What is an Emergency?
Emergency Definition
Before starting on building your emergency kit, it’s a good idea to have a think about what is an emergency and what it means to you. Knowing this can help you with your preparedness. If you asked someone what is an emergency I bet their answer might be different to yours.
From Wikipedia:
An emergency is an urgent, unexpected, and usually dangerous situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property, or environment and requires immediate action.
While some emergencies are self-evident (such as a natural disaster that threatens many lives), many smaller incidents require that an observer (or affected party) decide whether it qualifies as an emergency.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency
How I think of an Emergency
I like to put them into two buckets. One is man made and the other is natural. To me an emergency is an unexpected event no matter the root cause of it.
These two can weave into each other. But when it comes to emergencies the things I personally think of are natural disasters.
Living on a small island nation at the bottom of the world, we can experience a wide range of natural disaster type emergencies.
Types of Disasters
Natural Emergencies / Disasters
- Earthquakes
- Tropical Cyclone
- Flooding
- Tornado
- Volcanic Eruption
- Wildfire
- Heat Wave / Drought
- Snow Storm
- Landslide
- Pandemics
This is what I think of when it comes to natural disasters. Some of these can and will combine together and present hazards to many people.
Take an earthquake, landslides and flooding may also occur within the same event.
Man Made Emergency / Disasters
- Chemical Spill / Industrial accident
- Transportation accident
- Warfare
- Explosions / Fires
- Nuclear incident
I think that rounds out the main types of emergencies that could happen.
Some will be totally unexpected, some might be due to human error. The thing to remember is that they can happen at any time. Being prepared in some way will help you get through the emergency.
Every Location is Different
Wherever you are in the world, you will probably know the main type of emergencies you could potentially face.
This is where you will need to gain knowledge about how best to handle them.
While there will be an emergency response at a large scale for these huge events, having your own emergency plan is important.
For my location in the world. I would have to say the main emergency situations I may have to deal with, or the ones that are at least top of my mind would have to be:
- Earthquakes
- Volcanic eruption
- Tropical Cyclone
We’ve had our share of emergencies as a country. With Christchurch having a massive earthquake on Sep 4th 2010, with a destructive aftershock on Feb 22 2011. And more recently, the tropical cyclone Gabrielle in early 2023.
With death and destruction, these disasters highlighted the need for an emergency kit and sits in the back of my mind as I create my own.
I think it’s fair to say that there will be future occurrences that will happen and it pays to have emergency preparedness organized and ready to go if needed.
The Main Takeaway about Emergencies / Disasters
No matter what happens, who is affected or the final outcome, this is what I think you need to think about.
Resources are going to be stretched.
Things might not get back to normal for a while. There could be disruption to supply chains which affect food, power, health services, communications and more.
When something happens on a large scale, things can become problematic.
This was easy to see when COVID-19 became a worldwide pandemic. No matter where you were in the world, I think you have to admit; it caused strains on systems and supply chains.
In the event of an emergency you want to be able to take care of yourself, and your family.
To help achieve this goal, having an emergency kit organized and ready will help you get through any unforeseen circumstances.