Written by Lou Bispo, Risk Reduction & Prevention crisislou@live.com
This is one of his contributions to the profession required to apply for his CEM® credential.

Emergency managers are communities’ subject matter experts on all aspects of emergency management.  They must constantly be prepared for elements of surprise whether manmade or natural disasters. In this article, we focus on mass fatalities incidents.

We manage risk reduction activities in each of the four phases: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.  Our activities include coordinating security efforts across communities, ensuring communities regularly mitigate their risks, and are always upgrading their preparedness and response plans to assure readiness.  Preparedness consists of first responders and Emergency Operations Centers ready to respond to incidents, mass fatalities, and to face short-term and long-term recovery processes.

Facing a multi-cultural society
An emergency manager must have a good understanding of cross-cultural communication and an understanding of different customs to plan effectively and manage response efforts to support diverse cultural groups and communities.  It is important to know and record the different ethnic groups in the community so that planning, response, and recovery activities can conform to the values of those groups.

The IAEM Bulletin April 2012 is now on our IAEM Asia website. We encourage you to join the IAEM Asia mailing list, which is for anyone interested in IAEM Asia and emergency management.  It’s free. Just click on the obvious, red button in the upper right corner of the IAEM Asia website.

Join us as an IAEM member! Benefits are:

• Access to the largest network of top emergency management and disaster experts who can offer solutions, guidance and assistance.
• 1-year subscription to the electronic edition of the IAEM Bulletin.
• Access to Members Only Web site resources, including the IAEM Membership Directory and the IAEM Bulletin archives.
• The only internationally-recognized certification for emergency managers, the Certified Emergency Manager® and Associate Emergency Manager programs, which can enhance your career and salary.
• A chance to receive scholarship funds for students enrolled in emergency management courses of study.
• Discounts on registration at annual IAEM and IAEM-USA conferences and seminars.
• Voting privileges at member meetings.

IAEM members:

1. are in the field of emergency management (mitigation, preparedness, response, and/or recovery).
2. are interested in protecting lives and property through an all-hazards approach.
3. are concerned with national security.
4. have an emergency management/ civil defense assignment in government, the military, and industry or volunteer organization.

The IAEM Bulletin March 2012 is now available on our IAEM Asia website. We encourage you to join the IAEM Asia mailing list, which is for anyone interested in IAEM Asia and emergency management. It’s free. Just click on the obvious, red button in the upper right corner of the IAEM Asia website.

Join IAEM Asia as a member! Benefits are:

• Access to the largest network of top emergency management and disaster experts who can offer solutions, guidance and assistance.
• 1-year subscription to the electronic edition of the IAEM Bulletin.
• Access to Members Only Web site resources, including the IAEM Membership Directory and the IAEM Bulletin archives.
• The only internationally-recognized certification for emergency managers, the Certified Emergency Manager® and Associate Emergency Manager programs, which can enhance your career and salary.
• A chance to receive scholarship funds for students enrolled in emergency management courses of study.
• Discounts on registration at annual IAEM and IAEM-USA conferences and seminars.
• Voting privileges at member meetings.

IAEM members:

• are in the field of emergency management (mitigation, preparedness, response, and/or recovery)
• are interested in protecting lives and property through an all-hazards approach
• are concerned with national security
• have an emergency management/ civil defense assignment in government, the military, and industry or volunteer organization

After its flight data recorders were recovered from12,000 feet of water in the Atlantic last year, the July 2009 crash of Air France 447 was widely blamed on ‘pilot error’. The ‘lesson’ was supposed to be that if pilots had better training, they wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. That’s probably not true, says Jeff Wise, author of the 2011 book, Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger.

In a Popular Mechanics magazine article about what really happened on flight 447, Wise says the pilots’ brains worked exactly the way nature intended – the same way yours and mine do, too. It wasn’t pilot error; it was (brain) design error.

Training – conditioning, actually – can overcome an innate fear reaction. That’s what soldiers and cops get trained to do. But Wise says, “when trouble suddenly springs up and the computer [your brain] decides that it can no longer cope – on a dark night, perhaps, in turbulence, far from land – the humans…find themselves with a very incomplete notion of what’s going on.”

Airlines may change their training programs to reinforce habits that might have saved the doomed flight AF 447: practice hand-flying an automated airplane during all phases of flight, pay closer attention to the weather and to what the planes around them are doing, clarify explicitly who’s in charge when two co-pilots are alone in a cockpit, understand the parameters of ‘alternate law’ flight control modes. But they can’t rewire the human brain.

Asia Council annual report for 2011
For IAEM Global Board meeting Mar 2012, prepared by Victor Bai, Council President

• Victor Bai, China, was elected  Council President in September 2011. The three other officer positions – Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer -  are still vacant.

• The staff of Forbes Calamity Prevention (FCP), former council president Nathaniel Forbes’ company,  will continue to  maintain the IAEM Asia web site, with approval by the Council Board (the President until other officers are elected).  As often as he can, Nat will also continue to write IAEM Asia newsletter, sent to the IAEM Asia mailing list of 2,600 subscribers. FCP also voluntarily maintains the Council page on Facebook, and the IAEM Asia Twitter feed at no cost to IAEM.

