Emergency evacuation

Emergency evacuation is the immediate and urgent movement of people away from the threat or actual occurrence of a hazard.

Examples range from the small scale evacuation of a building due to a storm or fire to the large scale evacuation of a district because of a flood, bombardment or approaching weather system.

Evacuation may be carried out before, during or after such natural disasters as eruptions of volcanoes, cyclones, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis or bushfire. Other reasons to evacuate people include industrial accidents such as chemical spill, nuclear accident, traffic accidents, including train or aviation accidents, fire, military attacks, bombings, terrorist attacks, military battles, structural failure, etc.

Emergency evacuation plans are developed to ensure the safest and most efficient evacuation time of all expected residents of a structure, city or region. Evacuation time for different hazards and conditions is established. These benchmarks can be established through using best practices, regulations or using simulations, such as modeling the flow of people in a building to determine the time. Proper planning will use multiple exits, contra-flow lanes, and special technologies to ensure full, fast and complete evacuation. Consideration for personal situations which may affect an individual's ability to evacuate is taken into account. These are alarm signals that use both aural and visual alerts, and also evacuation equipment such as sleds, pads, and chairs for non-ambulatory people. Regulations such as building codes can be used to reduce the possibility of panic by allowing individuals to process the need to self-evacuate without causing alarm. Proper planning will implement an all-hazards approach so that plans can be reused for multiple hazards that could exist.

The sequence of an evacuation can be divided into six phases. These are detection, decision, alarm, reaction, movement to an area of refuge or an assembly station, and transportation.

1. Внимательно прочитайте весь текст. Не пользуясь словарём, постарайтесь определить его общее содержание.

2. Найдите в тексте информацию:

a) о фазах эвакуации;

b) планировании эвакуации.

2. Ответьте на вопросы:

1) Что такое эвакуация?

2) В каких случаях проводится эвакуация?

3) Какие факторы учитываются для определения времени эвакуации?

3. Переведите текст. Значение незнакомых слов постарайтесь определить по контексту, по составу слова и т. д. При необходимости используйте словарь.

4. Скажите, какую информацию Вы извлекли из текста.

5. Передайте краткое содержание текса на английском языке.