Monday 9 April 2018

A Shade On Disaster Damage Assessment

By Carolyn Nelson


The preliminary evaluation of calamities is normally the key step in the process of looking for the federal calamity declaration in assisting individuals as well as public entities to recover. In the wake of a calamity, the catastrophe specialists together with the local emergency managers as well as officials normally from two teams of the PDA which are the individual assistance as well as the public assistance teams to work on the disaster damage assessment.

The individual assistance evaluation teams commonly assess the damage that has been caused to homes as the personal property. They do not visit every home, but their work is to obtain a broad overview of all the ruins that have happened. They can then help the individuals that are eligible for temporary rental assistance. They can also provide some basic repairs to the homes and provide other fiasco-related needs that may not be covered by the insurance.

Similarly, the team evaluating the public ruins has to obtain an overall overview of the impairment to the public infrastructure such as schools, roads, bridges, nonprofit entities and hospitals among others. The team is then required to offer assistance in repairing of the entities that have been destroyed. This is an important step because, with this kind of support, everything is likely to go back to normal within a short time.

A PDA is normally the first step that should be done in case there has been a calamity. The PDA is normally defined by FEMA which is jointly conducted to assess how the ruins are and how they have impacted the people as well as other normal business operations. FEMA then tries to find solutions within the shortest time possible.

This agency team, as said earlier, will visit the local calamity relief applicants to view the ruins first-hand to evaluate the scope of impairment. This will help them to estimate the repair costs. The PDA will also help in identifying any other needs that may require attention immediately. More so, the assistance the agency offers helps the people to get back on their feet.

If the fiasco is small-scale and it has been confined to a small area of a hospital building or an office building. The estimation of wreckage will still be done. Then, the safety of a personnel is ensured as they all evacuate from the building and the first responder is activated on immediate effect.

More so, the team will ensure that people do not enter the area until it is safe. Also, the agency team will conduct an inspection to determine if there are more ruins in the area apart from the main one in case of a fire fiasco. On top of that, the environmental controls of the building are inspected as well such as water supply, power feeds, transformers, air handling systems and more others.

After the evaluation, depending on the depth of the ruins, the team will decide the next course of action. For example, if a hotel building is completely ruined, they can decide to close the place down until all the repairs have been done so that the hotel can be reopened and normal operations resume.




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