You think this is funny, Miss Nurse?

This book is presented in four parts: • Preparation • Mitigation • Response • Recovery In the first part a discussion of various disasters and their characteristics and concerns is presented as a means of preparation. A discussion of the national response plan follows showing how the system is supposed to work in a perfect world. This section is entitled Preparation. The book details preparatory steps that individuals, businesses and agencies should take to prepare themselves for disaster such as hurricanes or terrorist attacks. Understanding the motives and methods of terrorists may be unfamiliar with some readers. For this reason I’ve explained how they work and the system that is already in place to prevent disasters and catastrophes is a key element in defending against such attacks. The next section is entitled mitigation. This section describes steps and procedures that companies, individuals and communities can take immediately to improve their posture so that any disaster or attack will either be prevented or the damage will be kept to a minimum. The section on response includes information that initial, rescue and disaster workers need to have in order to respond to incidents of terrorism or natural disasters. The final section on recovery identifies procedures that can be taken to assist the community in its recovery efforts. The goal is to get the businesses up and running in the shortest amount of time with a minimum of disability, to get the community back on its feet after a natural or man-made disaster. The book is designed to assist in recovery operations after a catastrophe has struck. The author has used OSHA’s Disaster Site Worker program as a base document so that authorized instructors may use the material to augment their classes. Instructors may tailor their classes to meet the needs of their students and a suggested template for the Disaster Site Worker program is included in Section Two. Many of the topics required to be presented and understood in the Disaster Site Worker program are contained in Section one of this book since it was felt that the student should have a firm grip of the basic procedures, rules and concepts before advanced study of disaster recovery.