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Emergency services and rescue services are organizations, public or private, which ensure public safety and health by addressing different emergencies. Some of these agencies exist solely for addressing certain types of emergencies while others deal with ad hoc emergencies as part of their normal responsibilities. Many of these agencies engage in community awareness and prevention programs to help the public avoid, detect, and report emergencies effectively.

The availability of emergency services depends very heavily on location, and may in some cases also rely on the recipient giving payment or holding suitable insurance or other surety for receiving the service.

Contents

• 1 Main emergency service functions
• 2 Other emergency services
• 3 Civil emergency services
• 4 Cooperation
• 5 Response time
• 6 See also
• 7 Sources

Main emergency service functions

There are three main emergency service functions:

• Law enforcement — Law enforcement encompasses many jobs all related to keeping the community safe from crime. Many police officers go on patrols to look for various violations of the law. While on patrol local police officers respond to calls relayed to them by a central dispatch center. In addition to enforcing the laws all police officers deal with some amount of paperwork. In addition to regular police officers, most areas have or share detectives. The detectives job is to investigate and determine the cause of crimes, as well as coordinate the collection of evidence. After the investigation detective as well as police officers may be required to testify before a jury.
• Fire departments — The goals of fire departments in order of priority are to protect themselves and those they serve, contain the fire, and save property. While at their core firefighters are trained to put out fires, many departments provide proactive intervention. These include fire safety days, installing smoke detectors, and inspecting buildings. Firefighters are organized in companies under commanding officers in a pseudo military style. Once on the scene of a fire, firefighters may force their way into buildings, rescue trapped people, suppress fires, provide emergency medical aid, and provide specialized rescue. In large cities firefighters are often paid and may operate as specialized squads that respond as needed. However, in many smaller towns the firefighters are volunteer or a combination of paid and non paid members. In these situations the departments do not often have squads, rather a few apparatus equipped to complete a variety of tasks.
• Emergency medical services— Emergency Medical Services sometimes referred to as EMT or EMS are comprised of members at various levels of training. The most common levels are EMT basic, EMT Intermediate, and Paramedic. All technicians are responsible for patient assessment, Cardiopulmonary resuscitating (CPR), pain management, and stabilizing patients. EMT Basics generally have the least job duties due to the limitations of their training. They can provide non-invasive emergency care such as controlling bleeding, bandaging injuries, splinting broken bones, taking vitals, and using AEDs. EMT Intermediate have the same duties as EMT Basics, but depending of their location can preform cardiac monitoring, administering IV treatment, and preforming advance airway techniques. Paramedics hold the most training and preform the tasks of both the EMT basic and intermediate. In addition they can usually evaluate medical records, provide blood transfusions, administer medication, and preform intubations. These services are provided under the direction of a medical director who is a doctor.

In some countries such as the UK, these three functions are performed by three separate organizations in a given area. However, there are also many countries where fire, rescue and ambulance functions are all performed by a single organization (fire service based EMS).

Emergency services have one or more dedicated emergency telephone numbers reserved for critical emergency calls. In some countries, one number is used for all the emergency services (e.g. 911 in the U.S., 999 in the UK). In some countries, each emergency service has its own emergency number.

Specialized Emergency Services

These services can be provided by one of the core services or by a separate government or private body.

• National Guard — Under state law the National Guard provides protection of life and property while working to encourage peace and order. These missions are accomplished through emergency relief support during natural disasters, search and rescue in floods, earthquakes, and forest fires. Additionally, they provide support to civil defense authorities working in drug enforcement, maintain and securing public services, and assisting of military mobilization.
• Coast guard — The mission of the U.S. Coast Guard is to ensure the Nation's maritime safety, security, and stewardship. The U.S. Coast Guard works towards this mission though six major operational mission programs. These include: Maritime Law Enforcement, Maritime Emergency Response, Maritime Prevention, Maritime Transportation System Management, Maritime Security Operations, and Defense Operations.
• Lifeboat — Dedicated providers of rescue lifeboat services, usually at sea (such as by the RNLI in the United Kingdom).
• Mountain Rescue Association —The MRA organization is comprised of teams dedicated to saving lives through rescue and mountain safety education. With the use of 90 government authorized units, the MRA is the primary mountain search and rescue team in the United States.
• National Cave Rescue Commission — NCRC serves as the primary training organization for cave rescue in the United States. While the NCRC does not function as a cave rescue team, they work closely with the six main teams in the U.S.
• Mine rescue — specially trained and equipped to rescue miners trapped by fires, explosions, cave-ins, toxic gas, flooding, etc.
• Technical rescue — other types of technical or heavy rescue, but usually specific to a discipline (such as swift water).
• Search and rescue — can be discipline-specific, such as urban, wildland, maritime, etc.
• Wildland firefighting — Wildland Firefighters are specifically trained firefighters equipped to deploy to fire emergencies in the wildland front. Through the use of felling trees, backfire operations, water application, air team water application, and meteorology, these firefighters walk, drive, and parachute into wildfires to save life, property, and, the environment.
• Bomb disposal/EOD — The bomb squads and EOD techs across the world work to render safe bombs, and other explosives through the use of man power and robot technology. Explosive detection is done through X-Ray, chemical analyses, manual work, and K-9 units. Once a threat is identified the teams work to remove, disarm, or detonate the explosive on scene. Most units work closely with federal agencies to investigate these crimes.
• Amateur radio emergency communications — to provide communications support to other emergency services, such as RAYNET in the UK.
• HAZ-MAT — Hazmat teams are specially trained personal who are equipped to handle dangerous materials. These could include, but are not limited to corrosive liquids, oxidizing agents, radioactive materials, bio-hazard substances, and pathogenic materials. They do this through the use of basic chemistry, protective clothing, monitoring equipment, disposal techniques, decontamination, and isolation.
• Air search- providing aerial spotting for the emergency services, such as conducted by the Civil Air Patrol in the US, or Sky Watch in the UK.
• National Ski Patrol-Works to keep people safe on mountains especially during winter activities such as skiing and snowboarding.

