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| Definition of a Major Incident | ||||
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Police/Fire Service
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1. The following definition is set out in the Association of Chief Police Officers Emergency Procedures Manual and in the Fire Service Major Incident Emergency Procedures Manual. "A major incident is any emergency that requires the implementation of special arrangements by one or more of the emergency services, the NHS or the local authority for: |
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the initial treatment, rescue and transport of a large number of casualties; | ||
| b) | the involvement either directly or indirectly of large numbers of people; | |||
| c) | the handling of a large number of enquiries likely to be generated both from the public and the news media, usually to the police; | |||
| d) | the need for the large scale combined resources of two or more of the emergency services; | |||
| e) | the mobilisation and organisation of the emergency services and supporting organisations, eg local authority, to cater for the threat of death, serious injury or homelessness to a large number of people." | |||
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National Health Service (including Ambulance Service) |
2. The broad definition at paragraph 1 is also applicable to the NHS, as the wording indicates. For specific NHS purposes, a major incident may be defined as: "Any occurrence which presents a serious threat to the health of the community, disruption to the service, or causes [or is likely to cause] such numbers or types of casualties as to require special arrangements to be implemented by hospitals, ambulance services or health authorities." |
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| Dealing with Disaster, Third edition, Home Office |
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