Responding to Emergencies
Emergency Incidents
Grading Categories
Police Grading is Split into 4 Grades:
Grade 1 - Emergency Response - Threat of Violence, Danger to Life, Serious Damage to Property & Serious Injury to a Person.
Grade 2 - Priority Response -
Grade 3 - Scheduled Response - In a grade 3 incident the emergency services are not required instantly, the time of response could be anything up to 48 hours.
Grade 4 - Resolution Without Deployment -
In a grade 4 incident the call handler is able to resolve the incident through a number of different ways which include Written advise, Phone call, Answering callers questions & Recommend a more appropriate service.
Role of Call Handlers & Incident Managers
- Directing emergency services
- Ensuring times are met
- Directing non-emergency calls
- Maintaining contact with the incident team
- Ensuring contact with emergency services through radio
- Liaising with other organisations if required
- Ensuring effective use of resources
The roles of the incident manager is to be on the scene of the incident for example at a road traffic collision the incident manager will be on the scene directing the resources available and telling them where to go. The incident manager will also liaise with other services in this case the fire service and the ambulance service who are trying to assist the injured people inside the car.
The incident manager will also ensure that the incident scene is preserved so that the evidence can be located and taken for investigation purposes. The manager must also ensure that the scene is locked down and no media or general public can get into the scene. This is done to keep them safe and also so the evidence doesn't get tampered with or lost.
Emergency Driver - Safety
They must ensure that they look out for any potential hazards on the roads that may cause them to brake suddenly. Emergency drivers also have exemptions on the road they can break the highway code to get to an incident. Some of the exemptions they have include:
- Go through red lights
- Break the speed limit (20mph above the limit shown e.g 50mph if the limit is 30mph)
- Can go up one way streets
Emergency drivers are accountable for anything that goes wrong while they are on a blue light call out for example if there was an accident involving a police car and a car while they were responding to a incident, the police officers driving the car would be held accountable.
It is not against the law for drivers to not move out of the way of emergency cars when they have blue lights on. It is the driver responsibility to manoeuvre there way around the cars to get to the incident and so they are accountable if something goes wrong.
Emergency drivers must go on a specific course to enable them to drive a police car, fire appliance or ambulance. The test tests you on different skills and how you can react under pressure and if you can notice potential hazards when driving at high speed.