Eye-Opening Disaster Exercise For Community Leaders
It was an eye opener for the 270 delegates attending the Disaster Recovery exercise at the Community Board Conference 09 in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The delegates were faced with hundreds of casualties, no communications, infrastructure collapse, trapped and missing people and no help in sight in the initial hours of the simulated earthquake scenario at Wigram on Saturday.
Leaders of the community from all over New Zealand had to face the daunting task of gathering intelligence, searching and rescuing the injured, getting them to safety and looking after them in a set of exercises observed by the Minister of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, Hon. John Carter and Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker.
Volunteer casualties and civil defence personnel put the delegates through their paces in the three-hour exercise that left many shaken with the scope of activities.
“The exercise brought to their attention the need for community leaders to be well versed in disaster recovery,” says Helen Shrewsbury of Conference Innovators, Event Managers for CBC09. Given the structured way disaster recovery is handled by professionals, the community board members and community workers knew there was a lot for them to learn in getting it right, says Ms Shrewsbury.
See Eye-Opening Disaster Exercise For Community Leaders.
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An unexercised contingency plan could be worse than no plan at all!
Be sure to read Disaster Recovery Testing: Exercising Your Contingency Plan, Philip Jan Rothstein, FBCI, Editor for valuable tips, techniques and insights.
