Emergency

State statutes typically define an emergency as, "...a condition where life, health, or property is in jeopardy, and the prompt summoning of aid is essential.

"[3] Whilst most emergency services agree on protecting human health, life and property, the environmental impacts are not considered sufficiently important by some agencies[citation needed].

This means that some agencies do not mount an "emergency" response where it endangers wild animals or environment[citation needed], though others respond to such incidents (such as oil spills at sea that threaten marine life).

This can range from emergencies affecting a single person, such as the entire range of medical emergencies including heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrest and trauma, to incidents that affect large numbers of people such as natural disasters including tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, mudslides and outbreaks of diseases such as coronavirus, cholera, Ebola, and malaria.

Most agencies consider these the highest priority emergency, which follows the general school of thought that nothing is more important than human life.

Some emergencies do not immediately endanger life, health or property, but do affect the natural environment and creatures living within it.

Agencies across the world have different systems for classifying incidents, but all of them serve to help them allocate finite resource, by prioritising between different emergencies.

An example of this would be a fire department responding to help retrieve a cat from a tree, where no life, health or property is immediately at risk.

Following this, many agencies assign a sub-classification to the emergency, prioritising incidents that have the most potential for risk to life, health or property (in that order).

They are often government operated, paid for from tax revenue as a public service, but in some cases, they may be private companies, responding to emergencies in return for payment, or they may be voluntary organisations, providing the assistance from funds raised from donations.

A typical assessment for danger would involve observation of the surroundings, starting with the cause of the accident (e.g. a falling object) and expanding outwards to include any situational hazards (e.g. fast moving traffic) and history or secondary information given by witnesses, bystanders or the emergency services (e.g. an attacker still waiting nearby).

This avoids potentially negative situations such as three separate agencies all starting an official emergency shelter for victims of a disaster.

This should feed back into the preparedness stage, with updated plans in place to deal with future emergencies, thus completing the circle.