World Conference on Disaster Management

Emergency Management & Training is proud to be a proud sponsor of the 19th World Conference on Disaster Management. After the 2008 conference was such a success it only made sense to follow through in 2009.

We would like to invite all of our readers to attend the conference, either as a full delegate or join us for the trade show. Follow the link to register for your FREE trade show pass as a guest of Emergency Management & Training.

http://www.wcdm.org/eticket.html?eticket=EMT9&cbResetParam=1

Feel free to forward this link to your peers in emergency management.

For more information on the conference or to register as a full deligate go to:

http://www.wcdm.org/Toronto/registration.html

Please stop by our booth to say Hi and enter to win a cool prize - we haven't picked it out yet but it will be worth stopping by the booth. Last year we gave away a portable DVD player.

This conference attracts thousands of emergency management professionals from around the world. Check it out!

Canadian Hearing Society

Canadian Hearing Society

Emergency Management & Training Inc. has the privilege of assisting the Canadian Hearing Society (CHS) with their emergency plan and training. CHS operates 27 offices across Ontario with more than 500 staff and hundreds of volunteers.

Did you know that 1 in 4 Canadians has a hearing loss? 10% have a significant hearing loss or deafness. This is a critical issue for municipalities organizing emergency shelters ensuring appropriate resources and communication strategies are in place for evacuees. Public access locations such as hospitals, shopping malls, hotels, restaurants, sporting venues etc., as well as employers must consider communications issues for evacuations and other emergencies.

Emergency planners in all organizations must consider visual communication strategies such as visual fire alarms, visual announcement systems, having FM communication devices, ASL interpreters at shelters etc.

The Canadian Hearing Society can provide valuable insight and resources through their local CHS offices. http://www.chs.ca/

CHS position paper on emergency notification:

http://www.canadianhearingsociety.com/info/publicaffairs/pdf/CHSPositionOnAlarmsNotification.pdf

Spring / Summer Weather

Spring / Summer Weather

With warmer weather on the way it is time to be alert of the spring and summer weather hazards. With climate change causing the number of "hot days" and "extreme precipitation" events to increase, the risks of severe spring and summer weather are ever present.

On Saturday, April 25, 2009 a squall line of thunderstorms produced 115 km/hr winds in Toronto, the highest wind gust reported in Toronto since 1978. The line of Thunderstorms which produced high winds, hail, and lightning caused damage and left 40,000 without power across southern and central Ontario.

Thunderstorms can cause flash floods, back up drainage and sewer systems, and were partly responsible for E.coli contaminated water getting into the Walkerton (ON) water supply.

Lightening kills 10-12 and injures 100-120 people in Canada every year, and can cause significant damage to electrical systems.

Canada experiences 80-100 tornadoes per year, most of them in the F0 to F1 range. Tornados have been recorded right across Canada from British Columbia to Nova Scotia and even Newfoundland and Labrador.

Notable Canadian tornado dates include:

August 20, 1970 – 6 people are killed and 200 injured in a tornado in Sudbury, Ontario

April 3, 1974 – Windsor, Ontario is involved in Super Outbreak when 148 tornados occur in 13 American states and Ontario. 9 people are killed and 30 injured in Windsor/Essex.

May 31, 1985 – 13 tornados touch down between Grand Valley and Barrie, Ontario killing 12 and leaving 800 homeless. One tornado passing through Grand Valley is on the ground for 90 km.

July 31, 1987 – A large tornado strikes Edmonton, Alberta killing 27 and injuring 300. The tornado derailed a freight train carrying hazardous materials, a disaster in its own right.

June 22, 2007- The 1st confirmed F5 tornado in Canada occurs in Elie, Manitoba. Fortunately no one is killed.

Environment Canada provides up to date weather watches and warnings on their website at http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/. During severe summer storms the information on the website can be updated as frequently as every 10-15 minutes and includes actual real time satellite imagery. Weather watches and warnings can also be sent to your email automatically as well as to weather alert radios.

Volunteer Engagement between Responses

Volunteer Engagement between Responses

Written by Annie Burke, Manager - Disaster Management, Northern Ontario, Canadian Red Cross

Today’s volunteers have an array of knowledge, talents and resources. They are looking for opportunities that broaden their skills, expand their knowledge, provide meaningful work and help to better this world in which we live. These unpaid professionals are an untapped resource for agencies that have a role in emergency response.

For an organization like the Canadian Red Cross, volunteers are essential to the Disaster Management program. With the help of our volunteers, we meet the immediate, short term needs and the longer-term recovery needs of affected people. And we do that through a volunteer structure that both recruits and trains specialized responders and incorporate volunteers who walk through the door at the time of a disaster… wanting to help.

Our success is in: a high quality standardized training program, volunteers mentored to provide leadership in the delivery of preparedness and response activities, engagement between responses and the operational support required for a positive volunteer experience.

