It was fantastic to catch up with some of you at the South Island Civil Defence Emergency Management Conference in Christchurch last week where I spoke about the Ministry’s desire to strengthen relationships across the sector and explore how we can apply a more collaborative approach towards building a resilient New Zealand.

To this end, a reminder that submissions on the draft Revised Guide to the National CDEM Plan 2015 (the Guide) close at 5pm on Friday 11 September 2015.

The revised Guide outlines New Zealand’s arrangements for the national management or support for local management of emergencies. The purpose of the revised Guide is to assist and support New Zealand agencies to achieve the purpose of the new National CDEM Plan 2015 (the Plan 2015), which comes into force on 1 December 2015.

Years of work and extensive consultation with the public and relevant agencies and organisations on the Plan 2015 have resulted in significantly strengthened arrangements that are robust, current and well understood with those agencies and organisations with responsibilities in the Plan.

With this in mind, the revised Guide has been amended to act as a “slimmed down” operational support mechanism to the Plan 2015, incorporating Plan 2015 wording and supplementing this with diagrams, practical operational detail and a navigational tool to direct agencies and CDEM Groups to appropriate resources for use across the 4Rs.

The revised Guide is available to view on the MCDEM website at (http://www.civildefence.govt.nz/cdem-sector/cdem-framework/revised-guide-2015-consultation) in full and by section, allowing readers to provide comment on the document as a whole or to focus on their areas of interest. 

New Zealand ShakeOut is another major focus at the moment, with less than two months to go now until the national earthquake drill at 9:15am, on 15 October 2015.

More than 680,000 New Zealanders have so far signed up to take part. Help us reach the target of 1.5 million people. There’s a heap of resources on the website at www.shakeout.govt.nz/resources including videos of well-known New Zealanders promoting the campaign, as well as posters, banners, flyers and more.

Well done to Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt, Southland Mayor Gary Tong and Gore Mayor Tracy Hicks who have issued a challenge to the rest of New Zealand to get behind the campaign - check out their You Tube video.

Use the resources available to promote ShakeOut and engage with your own communities during this important public education campaign!

Sarah Stuart-Black
Director, Civil Defence Emergency Management

Photo: The morning of Sunday 21 June. Flooding along Taupo Quay – the paddle steamer Waimarie still tied to the wharf.

Friday the 19th of June 2015 was wet.

The Wanganui District had endured a damper than usual period over the previous months and the rain was steady all day. Weather predictions had most problems moving on past us with the really wet stuff hitting its traditional location on the slopes of Mt Taranaki.

Unfortunately for Wanganui, a big high decided to park itself out east creating a blocking effect on the weather system. Six weeks of winter rain hit all of our catchments over the next 36 hours – more than an average months’ worth in less than 48 hours.

At 4.00am of Saturday morning, the Emergency Management Duty Officer received the first phone call, and acting on a hunch, had us all heading into work to set up the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC). Almost immediately, further calls began coming in.

By 5am we had one Emergency Management Officer working with Police and Fire to evacuate pensioners from waist deep water, another receiving evacuees at a Civil Defence Centre, and others were setting up the EOC and continuing the call up of staff. Our outstanding local Red Cross responders and the Rural Fire team were soon operational, and by 6am we were working in multiple locations, dealing with slips and floods.  It wasn’t long after that Wanganui City was cut off north, east and south by flooding or major slips on the state highways.

By pure luck, a unit of Army Engineers were on exercise in the area, and as the situation worsened, they jumped in to help.

Come mid-afternoon there were multiple streets impassable around town due to either flooding or slips. Evacuations had been occurring all day around the city and our rural folk were also cut off.

Roading, infrastructure crews and contractors had all deployed, and the EOC was receiving calls for help at the rate of one every two minutes (over the first 18 hours). Power was out, the internet patchy and the city’s ‘three waters’ infrastructure was undergoing emergency work to keep things functioning.  Everywhere you looked there were slips, downed power lines, inundated transformers and blown manholes. All of this just from localised rainfall.
We were also aware that our neighbouring districts were having their own troubles and still the rain bucketed down.

In the evening it became apparent that the Whanganui River was approaching record levels at the upriver measuring sites. The decision was made to enact the flood evacuation plan. Easier said than done when everyone is already fully committed, staff are cut off or flooded out themselves, and access anywhere is limited. A state of local emergency was declared by the Mayor, Annette Main, at 4.00pm Saturday 20 June.

The stop banks overtopped more than two hours ahead of prediction at around midnight and before long floodwaters in some areas and houses exceeded 2m in depth. Hundreds of houses were affected as well as many businesses and facilities.

By first light on Sunday morning the rain had stopped and we were able to take stock. There were 20 urban road closures, 85% of our rural road network was impassable, over 200 homes evacuated, and over 3000 slips. Hundreds of people were cut off on farms and in rural communities and there was damage everywhere you looked.

