Emergency services have one or more dedicated emergency telephone numbers reserved for critical emergency calls. In some countries, one number is used for all the emergency services. In some countries, each emergency service has its own emergency number.
Specialized emergency services
These services can be provided by one of the core services or by a separate government or private body.
Canine Units — drug detection, explosive detection, cadaver detection, arson and accelerant detection, search and rescue, evidence search, suspect apprehension, and handler protection.
Aviation Units — law enforcement, firefighting, emergency medical services and technical rescue, and emergency management functions.
Coastguard responds to emergencies on the ocean and in large bodies of water, also providing law enforcement
Wildland firefighting
Military
Incident response team
Corrections Officers that work at prisons and jails enforcing prison rules, and working with prisoners.
Community services
Other emergency services
These groups and organizations respond to emergencies and provide other safety-related services either as a part of their on-the-job duties, as part of the main mission of their business or concern, or as part of their hobbies.
Public utilities — safeguarding gas, electricity and water, which are all potentially hazardous if infrastructure fails
Public Works — assessing and repairing damage to buildings, roads, and bridges; clearing, removing, and disposing of debris from public spaces; restoring utility services; and managing emergency traffic.
Tow truck Tows damaged vehicles away from scenes and responds to broken down vehicles and wrecks.
Amateur radio communications groups — provide communications support during emergencies
Poison Control — providing specialist support for poisoning
Animal control — can assist or lead response to emergencies involving animals
Voluntary medical services — medical & first aid support. Providers of these services include: St. John Ambulance / Red Cross / Order of Malta Ambulance Corps.
Insurance damage: fixes flooded and fire damaged buildings.
Tri- service: these units respond to police, medical and fire incidents.
National Guard- Division of the military working with the homeland
Coroner responds to incidents with death and investigates corpses
Some locations have emergency services dedicated to them, and whilst this does not necessarily preclude employees using their skills outside this area, they are primarily focused on the safety or security of a given geographical place.
Lifeguards — charged with reacting to emergencies within their own given remit area, usually a pool, beach or open water area
Park rangers — looking after many emergencies within their given area, including fire, medical and security issues
Security guards — protect assets from hazards and enforce security procedures.
First aid or medic — respond to medical issues and may be hired for businesses or events
Cooperation
Effective emergency service management requires agencies from many different services to work closely together and to have open lines of communication. Most services do, or should, have procedures and liaisons in place to ensure this, although absence of these can be severely detrimental to good working. There can sometimes be tension between services for a number of other reasons, including professional versus voluntary crew members, or simply based on area or division. To aid effective communications, different services may share common practices and protocol for certain large-scale emergencies. In the UK, commonly used shared protocols include CHALET and ETHANE while in the US, the Department of Homeland Security has called for nationwide implementation of the National Incident Management System, of which the Incident Command System is a part.
Disaster response technologies
Smart Emergency Response System prototype was built in the SmartAmerica Challenge 2013-2014, a United States government initiative. SERS was created by a team of nine organizations. The project was featured at the White House in June 2014 and called an exemplary achievement by Todd Park. The SmartAmerica initiative challenges the participants to build cyber-physical systems as a glimpse of the future to save lives, create jobs, foster businesses, and improve the economy. SERS primarily saves lives. The system provides the survivors and the emergency personnel with information to locate and assist each other during a disaster. SERS allows organization to submit help requests to a MATLAB-based mission center connecting first responders, apps, search-and-rescue dogs, a 6-feet-tall humanoid, robots, drones, and autonomous aircraft and ground vehicles. The command and control center optimizes the available resources to serve every incoming requests and generates an action plan for the mission. The Wi-Fi network is created on the fly by the drones equipped with antennas. In addition, the autonomous rotorcrafts, planes, and ground vehicles are simulated with Simulink and visualized in a 3D environment to unlock the ability to observe the operations on a mass scale.
Response time
A common measurement in benchmarking the efficacy of emergency services is response time, the amount of time that it takes for emergency responders to arrive at the scene of an incident after the emergency response system was activated. Due to the nature of emergencies, fast response times are often a crucial component of the emergency service system.
