Duration shapes the response more than the hazard does.
A flood and a nuclear incident are both emergencies, but they demand different staging, staffing, and equipment models. ERNA plans every response against two timelines: short-term events measured in days to weeks, and long-term emergencies measured in months.
Fast onset, fast resolution — days to weeks.
Short-term events are the majority of declarations across all three countries. The response model favors speed: pre-positioned equipment, rapid dispatch, and a clear end point.
Flood
- Water-rescue support equipment staged to evacuation corridors
- Field generators for pump stations and shelter operations
- Medical supply and shelter kits for displaced residents
Hurricane / severe storm
- Pre-positioned generators ahead of forecasted landfall
- ALS/BLS kits and mobile medical units for post-storm surge
- Evacuation-corridor and shelter supply support
Wildfire
- Medical support staged at evacuation zones and relief points
- Field generators for incident command posts and staging areas
- Mobile medical units for smoke-exposure and heat-related care
Earthquake
- Support equipment for structural search-and-rescue teams
- Mobile power for collapsed-structure and triage sites
- ALS/BLS surge kits for mass-casualty response
Security / Civil response
- Staging, lighting, and barrier-adjacent logistics support for incident command
- Medical support positioned at evacuation and staging areas
- Equipment support for search-and-rescue-adjacent operations in the affected area
Security / civil response events are coordinated with the law enforcement and public safety agencies with jurisdiction. ERNA supplies equipment and logistics support for staging and affected-area operations — not security personnel or law enforcement services.
Sustained, multi-phase — months or longer.
Long-term emergencies don't resolve on a fixed timeline. The response model shifts from rapid dispatch to sustained supply chains, rotating crews, and ongoing coordination with national authorities. This set follows CBRNE — Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive — the standard DHS/FEMA framework for high-consequence hazards, plus critical infrastructure attacks, which increasingly draw on the same response posture.
Chemical
- Detection equipment and PPE for hazmat response teams
- Decontamination-adjacent logistics support
- ALS/BLS medical support for exposed populations
Biological
- Sustained medical equipment supply for extended case surges
- Shelter and mass-care supply for quarantine or displacement sites
- Rotating crew logistics across a multi-month response
Radiological
- Radiological detection equipment and PPE
- Decontamination-adjacent logistics support
- Medical surge equipment for extended monitoring periods
Nuclear
- Hazmat and radiological detection equipment at scale
- Field power for extended-duration command and monitoring sites
- Search-and-rescue-adjacent equipment support in the affected zone
- Sustained medical surge equipment over a multi-year response
Explosive
- Support equipment for structural collapse search and rescue
- Mass-casualty ALS/BLS response equipment
- Field power for extended scene operations
Critical infrastructure / cyber-physical
- Field generators and fuel logistics during prolonged outages
- Shelter and mass-care supply where utilities are down
- Sustained equipment rotation over the outage period
ERNA supplies equipment and logistics support for these events; specialized containment, decontamination, and medical countermeasure operations are carried out by the government agencies and technical units with jurisdiction. Radiological and nuclear are listed separately because they call for different response postures — a radiological release disperses material without a nuclear detonation.
See these services scaled to a real number of people.
Every category above scales differently depending on how many people are actually affected. The Impact Calculator turns a hypothetical headcount into an estimated ambulance count, shelter footprint, generator count, hazmat team count, and search-and-rescue task force count — using real ratios where they exist.
What partners actually provide, mapped to each hazard.
Hazard type is how a requesting agency describes what happened. Capability is how ERNA matches it to a partner. These five roughly follow FEMA's Emergency Support Function structure, narrowed to the categories that involve equipment and crews rather than pure coordination.
| Capability | What it covers | Typical equipment |
|---|---|---|
| Medical / ALS-BLS | Advanced and Basic Life Support, patient movement, medical surge | Ambulances, ALS/BLS kits, mobile medical units |
| Engineering / Power | Field power, structural and infrastructure support | Generators, fuel logistics, engineering equipment |
| Mass Care / Shelter | Sheltering, feeding, distribution of emergency supplies | Shelter supply, water and food distribution equipment |
| Hazmat / Radiological | Detection, containment support, decontamination-adjacent logistics | Detection equipment, PPE, decontamination supply |
| Search & Rescue | Structural collapse, land, and waterborne search support | Support equipment for SAR teams, mobile power and medical backup |
On capacity: shelter and equipment capacity depends on the specific units deployed, not a network-wide total — for planning reference, FEMA P-361 sets a minimum of 5 square feet per person for shelter space, before accounting for mobility equipment, caregivers, and other access needs. Figures like this inform how a specific request is sized; they aren't a claim about ERNA's own aggregate capacity.
Two response models, one network.
Staging for a two-week flood response and staging for a six-month biological response draw on the same partner network, but the request, allocation, and dispatch process is built differently for each.
Speed over duration
Requests are matched against the nearest available equipment and dispatched immediately, with delivery and confirmation tracked to a defined close-out point.
Duration over speed
Requests establish a standing allocation, with equipment and partner capacity committed and rotated over the life of the response rather than a single dispatch event.
Every request is tagged by timeline.
On both the agency and partner dashboards, every request carries a short-term or long-term tag, so a partner deciding whether to accept a deployment knows if it's a same-day job or a multi-month commitment before they accept it.
| Dashboard field | Short-term request | Long-term request |
|---|---|---|
| Commitment | Single dispatch, defined close-out | Standing allocation, rotated over time |
| Partner payout | Per deployment | Per rotation / period |
| Visibility to agency | ETA and delivery confirmation | Ongoing allocation status and rotation schedule |