So began many days of response efforts involving multiple agencies from inside and outside the District. A fleet of helicopters looked after our cut-off rural folk, while a huge effort by the Roading gurus had tracks cut through to most people within two weeks.

The Recovery Team now has the long term task of helping the community through the aftermath, organising clean-up crews, working with volunteers and coordinating public and Government agency support.

Some factors of this event for the Wanganui Emergency Operations Centre were:

• Extensive use of social media for communications in our rural areas (phones were out but rural satellite broadband services remained – Facebook Messenger became the preferred communications tool). Our thanks to Wellington and Waikato for sending social media experts and other staff to bolster our efforts.
• Tenuous electrical power supply meant the City’s bores were out of action – two days of water remained in the reservoirs to be conserved. An enormous generator was sourced and rapidly installed to maintain water supply.
• Thirteen days of ‘state of local emergency’ reinforced the value of having regional and national staff support to maintain EOC 24/7 operations.
• Extended periods of security cordon tasks is enormously staff resource intensive. Army, Rural Fire, Police, NZ Fire Service, NZ Red Cross, Security Contractors and Council Staff ran cordons while Police conducted mobile security checks. There was no reported crime within the cordon areas – a great result that provided peace of mind for evacuated residents.

With many community meetings happening, Mayoral Relief funds to be managed and plenty of other tasks there is plenty of work ahead across the Wanganui District Recovery Team.

Article submitted by Matthew Smith
Emergency Manager, Wanganui District Council

“It’s been a long time coming, but change is gonna come” was the theme of the 2015 annual welfare forum for the Canterbury Group.

The forum was designed to take an in-depth look at the welfare sub-functions with a view to how we might implement them at the local and regional levels.

Attendees included national agency representatives, regional and local welfare managers and emergency management officers, and regional representatives from responsible or supporting agency for the welfare sub-functions. Representatives from the other South Island CDEM Groups also attended.

The day consisted of a mix of quick fire updates, more in-depth presentations on the sub-functions, and an afternoon scenario.

A key focus for the day was the expectations that national level agencies had of how these sub-functions would be implemented regionally and locally. It was also an opportunity to reflect the reality of this back to national level agencies.

The opportunity for local and national agencies to discuss the sub-functions in detail was invaluable, and has ensured that we have a much clearer idea of what is expected of Group and local welfare after 1 December.

A big thank-you to MCDEM for helping us put the day together, also to our speakers from NZ Police; Ministry for Primary Industries; Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; Child, Youth and Family, and the Canterbury District Health Board.

Article submitted by Jessica Petersen
Community Resilience Coordinator, Canterbury CDEM Group

Photo: Clutha District Council Emergency Management Officer Brendon Smith delivers the ‘Drop, Cover, Hold’ message to Rosebank School pupils.

‘Drop, Cover, Hold’ was the one of the key messages for pupils from throughout the Clutha District at recent safety training day.

Clutha Clued Up Kids was held for the first time in this district and saw 10 and 11 year old pupils from 19 schools take part in a range of practical, hands-on safety lessons.

Clutha’s Emergency Management Officer Brendon Smith was there teaching them how to drop, cover and hold when an earthquake strikes.

He was accompanied by a ‘shaky trailer house’ that replicated an earthquake and proved a big hit with kids and adults alike.

Brendon said it was heartening to see that all of the 220 pupils he spoke to already knew the drop, cover, hold message.

Students were also encouraged to sign up for New Zealand’s Big ShakeOut being held in October.

Dog safety, first aid, bike safety, firearm safety, life jacket training, relaxation skills and fire safety were among the other lessons taught during the day.

It was such a success that a date to run the event again next year has already been booked!

Article submitted by Rachel Askew
Communications Coordinator, Clutha District Council
 

This month Pāpāmoa College students participated in a big ideas session for New Zealand ShakeOut.

The session was designed to elicit some big ideas for how the Bay of Plenty might promote and encourage participation in the national earthquake preparedness campaign.

Pāpāmoa College teachers, Bay of Plenty Emergency Management staff and staff from the Bay of Plenty District Health Board and Ministry of Education also assisted in generating some very creative thinking.

The students broke into groups to discuss the best way to engage with a range of stakeholders including people with disabilities, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, businesses and workplaces, youth, preschools, schools and tertiary organisations to name just a few.

The morning was very successful with students grateful for the opportunity to provide some youth input into the planning. There were plenty of fantastic suggestions put forward (some a little too fantastic to realise this time round!) and many ideas will be incorporated into the planning for the event. Thanks guys!

Article submitted by Naomi Luckett
Emergency Management Coordinator (Community Resilience), Bay of Plenty Regional Council

Bay of Plenty Regional Council recently hosted Tai Poutini (West Coast) Polytechnic as they delivered Coordinated Incident Management (CIMS) 4 Training to a group of over 20 people.