What can help you? When volunteers are not on-call, responding or participating in training, they may have little interaction with your organization. So, how can you retain volunteers to maintain their interest and a state of readiness?
The key is to ENGAGE your volunteers. Here are some simple tips:
Exercises & Opportunities
Nurture / Mentor
Group projects
Award / Recognize
Guide / Train
Empower

Exercises & Opportunities:
Include volunteers in the planning and participation of internal/external practical and table top exercises. These are excellent ways to test plans, procedures, identify gaps, areas for improvement, increase interagency communications and enhance individual & organizational performance through practice. Opportunities can include: scheduling information sessions with guest speakers, host regular meetings/updates on procedures and notify volunteers of external training opportunities that may enhance their skills.

Nurture / Mentor:
Mentoring benefits both the mentor and mentee. As a mentor, it creates opportunities to strengthen your knowledge base and improve communication skills. For a mentee, it provides role modeling for professional leadership and facilitates the development of increased competencies and stronger interpersonal skills. For example; new volunteers shadowing experienced personnel during responses. The outcome is team building and utilizing the best of your internal knowledge and experience.

Group projects:
Find meaningful projects that could enhance your emergency planning. Examples of activities may include groups to facilitate public education sessions such as Personal Preparedness Workshops to an exercise design committee to test your organization’s capabilities. Also, participate in joint activities with external agencies to promote Emergency Preparedness week for example. All will foster teamwork and increase relationship building.

Award / Recognize:
Research and obtain feedback from volunteers in order to provide appropriate and meaningful recognition. Appropriate recognition helps volunteers feel a sense of achievement and pride in their activity; thus, plays a role in their desire to maintain their volunteer relationship with the organization.

Guide / Train:
Recruit and train the right volunteer for the right position. Fostering a “career” training path contributes to a positive organizational climate and promotes a more clear understanding of responsibilities and expectations.
It also promotes the recognition of mentors for their commitment to developing the talents of new volunteers.

Empower:
Work with volunteers to develop leaders. Involve them in the formation of projects, planning and education, meetings with government/partner agencies. With appropriate training, mentor volunteers to undertake leadership roles held in emergency response. Through your collaboration and guidance, these individuals create a sense of ownership and will champion your organization. This reflects an investment in professional development & can increase commitment and loyalty.

Successful volunteer engagement & retention is built upon the volunteer relationships formed, integrating them into your various teams and ensuring that together, staff and volunteers are working to support your organization’s goals in a collaborative and mutually supportive manner.


Annie Burke ~ Manager, Disaster Management
Northern Ontario
Canadian Red Cross

Related Resources:
Voluntary Sector Framework for Health Emergencies, Canadian Red Cross
Disaster Management Volunteer Recruitment tool, Canadian Red Cross




The Emergency Management & Training newsletter currently goes out to approximately 3,000 organizations including federal, provincial and municipal departments/agencies, emergency services, health care facilities, educational facilities, public and private corporations, and NGOs.

If you would like to submit an article for the newsletter please email us at info@emergencymgt.com. Due to the large number of responses we receive to our newsletter we are not able to accommodate all submissions.

Protecting Your Firefighters

Major Explosions Put Firefighters At Risk

On the night of May 14 / 15 a fire in Lamesa Texas brought area firefighters to the scene of a tank battery fire. About 2 hours into the fire an explosion had the potential to kill and seriously injure firefighters, a near miss.

Check out the YouTube clips.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DECyAxDk88U

slow motion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qcrwNM74sg


Lyle Quan, Emergency Management & Training Inc. team member and firefighting expert provides some important comments below on dealing with similar situations.



Tank Battery Explosion – Points to Consider


When reviewing an incident like this fuel farm fire, I see there being two categories to consider. The first being the pre-planning stage; the second is the incident command stage. Both of these activities are inseparable. By this I mean that if you have not done a thorough pre-plan of the facility, then how can you expect to be prepared for the “worst case scenario”?

The following pre-plan and incident command points are by now means meant to be an all inclusive list. For each location and department, there will most likely be several other questions which are unique to each location. For now, you should at the very least consider the following questions as a basis to conducting your risk assessment.

Pre-plan stage:

When pre-planning a facility like the one in the video, fire crews need to ask themselves (and answer) the following questions.

* What is the maximum fuel load at the facility
* What type of storage tanks are you dealing with – hard tops or floating tops. Each presents its own unique dangers and attack considerations for the incident commander
* Does each storage tank have a proper dike area to contain fuel spills
* What level of firefighting does the facility have – do they have trained personnel to respond and/or assist
* What type of equipment does the facility and/or the fire department have to deal with such incidents
* Is the facility equipped with unmanned master streams
* What is your available water supply for a worst case scenario – do you even have the ability to extinguish such a large scale incident
* What evacuation plans and routes are available for staff and emergency services personnel
* What mutual aid or automatic aid response do you have for such an incident
* Are you conducting training with the facilities response staff – does everyone know what to do in such an emergency
* Do the facility staff have an accountability system to identify who is on site
* What about product containment and clean up after the fire.

