Exercise Eastern Comms

As a prelude to Exercise Eastern Oil in April next year, several Horizons staff participated in an exercise today to test communications solutions for the east coast of the Horizons Region. Based at the Akitio Boat Club, teams deployed north and south to evaluate possibilities and issues for a marine oil spill response including communications challenges, beach access, foreshore types and possible factors for clean-up activities (such as wildlife). The teams used the Council Team Talk radios, ESB 164 emergency services liaison channel from a temporary repeater (set up with the assistance of Tararua District Council staff), and satellite phones. We borrowed two repeaters, one from the NZ Fire Service and the other from Tararua DC. Teams also took photographs, tested GPS units and the tracking function of our SPOT personal trackers.

The Incident Control Point (ICP) was set up in the Boat Club - great venue! We tested deploying our mobile office including three laptops, colour printer, BGAN satellite terminal, telephone exchange, GPS enabled camera, radios, data projector and screen plus the usual whiteboards and the ancillary equipment. In addition, we had several staff with their laptops and an iPhone. We also have the advantage that Horizons has a router operating in the Boat Club to transmit photos of Akitio back to the office. Most of us hooked into the router for fast and inexpensive connectivity. We Skyped, Twittered, SMS'd, and Googled... now that I think about it, the only thing we didn't test was the fax.

I'm really pleased with the way everything performed. We've got a couple of little things to follow up in the next few weeks but the baseline preparation is well underway for Exercise Eastern Oil. Evan did a great job of planning this exercise, so a big thumbs up for him!

Barrier training

The Foxton Beach flood barrier was erected last night by the local NZ Fire Service crew. This is the second time the crew has been out to practice setting the barrier up. There are still a few improvements that can be made to the barrier itself and the suggestions of the local Fire crew have helped to build capability in this area.

The barrier (which looks like a big white sausage) is designed to be erected during high flow or storm surge events that will push river levels up to the stopbank. There is a short section of bank that is lower than the rest to make provision for the road. This section is blocked off by the water filled barrier to complete the flood protection works as required. Drivers could still get past given the firm ground conditions last night and the low slope of the surrounding stopbank.

It took the crew about 40 minutes to deploy and fill the barrier with about 30,000l of water. Well done guys.

Emergency Management Information System Update

As part of my selection to represent the CDEM Groups I made an undertaking to keep you informed on EMIS progress. Well, we've survived three days of pitch from the three finalists in the EMIS evaluation round. John Hamilton announced at the recent North Island conference that Critchlow (WebEOC), E-Sponder and Intergraph + NC4 were the three providers to be evaluated. Each spent a day demonstrating their products and how these measure up to the RFP requirements plus any additional benefits we would acquire as part of the purchase.

I'm happy to say that we will end up with a product that will do what MCDEM was seeking. We are still to crunch the numbers on the RFP analysis and do a SWOT analysis but my gut feel is that we are down to two contenders. Of these two, I have a personal preference but both have strengths and weaknesses.

Things are on track and I am really excited by the possibilities.

What could this mean for you as CDEM Groups? Well, CDEM Groups can still carry on with no change. If you are currently using a system, you won't be expected to change - although there may be long-term/big picture benefits in adopting the national EMIS. If you are currently considering an EMIS for your Group, I'd wait - you might get one for free. At this stage, it looks like Groups can ride on the coat-tails of MCDEM provided you stick to the core process and principles of the generic workflow for Group and Local EOCs. If you want to tailor this, you would probably be required to purchase a licence (price unknown as this is provider and add-on dependent). To be honest I didn't think any of it was unreasonable on the price front.

What's next - there is a big chunk of work still to happen - we need to be really clear what a generic workflow looks like. What are the job descriptions, what are the plan templates and forms, authorisation processes, generic dashboards, etc etc that Groups would want to see in a core package. These can be tailored to some degree including look and feel, branding etc for each Group but still provide for Group and national roll-up of data. In some cases, this may mean a slight adjustment to your internal processes (or you purchase a licence and tailor the package to suit your processes without corrupting national level data feed requirements). For me, the war cry is consistency and I do think we are seeing some real leadership from MCDEM on this. I hope that as a sector we play the game - this is the start of a new era in CDEM in this country.

9th Annual Emergency Management Conference

22-23 February 2010, Duxton Hotel, Wellington, is the time of the 9th Annual Emergency Management Conference. The programme is looking pretty good this year and at least one of the presenters will be brilliant (gee I wonder who that'll be).

Here's a link to the conference site where you can download a copy of the programme and registration material.

