Emergency service

The main emergency services include:

• the fire service and firefighters
• the emergency medical service consisting of ambulance services and paramedics / emergency medical technicians
• the police
• emergency operations, often managed by the fire service.

Specialized emergency services include:

• maritime search and rescue services such as the local coastguard, lifeboat or surf lifesavers.
• mountain rescue teams
• mine rescue[?] teams
• bomb disposal teams
• earthquake rescue[?] teams, also known as urban search and rescue teams or heavy rescue teams
• famine relief[?] teams

Mass emergencies such as floods, earthquakes, snowstorms, tornados and hurricanes overload professional emergency services. Consider the math: A community of 100,000 typically will have about ten fire trucks. Many jurisdictions do not cross-train police as light rescue personnel. If the emergency traps or injures just 2% of the population, 2,000 rescues will be needed. Since each rescue takes about a half hour, and there are ten trucks, the rescues will take about 100 hours to complete. People in shock will begin to die within two hours. Trapped children will begin to die ot thirst in one day, trapped adults and shut-ins in two days. As many as 1500 deaths might be prevented by simple rescue and first-aid, if it were only available quickly.

• Some regions therefore perform mass training of amateurs to cope with mass emergencies, in a program called community emergency response teams.
• In mass emergencies, coordination is crucial. This is usually provided by some form of emergency operations.
• The military can sometimes help in mass emergencies, although they can rarely mobilize quickly enough to make a significant difference, and often have incompatible doctrines.

Emergency responders are persons who respond to a call for help to an emergency telephone number. Typically they are sent by a emergency dispatch center. Many countries have special emergency numbers, such as 911 in North America, 999 in Britain or 000 in Australia. Due to the increase in international travel and mobile phones capable of operating in different countries, an international emergency GSM mobile telephone number 112 has been agreed upon. This works in all GSM mobiles and on landline phones in European Union countries, ex Soviet Union countries, some mobile networks in the United States and many other countries. In most cases the existing national number(s) also works.

See also:

• Emergency telephone number for more about 911, and other numbers such as 112.
• Emergency medical service
• Disaster relief
• Civil defense