Disaster and Emergency, What’s The Difference?
February 20, 2012, Submitted by: Ken Tweet
The difference between disaster and emergency is fairly big, although an emergency situation can certainly feel like a disaster to those involved.
Disaster is defined as a sudden calamitous event bringing great damage, loss, or destruction; a sudden or great misfortune or failure.
Emergency is defined as an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action; an urgent need for assistance or relief.
A disaster will likely affect more people and/or will have more devastating consequences than that of an emergency. An emergency can turn into a disaster while a disaster is inherently an emergency situation, if noticed ahead of time. Not all bad results of an emergency will reach the level of disaster.
When I think of disaster and emergency, I consider a disaster to be widespread, regional, or wider. Examples of a disaster may be the consequences of severe weather such as a hurricane, tornado, or flooding. An economic meltdown followed by a rapid devaluation of currency would be considered a disaster, affecting countless millions of people.
An emergency is a situation that requires immediate attention, a situation that could lead to disaster if left alone or unattended. Or, maybe it won’t, although it may seem like it to you nonetheless.
A disaster does not have to be preceded by an emergency. A disaster may come on quickly and without warning, a black-swan event, but not necessarily so. An asteroid strike to the planet could bring about major disaster without an ‘emergency’ before it. If we saw the asteroid coming weeks ahead of time, you could say that we had an emergency on our hands.
An emergency is a situation which may be an impending crisis, and is always something that requires quick or immediate attention. A disaster is a done deal, in that the damage is done, while it may leave behind countless emergencies as the damage unfolds into subordinate events which may themselves last for a long time until they are cleared up or written off.
Examples of Disaster and Emergency
Disaster
A solar flare / CME event unleashes an EMP (electro-magnetic-pulse) which takes down the electrical power grid of 2/3 the United States. A disaster for sure.
The Hayward Fault in California rips a magnitude 7.5 earthquake which destroys tens of thousands of homes, injures thousands, and kills hundreds in a highly populated area outside of San Francisco. The electrical power, natural gas, and water utilities are all damaged and offline in the region. A major regional disaster affecting millions.
A declared ‘Greek default’ triggers an economic tsunami as credit-default-swaps are called to perform while the issuers of the insurance do not have the assets and liquidity to pay the bondholders. The major banks and institutions are too leveraged and all fall like dominoes, setting off a new Greater Depression that lasts 13 years. While not a geophysical disaster, a man-made disaster such as this can be just as devastating or even worse.
Emergency
You are at work and rioting has broken out in the streets outside from an angry mob who has lost their government cheese and are smashing storefront windows and lighting cars on fire in protest. It is an emergency and you need to bug-out safely or ‘bug in’.
You are awakened in the middle of the night as an intruder has just invaded your home in search of valuables, or worse… Your heart is pounding as you realize what is happening, and you reach for your firearm. It is an emergency.
It is winter and you are traveling in your vehicle through the snowy mountains on the way to your destination. You are not on the main roads, and you swerve to avoid a deer which suddenly leaped out from the side of the road. You skid off the road down a moderate embankment, you’ve been injured, and you know that they won’t be able to see you from up on the road. It is an emergency.
Disaster and Emergency are two different things, they are sometimes confused, but they are often related. At Modern Survival Blog.com we often speak of these words, while they each have their place and context with regards to survival and emergency preparedness.
Be Prepared.
If you enjoyed this or topics of emergency preparedness, or are planning for disaster,
Read our current articles on Modern Survival Blog – surviving disaster and emergency
You know one way I define an emergency and a disaster is the effort and the recovery time necessary. With a disaster I need of Haiti or Fukushima. With an emergency I like of the LA riots in the 1990′s, an overblown situation like the swine flu episode, the Cuban Missile Crisis. With a disaster I think of a true calamity. With an ememgency I see a scare. Emergencies though can be scares that turn quite real and dangerous. A national emergency I see as the country using something that is frightening to exert control such as a total OPEC oil embargo against the U.S. The disaster would be the aftermath of the out of control food prices and food runs because of the extreme costs of transporting and manufacturing food if the embargo lasts long enough.
Good advice is to be ready for both. An emergency may just be a few days to recover, whicle a disaster could be weeks or years. A long term emergency would sooner or later have to be classified as a disaster because of the time it would take for recovery from it.
By the way Ken, Anderson Cooper’s new talk show on ABC is doing a special on this Wednesday, day after tomorrow, about survivalists that will eat anything to survive, maybe even people. Here we go again with with making preppers and survivalists look like nut cases that have been released from the booby hatch. I am going to watch it and get real pissed off about it, probably. Maybe you and Lauren could check it out also to see just what I have been saying about the black eye that the media and TV shows so much enjoy giving to people that prepare. They sure love to exhibit us like the audience and masses like to; “look at the crazy person, look at the crazy person”. I know it shouldn’t piss me off, but if you watch this, I think it will likely get you a little upset also. Everyone, check your schedule at try to watch it.
