What is Disaster and Emergency Management?
Preparing to deal with natural or man-made disasters is part of CVMC's mission. While, routine emergencies happen daily and are faced by citizens and local emergency services personnel such as fire fighters, police or emergency medical services, addressing disasters on a larger scale requires advance thought and preparation. Should something disastrous happen, we plan to be ready. At CVMC, disaster and emergency management includes overall pre-disaster planning as well as conducting training and exercises for responding to natural and man-caused disasters that can affect the institution or the community at large.
Some of the Emergencies we Prepare for include:
- Blizzard
- Ice storm
- Extreme heat
- Extreme cold
- Flood
- Communicable diseases
- Mass casualty incident
- Bomb threat
- Communication system failure
- Electrical system failure
- Fire
- Building evacuation
- Infant/Child abduction
- Terrorism
- Chemical exposure (internal or external)
Our Partners
CVMC works along with our partners at the Vermont Association for Hospitals and Health Systems (VAHHS), Vermont Emergency Management (VEM), Vermont Department of Health (VDH), and the Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) to:
- identify the potential hazards in our community
- estimate the likelihood that they will affect us
- gauge the amount of damage we can anticipate
- prioritize our need to respond
- plan mitigation measures, that is, those are measures that reduce or prevent anticipated damage to people or property
- Plan our response and recovery efforts for disasters that occur in our community/state.
In addition to evaluating and planning for emergencies, we participate in at least two disaster drills a year to practice and evaluate our organizational and community response plans.