I have never witnessed any sort of emergency, I have never even been in a mild earthquake, but in this essay, I will try to describe what would happen if a strong earthquake was to happen in my city.
The city I live in is very small, so in case of an earthquake, definitely, everyone living in the city will be affected. Since there are more buildings, apartment buildings, and more houses in the middle area of the city, the earthquake would have brought more damage in these places rather than on the outskirts of the city. Since most hospitals were built keeping in mind these scenarios, they will not collapse, and even though it won’t be enough, they can have some of the injured people in there.
Most of the city’s infrastructures, including school, houses, hotels, and other buildings, will have collapsed, so many people would be living in tents outside on the streets, without much of their belongings or any resources. Imagine, due to the earthquake, there was an accident in one of the companies that produce gas and there was a big explosion on the one side of the city. Right now, there is a lot of smog and dust in the air due to this explosion and also from the collapse of the buildings. The hospitals are also overcrowded and many of the doctors are not available as they had to perform emergency surgeries to those that were directly affected by the earthquake and by the explosion. There are many volunteers and health care professionals that are trying to distribute clean water, food and blankets but it is not enough. There is no power and the hospitals and other public spaces are the only ones with generators.
People that already had respiratory problems and children who could not resist all of the air pollution are developing some respiratory diseases. Because many people are living in an overcrowded state, outside in the tents, these diseases are quickly spreading from child to parent and from neighbor to neighbor. Some of the people decided to get water from the river nearby but ended up getting diarrhea instead. So, now there is another disease going around, affecting especially the children, and there are not enough resources to help hydrate these infected people. Many of the elderly and many of the children below 3 years are one of the first victims of these diseases. Some have to also deal with other disease and sicknesses that they had before the earthquake.
As we have many people suffering from different wounds continuously coming in to the hospitals, we need to have some order so that we know which wounds are more serious and which patients need more care at the moment. But in order to do so we first need to set order in the whole city, as we cannot work properly and efficiently if we keep getting distracted by the new diseases that are spreading through town. Not only are these diseases spreading rapidly, but they can be stopped. First, we need to stop immediately the spread of acute upper respiratory tract infections and diarrhea, because they are the most serious disease going around. We already know the causes of these two infections, as the first one is caused by the crowding, lack of hygiene and the air pollution caused by the collapse of buildings and the explosion at the industry that produces gas, and the second one is caused by the contaminated water of the river that people are still trying to drink. In order to stop these diseases from spreading any further, we first need to isolate anyone that is showing any of the symptoms for diarrhea, including watery stools, fever, nausea or vomiting, or symptoms for acute upper respiratory tract infections, including symptoms of the common cold or pneumonia, fever and coughing. After the people infected with these diseases are isolated, we need to stop people from drinking water from the river. Once these two sources of spread of disease are stopped, everyone needs to receive enough water and food and everyone should have easy access to a health care provider in case of emergency or even if they want to ask questions. This way we can decrease people panicking and hurting themselves any further. As soon as the spread of disease and panic is neutralized, we can focus on concentrating on the people that need medical care. In order to do so we need to have more medicine and more doctors in the hospitals. We also need some volunteers that can help us separate the patients by the severity of the wounds or diseases so that we can start with those that are in more danger. On top of all this, we need to make sure that the hospitals are properly equipped and that there is enough medicine and other instruments to take care of everyone that might need care.
If we manage to do all of this, I am sure that we will have everything under control in a short time and we can prevent the loss of more lives until we get further help from the outside.