@”BEE”, You must have an alarm that tells you when M.S.B. posts… Ooooo; tastes like chicken. Have a link to send via the heart line, wishing and directing energy to you and yours. That is to say all of you that come upon this. Survive-All…
(I’m starting to wonder that myself)
@ otter. I truly like the people on this site, they remind me a lot of myself and I truly want what is best for them. I am only on the computer a couple of hours to maybe 3 hours a day. I do not know why I have some sort link up to when the site posts, I just do. I sense things all the time, and I have had too many dreams that have come true. I just cannot get the winning lottery numbers, have gotten close though. When these programs make fun of good people that try so hard to prepare and make a future for themselves, their family and friends, it ticks me off. This is why I try to defend all of us against these characters that use showsmanship at the expense of people that prepare to sell air time. Check out the Anderson Cooper segment on “Should we be worried about the end of the world?” that is on tomorrow and see IF Mr. Cooper is fair or has fallen into the category of so many others.
Ken can wonder much about me and this is hardly intentional. I have not personally E-mailed him as I don’t E-mail anyone. The Anti-Virus from Norton that I have has my original E-mail address but I don’t get E-mails from them. I don’t E-mail relatives even though they want to E-mail me. Since 1996 I had a total of 6 computer viruses, I was looking at old receipts from the computer repair shop I go to. 2 were because I was too stupid enough not to have anti-virus. Two of them came as a result from visiting a conspiracy site and an Israeli news site, not the usual places that someone gets a virus as normally it is from the X-rated sites. The other 2 came from E-mails. Those 2 from E-mails were vicous and BOTH killed the hardware on 2 computers. There were older computers granted, but it was awful. I use to enjoy E-mailing people but I learned my lesson that E-mail is dangerous even with a good anti-virus that I had.
I feel terrible that I remain this mysterious person to poor Ken because I will not go through this again. Ken’s site has been hacked and like other survival sites the government and others that don’t want people to know how to survive and are likely to embed problems into E-mails going from these sites. This is why I don’t correspond on other survival sites because they require E-mails, and because I truly like this site a lot and the people here. I guess my E-mail works but I have not received anything from it. People can talk about safely E-mailing someone through all sorts of protection, but if someone wants to put something malicious it can be done and it will be in an E-mail because it is easier to hide there and they are the worst ones also. I would like to receive coupons via E-mail but I am not going to take a chance of a third computer dying prematurely.
Otter, I admit it I totally think outside the box, but I make other people think also. I see what others don’t see and this can be most valuable because so many disasters and preparation are off the charts and so many people are caught off guard because they just didn’t think of THAT. I think I have a connection with this site because I do care about what happens to the people that visit this site. I can see much trouble coming from war and I truly don’t feel that people have made themselves ready for war. I go by statistics a lot, and raw chance can predict the future. Like an area overdue for an earthquake or in a drought stricken region way overdue for rain, events that are overdue eventually happen and usually with severe results such as a mega quake or mega flood. A world war is way overdue and few see this. The true emergency is that people are not preparing for war, and the disaster will be that WHEN it happens that they have not prepared.
Always nice to see your comments Otter, ALWAYS.
As a 20 year-old Emergency Medical Technician in training many (too many) years ago, The definition of a disaster is:
any situation which overwhelms the capabilities of your local emergency providers.
It could be in the form of a fire for the fire dept, a riot for law enforcement, or a multi-vehicle pile up on a busy freeway to an EMT driving an ambulance. The whole point about surviving a disaster is that IT WILL BE A WHILE before you are extricated from your vehicle if there are other damaged vehicles with injured people. The cops probably won’t be there to chase away the unruly mob approaching your block if the rest of the city is also burning. The Public Utilities will be really busy tracking and fixing downed power lines in the aftermath of an ice storm or an earthquake, and the fire department truck may drive right by your house even though the flames are approaching your house. I realize it is uncomfortable to think about but, as preppers, GET USED TO THAT IDEA!
Prepping goes way beyond the things that we buy. Prepping for disasters is a mindset. We expect things to go wrong. This mindset makes us clear the brush and burnable material away from our houses in wildfire country, We don’t move into flood zones or low lying areas. The chief difference I see between emergency service workers and civilians is that workers go to work. civilians tend to sit still and stare or go into hysterics.
If I had to choose one skill that came in most handy over the years, It would be my time spent learning emergency medicine from a CDF captain those many years ago.
If you are an emergency services worker, I have one piece of advice I have learned when dealing with your own family: Think twice before you say it and go easy on your own family. Especially in the aftermath of a disaster or in the midst of an emergency. Our wives and children will not react well when/if you bark out commands like you do at the accident scene. When the emergency is over and you come home after the disaster, you still have to live with these people. This inability to separate themselves from the job is what leads to sky high divorce rates among Emergency Services Personal.
Keep your communications and instructions simple. If a person is overwhelmed, break down the complex task into a sequence of simple ones. Prewritten instructions are invaluable.
In terms of practice, I know the many gun-geeks on this site will understand the importance of practice (with fire arm of choice) How many of us have practiced using a dry-chem fire extinguisher in the past year. If you have the money, blow off an extinguisher at a fire just to see how it works. Have a family member film it. An old fire extinguisher is a teachable moment. ( be sure to turn it upside down and gently tamp the bottom prior to use. The dry chem can become packed after sitting for a long time.)