Respond to Discussion Question 2

 For this discussion scenario, one is selected. The issue is that there is sudden flooding that requiring emergency management to select between saving a nursing home or a factory that most of the community works. The assumption taken for this discussion is that there are people at the nursing home, so you are not saving the building but the people in it. This is critical in determining what is the priority for emergency management. Life of the individuals in immediate danger will always take precedence over the saving of property. Canton (2011) noted that “Life safety is always the first priority in response, but as was pointed out in a previous chapter, one of the qualitative differences between disasters and emergencies is a change in speed of response and in standards of care.” (p. 178). Since we are not given specifics on the factory, we will assume it does not create any hazards to the community if it is flooded. If the plant produces materials that would be hazardous and endanger the community if flooded or kills individuals from exposure to toxic materials a, different issue is created. Since the factory does not have toxic materials and presents no environmental hazard to the community if flooded the selection of responding to the nursing home first would be the selected course of action while planning to address the factory as soon as all individuals are evacuated from the nursing home. The priority will be to remove the people from the nursing home to a safe location. Priorities should have been part of the emergency plan to cover what the community has established as priorities. This scenario causes the reader to wonder what response strategy had been developed or considered before the sudden flooding. Did this flood fall within the 100-year flood data?