CHAPTER 13: Chemical Incident Management: An Overview of Preparedness, Response and Recovery

Chemical incidents can happen anytime, anywhere and on any scale so it is important that effective procedures are in place to manage any incident that occurs with the main objective being to reduce any potential exposure to the affected population in order to protect the public's health. Effective chemical incident management strategies are the best tool towards protecting the public's health in the event of a chemical incident. This chapter explores the phases involved in chemical incident management. The first phase is planning and preparedness; reviewing and designing effective response strategies and ensuring correct and suitable training and production of guidance material. Next is incident response; rapid deployment of appropriately trained first responders and evacuation and decontamination of affected individuals and populations. The final phase is recovery and remediation; removal of contamination from the site and expediting a return to normality.