Definition of a Major Incident

A major incident is any event or circumstance (happening with or without warning) or combination of events and circumstances that causes or threatens immediate death or injury, disruption to the community, or damage to property or to the environment on such a scale that the effects cannot be dealt with as part of normal, day-to-day activities of the affected authority. This includes any emergency that requires the implementation of special arrangements by the primary emergency services, the National Health Service or other public safety services in relation to one or more of the following emergency events:

• the initial rescue, decontamination, treatment or evacuation of a large number of casualties;
• the involvement – either directly or indirectly – of large numbers of members of the public;
• the handling of a large number of enquiries likely to be generated by the public and the news media;
• the need for the large-scale resources of two or more of the primary emergency services;
• the large-scale mobilisation of the emergency services and supporting organisations to deal with the death, serious injury or homelessness to a large number of people or the threat or possibility of such an outcome.

Declaration

A major incident may be declared by any officer of one of the emergency services, the NHS, or the local authority, who considers that any of the criteria for defining a major incident has been satisfied. Despite the fact that what is a major incident to one of the emergency services may not be so to another, each of the other emergency services will attend with an appropriate pre-determined response.

Click here to see a diagram of the notification process

Stages

1. initial response,
2. consolidation phase,
3. recovery phase, and
4. the restoration of normality.