Incident Command stage:

The incident commander must be able to ask and answer three basic questions;
1) what do I have (what is the incident);
2) what do I have (in resources) to deal with it; and
3) what else will I need (if anything) to mitigate the situation.

In no specific order, the following questions may help in addressing these three main questions.

* What is on fire and what is the potential fuel load
* Wind direction – attack (if at all possible) from the upwind side. As noted in the video the crews appeared to be in an upwind location as noted by the drift pattern of the smoke plume
* Identify a safe explosion/collapse zones for emergency services personnel and other personnel/civilians that may be in the area
* Use your staff sparingly – you should always anticipate the worst
* Are your lines causing more of a problem by spreading the fuel – this can be done by over filling the diked off areas
* Do you need to use manned lines to deal with this situation – why?
* Is the use of a firefighting foam product a viable option or has this leak/fire spread too far to properly contain under such conditions
* Where are you going to set up a triage area for injured/exhausted personnel
* Setting up your zones (hot, warm and cold) to deal with staff, media, medical, etc.
* How long do you expect to be on site – fresh staff to battle the situation
* Are you sensitive to the signs of tank/product explosion – aggressiveness of flames venting from the tanks or sounds of high pressure release.

Hope these few points give our emergency services personnel some food for thought.

Cheers
Lyle



Lyle Quan has 28 years of emergency service leadership experience. Lyle started his career as a police officer before becoming a career firefighter, now a Deputy Chief for a career fire department with responsibilities that include oversight of a large EMS operation and Chief of a Volunteer Fire Department. While moving up through the fire service ranks Lyle was a training officer and Divisional Chief of Training for a career fire department.

In addition to being on the Emergency Management & Training team, Lyle is a professor at Dalhousie University in the Fire Service Leadership & Administration Program and Lakeland College in the Bachelor’s Degree of Applied Business: Emergency Services program. He is an associate instructor for Emergency Management Ontario and the Ontario Fire College.


For more information on how Emergency Management & Training can assist your Fire Department put training plans, guidelines and strategies in place for major events email or give us a call at 1-888-421-0665.

Emergency Management for Long Term Care and Retirement Homes seminar

On April 13, 2008 a fire ripped through a Retirement Home in Huntsville Ontario, but more than 50 residents escaped without any injury. The Home was totally destroyed.

Following the fire I set up an interview with Huntsville Fire Chief Steve Hernen to discuss the successful evacuation and response to the fire. Chief Hernen explained that the facility had a well developed fire plan and continual staff training. The combination saved the residents.

interview part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vKc55CwOS8

interview part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1msK4TvBn8

After the interview we (EMT) decided that we needed to reach out to more Long Term Care and Retirement facilities, so we started planning a special emergency management seminar for these Homes. Unfortunately, with many projects keeping us very busy the seminar fell onto the back burner.

Nine months later, on January 19, 2009 I responded with EMS to another Retirement Home fire in which two residents died at the scene and many others were seriously injured, 2 of whom subsequently died from their injuries. For the families of the residents it was devastating. The community was in shock as the national media descended on the small central Ontario city searching for answers.

On that day I decided that the seminar had to move forward.

We are pleased to say that the response to the Emergency Management for Long Term Care and Retirement Homes seminar (June 4 & 5) has been fantastic. 85% of the seats are sold out and we anticipate being sold out in the next few days. To see if there are any seats remaining please email us at info@emergencymgt.com.

Due to the critical importance of this issue, numerous topics to cover and strong demand we are now considering making this seminar an annual event. For more information on future seminars and training programs subscribe to our newsletter by emailing us at info@emergencymgt.com.

Reception at the US Embassy

It was an honour to be invited to a reception for selected Emergency Management specialists at the USA’s embassy in Ottawa. Attending with Cheryl (my wife), it was a great opportunity for networking with about 40 attendees including senior staff from the RCMP, DND, guests from other embassies, the American hosts, and other emergency management specialists. The reception included displays of the latest in EM technologies as well as sampling of some fine California wine.

"After the Crash"

Emergency Management & Training is proud to have played a small role in assisting Rogers TV with the documentary “After the Crash” on the deadly realities of drinking and driving. We have attached a link to the documentary “After the Crash” as it has a very important message.

http://www.rogerstv.com/option.asp?lid=237&rid=23&mid=52&gid=54041

The skills EMT uses in creating mock disaster scenarios are scaled down for the television/video productions – scenario design, casualty simulation, patient coaching, technical advisors, response and responder coordination etc.