• If too many members do not renew their memberships after October 1st each year, membership in the Asia Council temporarily falls below the minimum seventy-five (75) members to be a Council.  Staff at Forbes Calamity Prevention send email reminders to members when they can, but the National Representatives in each country are responsible for membership in their countries.

• During the Chinese New Year holiday in February, Victor Bai met Clay Tyeryar at IAEM HQ with Professor Lee from theChina National School of Administration (NSA). They discussed future cooperation and opportunities. The NSA may be able to help promote IAEM in China – including EM education and the CEM certificate program. The International Emergency Management Society (TIEMS)  is already working with NSA to expand in China and Asia.

The IAEM Bulletin February 2012 is now on our IAEM Asia website. We encourage you to join the IAEM Asia mailing list, which is for anyone interested in IAEM Asia and emergency management.  It’s free. Just click on the obvious, red button in the upper right corner of the IAEM Asia website.

Join us as an IAEM member! Benefits are:

• Access to the largest network of top emergency management and disaster experts who can offer solutions, guidance and assistance.
• 1-year subscription to the electronic edition of the IAEM Bulletin.
• Access to Members Only Web site resources, including the IAEM Membership Directory and the IAEM Bulletin archives.
• The only internationally-recognized certification for emergency managers, the Certified Emergency Manager® and Associate Emergency Manager programs, which can enhance your career and salary.
• A chance to receive scholarship funds for students enrolled in emergency management courses of study.
• Discounts on registration at annual IAEM and IAEM-USA conferences and seminars.
• Voting privileges at member meetings.

IAEM members:

1. are in the field of emergency management (mitigation, preparedness, response, and/or recovery).
2. are interested in protecting lives and property through an all-hazards approach.
3. are concerned with national security.
4. have an emergency management/ civil defense assignment in government, the military, and industry or volunteer organization.

At the Singapore IAEM meeting Wednesday 8 February, we talked about emergency management (EM) training. Some of us think IAEM Asia should begin to offer appropriate EM training adapted for Asia.

What do you think?

Here is the link to the U.S. Emergency Management Institute’s first course, IS-1, Emergency Manager: An Orientation to the Role. It is seven (7) units:
http://training.fema.gov/emiweb/is/is1lst.asp

And here’s the link to the final examination for that course:
http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/downloadexamnotice.asp?eid=is

My colleague, Gideon For-mukwai CEM®, and I are working to adapt this course for Asia. We hope that our new version can be used by IAEM members, and that it will earn training credit toward the Certified Emergency Manager® (CEM) credential.

If you have any suggestions about how to adapt this course, please write to me nforbes@iaem.com.sg or Gideon gideon@1xtramile.com at your convenience.

Guest Speakers
Mr. Bryce Mitchell and Mr. Paul Butler, WebEOC

Topics:
1. Presentation and demonstration of WebEOC
2. Plans for emergency management training in Asia
3. Discussion about the future of IAEM in Asia.

Come and join us! If you interested to attend, please let us know here

P.S. We encourage you to join the IAEM Asia mailing list, which is for anyone interested in IAEM Asia and emergency management.  It’s free. Just click on the obvious, red button in the upper right corner of the IAEM Asia website.

Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) Commissioner Peter Lim Sin Pang has been suspended during an investigation into charges of corruption against him. From Singapore’s Straits Times of Wednesday, 25 January: http://bit.ly/A2nISI

I have no more details than any other member of the public, but I have known Peter Lim for four years. He has been a strong supporter of IAEM Asia since we started organizing some years ago. He was the keynote speaker at our Asia-Oceania Resilience conference in October 2010.

He has had a 20-year career in Civil Defence, earning his way to the top through hard work and playing by the rules. I have known Peter to be honest, fair and firm, and a believer in preparedness.

I respect him.

It is very difficult for me to believe that he knowingly engaged in corrupt activity. If it turns out that he did, I will be as disappointed as any resilience professional in Singapore.

Where I come from, we believe that a person is innocent until proven guilty. I believe it is good guidance anywhere, and I urge patience on all IAEM members and those interested in emergency management in Asia until the matter is resolved by the responsible government authorities.

-Nathaniel Forbes, past President, IAEM Asia Council, nforbes@iaem.com.sg

The IAEM Bulletin January 2012 is now on our IAEM Asia website. We encourage you to join the IAEM Asia mailing list, which is for anyone interested in IAEM Asia and emergency management.  It’s free. Just click on the obvious, red button in the upper right corner of the IAEM Asia website.

Join us as an IAEM member! Benefits are:

• Access to the largest network of top emergency management and disaster experts who can offer solutions, guidance and assistance.
• 1-year subscription to the electronic edition of the IAEM Bulletin.
• Access to Members Only Web site resources, including the IAEM Membership Directory and the IAEM Bulletin archives.
• The only internationally-recognized certification for emergency managers, the Certified Emergency Manager® and Associate Emergency Manager programs, which can enhance your career and salary.
• A chance to receive scholarship funds for students enrolled in emergency management courses of study.
• Discounts on registration at annual IAEM and IAEM-USA conferences and seminars.
• Voting privileges at member meetings.

IAEM members:

1. are in the field of emergency management (mitigation, preparedness, response, and/or recovery).
2. are interested in protecting lives and property through an all-hazards approach.
3. are concerned with national security.
4. have an emergency management/ civil defense assignment in government, the military, and industry or volunteer organization.