Civil emergency services

These groups and organizations respond to emergencies and provide other safety-related services either as a part of their on-the-job duties, as part of the main mission of their business or concern, or as part of their hobbies.

• Public utilities — safeguarding gas, electricity and water, which are all potentially hazardous if infrastructure fails
• Emergency road service — provide repair or recovery for disabled or crashed vehicles
• Civilian Traffic Officers — such as operated by the Highways Agency in the UK to facilitate clear up and traffic flow at road traffic collisions
• Emergency social services - Provides aid to those affected by a community disaster or large scale emergency event that generally impacts many people in one geographical location.
• Community emergency response teams — Also know as CERT, are individuals knowledgeable about disasters and response specific to their geographical area. Through the use of training learned in the classroom and tabletop exercises, CERT personal are encouraged by FEMA to assist professional responders during emergencies.
• Disaster relief — such as services provided by the Red Cross and Salvation Army
• Famine relief teams
• Amateur radio communications groups — provide communications support during emergencies
• Poison Control — While it is rare for a member from the Poison Control Center to respond to an emergency, they provide valuable assistance to civilians as well as emergency responders when dealing with poison exposure related emergencies. In America their emergency number is 1800-222-1222.
• Animal control — In some jurisdictions may be a police officer with specialized training in dealing with animals. However, in larger cities animal control officers may have a full time job dealing with lost or stray pets and their interaction with the public.
• St. John Ambulance- A world wide charitable organization with 400,000 members specializing in first aid response to natural disasters and minor emergencies.
• Order of Malta Ambulance Corps — Provides medical & first aid support in North and South Ireland to the community at national and local community events.

• Park rangers —In addition to preserving the natural resources of their respective country, park rangers are often the first responders to many park emergencies. In some areas park rangers also have police powers. When a visitor in injured or lost in a protected area, park rangers coordinate with local responders to assist and recover individuals.
• Lifeguards — responds to water emergencies with quickly in a verity of situations including beach fronts, water parks, swimming pools, and river areas.

Cooperation

Effective emergency service management requires agencies from many different services to work closely together and to have open lines of communication. Most services do, or should, have procedures and liaisons in place to ensure this, although absence of these can be severely detrimental to good working. There can sometimes be tension between services for a number of other reasons, including professional versus voluntary crew members, or simply based on area or division.

To aid effective communications, different services may share common practices and protocol for certain large-scale emergencies. In the UK, commonly used shared protocols include CHALET and ETHANE while in the US, the Department of Homeland Security has called for nationwide implementation of the National Incident Management System (NIMS), of which the Incident Command System (ICS) is a part.

Many fire departments also participate in what is know as automatic response. This is a contractual agreement between two response areas to provide mutual aid or assistance on a case by case basis. For these agreements to be ISO recognized they must meet the following arrangements.

• It must be prearranged for first-alarm response according to a definite plan. It is preferable to have a written agreement, but ISO may recognize demonstrated performance.

• The aid must be dispatched to reported structure fires on the initial alarm.
• The aid must be provided 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
• The aid must offset a need in the community ISO is surveying. For example, if a community needs a ladder company and the fire department does not have one, but a neighboring community's ladder company responds by automatic-aid agreement, credit may be available.
• The aiding ladder company must cover at least 50% of the needed ladder company Standard Response District by hydrant count in the community being graded.

Response time and Ratings

A common measurement in benchmarking the efficacy of emergency services is response time, the amount of time that it takes for emergency responders to arrive at the scene of an incident after the emergency response system was activated. Due to the nature of emergencies, fast response times are often a crucial component of the emergency service system.

ISO or the Insurance Service Office is a for profit organization that provides statistical information on risks. The ISO rating is on a 10-1 scale with a 1 being considered the best rating. Ratings are based on various aspects of response time and performance such as distance between fire hydrants, distance between fire stations, available personal, and trucks available. These ISO ratings are used by some insurance companies to determine the cost of certain premiums in a response area.