This section describes the role of the emergency services during a major incident, and what you can do to help.

Emergency Services

Any major incident will see the involvement of the police, ambulance and fire services as well as your local authority. This section describes who will do what in the event of an emergency.

Who will respond?

The emergency services are the first people you should call in a crisis. They are carefully trained for these situations and have very specific roles:

• The police: In an emergency situation the police will be responsible for moving everybody to a safe place, keeping people away from the scene and coordinating the activity of the other emergency services. If it is believed to be a criminal attack, the police will also attempt to preserve any evidence.
• The fire service: As well as fighting fires, the fire service will be called in to prevent any fires from starting and to help in searching for and rescuing anybody caught up in the incident.
• The ambulance service are there to save lives, provide care and treatment to people who have been wounded, alert hospitals, and evacuate the injured.
• The local authority will provide support for the emergency services, offer information to the public and coordinate work done by the voluntary sector and other agencies.

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Response levels

Depending on the scale of the incident, the emergency services have different response levels with members of the services having distinct roles:

• Operational: Called the ‘bronze level’, this involves members of the emergency services who are actually on the scene, working to rescue people and trying to prevent further damage and injury.
• Tactical: Referred to as the ‘silver level’, emergency service men and women at this level maybe based in temporary headquarters near the incident. They will help to coordinate the operational response, assess whether the problem will spread and request more support if needed.
• Strategic: The ‘gold level’ pulls senior members of the emergency services together to coordinate things like large scale evacuations, the organisation of extra support in hospitals and major traffic diversions. They will also be responsible for dealing with the press and politicians.

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Action: How can you help?

The best thing you can do to help the emergency services is to have a well thought out continuity plan in place. This process has been broken up into simple steps.

1. Do the online interactive risk assessment
2. Complete the risk assessment form
3. Create your business continuity plan
4. Communicate your plan
5. Test your plan
6. Discuss your plan with your local authority’s Emergency Planning Officer, to make sure your arrangements tie in with those of the emergency services

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