What Police do During a Disaster

We received a question on one of our most recent videos. The question actually covers multiple areas but the one we will focus on in this article is the role of police during disasters.

The question is:

“I don’t know if the Canadian police work/are trained differently from the American police, but if they are remotely close to what the American police are then what the (expletive) are police going to do during a natural disaster. Yeah, you’re going to need more than usual because you need somebody to direct traffic if/when the power goes down but no way it is double the amount. What is actually going to need doubled? EMS (emergency medical services), fire fighters, specialized rescue teams, what help are the cops going to be other than shooting people already panicking?”

When looking at what the role of police is during a disaster, first it is important to break down what their roles are during both normal operations and extraordinary operations (disasters).

Together, police and fire departments are the initial ‘first line’ for response to all hazards. Police specialize in the human element and fire specializes in the non-human element. Most specialized response resources will be sub-specialized within these two services.

Looking only at responding to an initial incident, police and fire are both responsible for ‘securing a scene’. Other response agencies generally do not do this. As an example: EMS is usually not responsible for securing the scene for the public, they assist with medical needs within a scene that has been secured for them.

Within securing the scene, fire will be responsible for clearing roads, putting out fires, moving rubble, basically construction and demolition style-work. Police will redirect traffic, set the scene boundary and secure it, act as extra hands, and are better specialized at doing larger searches for missing persons.

In general, police handle the ‘people stuff’ so that firefighters can focus on their specialization.

Outside of securing the scene, there is also the communications infrastructure that connects all emergency services. In most jurisdictions this is run almost entirely by police. 9-1-1 is housed in a police building, if not directly in police headquarters. The 9-1-1 dispatcher that picks up the call is most likely a police civilian employee.

The police are far more specialized than fire and EMS when it comes to communications infrastructure in general. Even in the event there is a complex incident where it is determined that ‘fire’ is effectively in charge because they know the hazard better, they are probably using a significant amount of communications infrastructure that is being provided by police.

Police also act as a resource for filtering incidents to other specialized agencies. Most police will have a list of other relevant services and their contact information on their person.

If someone doesn’t know the right number to call for whatever the emergency is, and they either don’t know or can’t reach the city operator (311 in Toronto), then the local police officer can probably help.

Out of the three most well-known emergency responder types (police, fire, EMS), police are uniquely the only one which is commonly among the public outside of an emergency call. They also tend to act as a sort of ‘multitool’; even when something does not normally fit their regular job description, they often end up responsible for it anyways. This uniquely make police three things among emergency response resources simultaneously:

1. The largest (significantly so).

2. The most publicly facing.

3. The most flexible.

In fact, when it comes to search and rescue (SAR), at a local level, this is directly a police core-competency. Specialized units like HUSAR (heavy urban search and rescue) will often be a sub-specialization or cross-specialization of the fire department, but when it comes to mobilizing a large number of resources and finding people, this is something police tend to do best.

Here is another way to think about it. What agency is responsible for hunting down a serial killer? A specialized police unit. Now, fundamentally, what is involved in this? People tracking. The underlying principles of tracking down a criminal, a lost child, or missing people in a disaster are all the same. There are small adjustments based on the circumstance, but fundamentally, this is people tracking. The local marine unit doing search and rescue is probably a police unit. 

In very large disasters, it is not only local police that do this. Regional, state/provincial, federal police and other resources get involved. Often military professionals will also be involved; often they are being utilized to essentially ‘throw more people at the problem’ and are fulfilling a police function due to a lack of sufficient local resources.

Police also serve a risk control function in other components during very large-scale disasters, here are a few:

• They are the primary resource that does door-to-door evacuation notifications.

• Implementing an evacuation and controlling traffic. Keep in mind, virtually no large city has enough police to do this efficiently, evacuating an urban environment quickly is extraordinarily difficult, in some jurisdictions it is practically impossible.

• Maintaining order and supporting emergency shelter staff. A lot goes on in these shelters, some people get violent with nurses. Some people behave erratically in an emergency shelter, most don’t. Kids wander off, parents panic, police are very helpful here.

• Victim ID. When it comes down to the tracking of the deceased and coordinated with the coroner’s office, this is generally the job of the police. There are also certainly medical considerations, but police need to come to a determination if the individual died due to the disaster, or some other cause.

To bring this back to the initial point of the video that this question responded to:

The major point being made is that large scale disasters place a strain on local resources that is often greater than double what they require for everyday operations.

People are generally only willing to pay enough for emergency services to operate as normal, sometimes with a bit of additional surge capacity. This is a very small fractional increase. You can see this behaviour in every response resource, police, the justice system that supports it, fire, specialized units, EMS, the healthcare system, public health, etc.

This results in a situation where emergency services are effectively guaranteed to be strained to the point they should be expected to ‘not be coming’ in a timely manner in the event of a disaster. 

This places a greater need on alternate strategies. The most commonly suggested one being improving one’s own resilience or ability to survive long enough until emergency services can catch up to the backlog.

As far as double being needed, consider events like the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear earthquake tsunami. Double isn’t enough, you need over quadruple.

The public won’t pay for it, so people might want to consider taking their personal preparedness more seriously.

Learn more and watch the full video here.

Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp. and is the author of Continuity 101. He can be reached at info@prepared.ca.