Emergency services respond to personal disasters not emergencies.

Technically, you do not call emergency services such as police or the fire department during an emergency.

You call emergency services during a disaster, as an emergency is a serious situation that can be handled internally without summoning outside help. For example, a pot on your stove catches on fire, you cover it up, and the fire goes out. That’s an “ordinary” emergency not a disaster. Disasters overwhelms local capacities and requiring summoning outside help, while emergencies are able to be addressed with resources on hand.

The reason why they call police and fire departments emergency services, is because they are able to handle a serious situation without requesting outside state and national resources as would be in case of a disaster. From their perspective, they are just responding to an “ordinary” emergency, not a disaster, as they are not summoning additional assistance.

Language is werid.