontamination considerations are important to this particular attack, and explain how, as a first responder, you will meet these challenges.

The unfortunate aspect of the school in this case is that it is quite near to one of the big cities in the state and this poses a risk to the city. The people in the city will panic due to fear that they are next. The best way to deal with this is to use the media to inform them of what exactly happened and to ask them not to panic but to be cautious.

The school is one of a high population of students and that goes without saying that I will need a lot of people in the rescue team for efficiency. Such a school may have a lot of casualties as the many students fought for safety out of their classes or the bomb may have affected many (Houghton,2016).

Football stadium

This is a good target for an attack because so many people love football and so he will get the attention he needs from the public.

Since different people of different ages and ways of life go to watch football, no one will be able to tell who was responsible for the attack. A person can easily sneak the bomb in and out of the stadium.

Initial considerations

The architecture of the stadium- Some of the stadiums are quite complex in the way that they were built and this may make it even more difficult to decontaminate. It will require the help of architects especially when it comes to the issue of assessing the place for any bombs that may be hidden.

The decontamination

Approach scene with caution -While going to the arena, it is important to be careful as you go to the rescue because you can find that there are other bombs in the stadium that are still yet to go off and cause more death.

Assess the place and find out where the bombs are located and disarm those that are still on to avoid further damage.

Identify signs and indicators of CBRN incidents;-Take time to acquire patterns of things that were done deliberately to cause the bombing. This means establishing how the security was bridged all that was done for the bomb to go off

It is important to know how many people lost their lives and to also identify who they were. People will come looking for their family members who might have lost their lives and so establishing the identity is important. For accountability purposes, the citizens will also expect to have a comprehensive report on the number of causalities in the bombing.

Establish all the resources that will be needed for the cleaning up of any hazardous material left in the stadium. This will rely on the extent to which the bombing affected the place and the size of the stadium.

The facility needs to be closed off from any further use till it is completely made safe for use. This will involve clearing of any chemicals or hazardous gases that may have been released. It can only be opened once professionals in this filed certify it as safe for use.

Conclusion

There are different forms of contamination in the world where bombing is one of them. This has been the cause of mass loss of life in the human history. These needs to be approached with care because any mistake made could make things worse. All the above listed steps or more should be followed with great caution so as to make places safe for use again. One fact remains; attacks will always be on places of large population (Simpson, 2014).

References

Houghton, B. (2016). The Changing Nature and Tactics of Terrorism. Oklahoma Politics, 25, 1-16.

Fuse, A., Okumura, T., Hagiwara, J., Tanabe, T., Fukuda, R., Masuno, T., … & Yokota, H. (2013). New information technology tools for a medical command system for mass decontamination. Prehospital and disaster medicine, 28(03), 298-300.

Simpson, E. (2014). The poor man’s nuclear bomb.