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apse of a community in an emergency situation can put stress on the ordinary laws and structure of everyday living, leading to the vulnerability of social, ethical and legal norms. While anti-social behaviour such as looting and other criminal conduct is often documented and in many cases exaggerated through the media, often very few cases are substantiated in law. The fact is, that of all the human actions witnessed in an emergency, it is often the very few, rare cases of anti-social behaviour that is held to be ?news worthy?, creating a picture which misrepresents the situation. This said however, during Hurricane Katrina, there was widespread looting and criminal activity which caused chaos in the city of New Orleans and its evacuation centres.

4. People are gripped by a sense of helplessness

The sudden and extremely volatile situation of being involved in an emergency/disaster generally does not trigger those involved to display the signs of being overcome with distress and emotion that is often portrayed by some stereotypes- that is freezing and become immobile and helpless. The shock and disturbance associated with an emergency event, generally leads to look for constructive and appropriate means to survive and help (Manock, 2006).

5. Children are too young to be affected

Although it is commonly believed that young children are not mentally inept and capable of fully realising the emergency at hand and therefore are not negatively affected, or only affected for a short period of time, this is not the case. Trauma and stress related to an emergency event can often manifest itself in post-event behaviour often not coming to fruition until sometime in the future, in ways such as nightmares, bed wetting and other negative self inflicted illness and behaviour (Wraith, 1986).

8.2 Human behaviour following trauma

Human behaviour following trauma is classically the same, regardless of situation. Following trauma, people generally follow through the same pattern, grieving the loss they have incurred, moving through sadness and distress, to making positive decisions, on the way to acceptance. Not all trauma victims will necessary move through all stages at the same rate, some emergency situations are worse than others- some may skip some, others will stay at a particular stage for longer, but for the overwhelming majority they will all reach acceptance in their own time.

8.3 Principles of recovery

Recovery must satisfy the physical, psychological and social needs of the community (Manock, 2006). The 8 principals that guide the recovery management framework after an emergency are particularly important.

9.0 Emergency Legislation

9.1 Integrated approach

The emergency management components of the prevention, preparedness, response and recovery framework are all bound, related and the success of each- dependent upon one another. It is for this reason, that the creation and ongoing success of each component is integrated with the other to create a successful and harmonious relationship within the framework. It is rare that one specific component can work efficiently or does not affect another. An active collaboration and monitoring effort to integrate all components is not only desirable to effective emergency management, but is impe