What is the legal and regulatory basis for emergency response guidelines?

First of all, we must clarify a common misunderstanding - the emergency response guide itself is not a law or regulation, nor can it be used as a direct legal basis for law enforcement or accountability. It is a translation of emergency-related requirements scattered in higher-level laws in various fields into an operation manual that ordinary people can directly follow. The legal basis for its preparation basically covers all legal provisions corresponding to the current emergency management system.

Speaking of which, when I helped the street sort out the basis for compiling community emergency guidelines last year, I read through dozens of laws and regulations before I figured out that guidelines for different scenarios correspond to completely different legal systems. Take the most familiar guidelines for emergency response to high-rise residential fires. The core higher-level laws are the "Emergency Response Law of the People's Republic of China" and the "Fire Protection Law of the People's Republic of China", which require "prioritize the safety of personnel", "grassroots organizations need to clearly identify the person responsible for emergency response" and "plan evacuation routes in advance". The requirements in the guide will be broken down into specific implementable clauses such as "setting up evacuation guides on each floor" and "initiating a micro fire station response within 5 minutes after a fire occurs." At that time, we also checked specifically. If the requirements in the guide are looser than the law, such as not setting up pair evacuation rules for elderly people living alone, it actually does not meet the legal requirements.

If we switch to the factory's production safety accident emergency response guide, the core basis must be replaced by the "Work Safety Law" and the "Production Safety Accident Emergency Regulations". A friend who runs a chemical trading factory complained to me before, saying that the time limit for reporting hazardous chemical leakage in the guide they compiled was 2 hours. When they were inspected by the Emergency Management Bureau, I directly requested rectification. I read the "Regulations on Reporting, Investigation and Handling of Production Safety Accidents" and found out that the law clearly requires the person in charge of the unit to report it to the local regulatory authority within one hour after receiving the accident report. The guideline is a practical guide and must not break the rigid provisions of the law. Otherwise, if something goes wrong, he will be held responsible for non-compliance.

Of course, there has been a lot of controversy over the boundaries of the emergency guidelines in the past two years. For example, during the epidemic prevention and control in the past two years, many measures to restrict residents' travel were added to the community prevention and control guidelines in some places. At that time, there were two voices in the industry. One thought that the guidelines were detailed operations based on local actual conditions, as long as they did not violate the principles of higher-level laws. There is no problem. Another person thinks that as long as it involves restricting the basic rights of citizens, there must be clear legal provisions as a direct basis, and it cannot be "allowed in principle" to add more weight on its own. This kind of controversy is actually not a bad thing. Nowadays, emergency guides in various places basically require a legality review step, just for fear of crossing the line.

The last time I took the subway, I took a look at the emergency response guidelines posted in the carriage. Among the bases listed at the bottom are the "Special Equipment Safety Law" and "Transportation Emergency Management Regulations". You see, even emergency guides in the public domain have different legal basis for different scenarios. To put it bluntly, the emergency guide is like a "translator" between the law and ordinary people, translating rigid legal provisions into steps that you can follow directly when encountering an emergency. Legality is its most basic bottom line.