We have a winner...

During recent Disaster Awareness Week activities, we were running a little competition. Visitors had the opportunity to answer ten questions about storms and preparedness. All the answers were on the display and this encouraged visitors to actually read the information.

Congratulations Diane and Brian Wesch of Palmerston North who have won the LCD wireless weather station. Ged Shirley, Chair of the CDEM Group's

Co-ordinating Executive Group is pictured presenting the prize at Horizons Regional Council this afternoon.

There will be another opportunity to win a weather station during Field Days in March.

North Island EM Conference 09

Well, Hastings District Council did a great job of the conference this year. As part of the celebrations of their 50th year as a civil defence organisation, the Council chose to host this year conference. I must confess to a little bit of disappointment when I first saw the programme, but I think they pulled it off nicely.

Paul Hawke and team had a really good mix of historical events (the 1931 quake), recent events (Napier siege and Samoa tsunami), research (earthquake fault mapping) and national level updates from the Director. The evening dinner was also a good opportunity to network with colleagues and meet one or two of the newbies to the sector.

I didn't attend the field trip but as an optional extra this too would have added to the conference (good reports were heard).

Some of the usual suspects had their wares on display and it was great to see their continued support for these conference activities. Wright Satellite Connections, PSL, ReadyNet, Meerkat Alert Systems, Spirit Wireless and SRT Shelterbox helped to distract us during the breaks. Lyndon Tamblyn from Bulls had the Shelterbox equipment set up - no sooner had he arrived than he was being asked to deploy to an earthquake in Indonesia - thanks for sticking around Lyndon.

Seasonal flu and H1N1 communications

For those of you who missed it, the webinar hosted by the Centre of Excellence for Risk and Crisis Communications on social media and technology breakthroughs for H1N1 and seasonal flu communications, is now available on-line.

Here is the link to the webinar. Here is the link to the original story on this blog.

My view - tsunami reports

Both the internal and external reviews of the response to the Samoa earthquake and tsunami were released on Friday. The internal review is an honest attempt by MCDEM to improve internal systems and procedures. It doesn't really attempt to look at the wider CDEM sector and recommend improvements for the entire response. I guess that's fair enough although I do think MCDEM underestimate their sphere of influence sometimes.

There have been discussions within the Ministry about re-activating the Tsunami Working Group to help work through recommendations in a consultative manner - good on you MCDEM.

On the other hand... the external review is a waste of time. Not only does the report not address the questions raised in the terms of reference, it was whipped out in short order with unrealistic consultation. For example, the CDEM Groups and NZ Fire Service were not consulted but the National Foundation for the Deaf was - I just don't get that, especially when one of the points was to focus on the 'use of information and distribution of warnings, advisories and messages at the local level'.

The main focus was on public information and all of the sub-areas were to have this slant - but surely local use refers to how successful the Group and Local Public Information Managers and local media were at relaying critical advise and information to the affected communities? Sorry guys but this whopping 5-page report just doesn't cut the mustard.

The internal review is available here, and the external review here.

Review of CDEM tsunami alerts process

I'm sure by now you've heard the there are two reviews underway following the response to the Samoa earthquake and tsunami. The first of these reviews is an internal review of MCDEM responses. I guess this is similar to the reviews many of us did to double check procedures and arrangements and to implement any opportunities for improvement identified.

The second review has been requested by the Minister. The following information was drawn from the Beehive website:

Civil Defence Minister John Carter has asked for a review into how the Civil Defence and Emergency Management ministry deals with tsunami alerts.

"Generally, the response to yesterday's tsunami warning was pretty good, but there are concerning reports about the ways in which some information was communicated to the public. Frankly, that is not good enough," says Mr Carter.

"Public confidence in Civil Defence is critical. There are always lessons we can learn from events such as these and I am determined to ensure we do learn from them."

Mr Carter says co-ordination between the national Civil Defence headquarters and regional operations went largely to plan, and it is usual for regional civil defence controllers to manage warnings in their own areas, because what works in one area may not work in another.

"For example, some places have cell phone coverage and some don't. That's why it's important regional controllers are able to make their own calls on their own patch.

"However, I think Civil Defence weren't as helpful as they could have been in communicating with the media in the early stages and I am also concerned about reports saying places like Wellington Airport didn't get timely information. We have to sort that out," Mr Carter says.

It was with some surprise yesterday that I learned that the review is complete and that none of the CDEM Groups present at our meeting yesterday had been consulted as part of the review... we'll read the report with interest before making comment.