Major emergencies can happen with little or no warning and have the potential to seriously disrupt the lives of individuals and communities.
A major emergency is something that seriously affects people, buildings or the environment and could include transport accidents, major fire, severe weather such as heavy snow, flooding or high winds and health alerts.
Colchester Borough Council's Emergency Planning team works to ensure that there are emergency plans in place to respond to emergency events. We also work with local communities to help them create their own plans and ensure residents and businesses have the required information before, during and after an event.
We work closely with Essex County Council, the emergency services and other agencies and neighbouring districts to regularly assess the threats and risks to the communities within the Borough. This helps us to prepare emergency plans to respond to incidents and to help communities recover after an event.
All agencies which are involved in this process are represented on the Essex Resilience Forum (ERF), which acts as a county-wide co-ordinating group.
This involves:
One of our biggest roles in a major incident is to provide emergency accommodation. This could be for people who have been evacuated from their homes or who have been involved in the incident but are uninjured. It could also be for people who can't access their homes because an incident is in progress.
Rest Centres are normally set up in local schools, village halls and sports centres. Facilities will range from simple refreshments to makeshift overnight accommodation as necessary.
For more detailed advice, contact the emergency planning team or call 01206 282222