Attendees came from multiple agencies across the Bay of Plenty, including New Zealand Police, New Zealand Fire Service, Bay of Plenty District Health Board as well as staff from various councils in the region.

The three day course involved a number of desktop exercises where teams developed an understanding of the roles under the CIMS structure, including Incident Controller, Planning, Intelligence, Logistics, Operations, Welfare and Public information Management. 

The course was well received and we look forward to hosting the next course in Whakatāne in September.

Article submitted by Naomi Luckett
Emergency Management Coordinator (Community Resilience), Bay of Plenty Regional Council

Golden Bay sits at the top of the south and although it’s a slice of paradise they’ve had their share of big floods in recent years. 

On 1-2 August the Golden Bay CDEM team assembled for a weekend CIMS4 course at their local Emergency Operations Centre, the Takaka Fire Station. 

The brilliant thing about this team is that they identified the training need and organised the event. 

The team picture shows the Golden Bay incident management team, made up of representatives from local emergency services, Search and Rescue, Department of Conservation, Council and community members. 

Sara Chapman (centre) is the Golden Bay Local Controller, and also pictured is the Nelson Tasman Group Controller, Roger Ball (left).

Article submitted by Roger Ball
Manager/Controller, Nelson Tasman Emergency Management

The Emergency Management Southland team pictured back row (left to right): Craig Sinclair (Emergency Management Advisor) and Angus McKay (Emergency Management Manger). Front row (left to right): Sandra Miller (Emergency Management Advisor); Janelle Ladbrook (Administration Assistant); and Jayne McAllister (Emergency Management Advisor).

With a degree in aeronautical engineering and an early career at Rolls Royce, new Emergency Management Southland manager/controller Angus McKay brings a wealth of diverse experience with him.

Angus joined the Southland team in late July, moving from his Auckland Civil Defence role to fill the desk left empty by Neil Cruickshank.

Starting his career in the aerospace division of Rolls Royce in England, it was only a few years before he was looking for something more challenging and he joined the Police force.

“I was young and keen and the Police seemed like an exciting place to be.”

In 2003, the New Zealand Police were recruiting from the UK when Angus, his wife Denise and their two children decided a fresh start on the other side of the world might be in order.

Originally deployed in Auckland, Angus became Sergeant in charge at the Wellsford Police Station, a real highlight of his career, but once he turned 40, he decided it was time to reassess his future.

Having run his own security business, he sold the company and was looking for his next challenge, when a job in Civil Defence in Auckland came up.

Starting as a duty officer, Angus made his mark as head of operations and was one of the alternate controllers for the area.

He always knew 2015 would be a year of change, as the youngest of his two children moved on to university, and the opportunity to take on the manager/group controller role in Southland was too tempting to ignore.

Article submitted by Emergency Management Southland

Chris Hawker, of Christchurch, has been appointed as the inaugural manager/controller for the Otago Regional Civil Defence and Emergency Management Group, effective from November 2.

Mr Hawker has a wealth of experience in business and local government, and most recently, nine years in both operational and teaching roles at the University of Canterbury (UC).

During his time with the university he co-led the development of an extensive emergency preparedness programme which, in the aftermath of the Canterbury earthquakes in 2010-11, has been internationally acknowledged for its quality and effectiveness.

Mr Hawker has spent the past three years as director of the university’s Centre for Risk, Resilience, and Renewal, which provides tertiary education and professional development courses, research, and consultancy services, across a range of public safety and disaster management disciplines.

He led the university’s operational response to the September 2010 and February 2011 earthquakes as its primary Incident Controller, and combined with numerous other incidents which have affected the university, has had considerable hands-on experience dealing with major crises.

Mr Hawker and his family have previously lived in both Dunedin and Wanaka and are looking forward to returning to the Otago region, which he says “stole his heart” many years ago.

Confirming Mr Hawker’s appointment, Otago CDEM Co-ordinating Executive Group chairman Peter Bodeker said the region was fortunate to have attracted someone of Mr Hawker’s calibre and experience in the emergency management sector to the new role.

Mr Bodeker said it was crucial to maintain a high level of civil defence emergency management responsiveness for the people of Otago and Mr Hawker would be more than able to ensure that the regions civil defence agencies were well prepared to respond to a disaster alongside the community.

Continual community development and strengthening the partnerships between Otago’s councils and other CDEM agencies involved with emergency management response would be the key to maintaining this readiness and preparedness, Mr Bodeker said.

Media Release, Otago Region Emergency Management

Hawke’s Bay people now have access to a range of hazard information about their properties and the region in one centralised online portal.

Hawke’s Bay Civil Defence Emergency Management has launched a web-based hazard information portal, which will house all the information available about hazards in the region and how they affect various parts of Hawke’s Bay.

The portal integrates all the hazard information in Hawke’s Bay, including GIS (Geographic information system) information, the regional hazard research database, and links to all other hazard information available within the region.

It is available to the general public seeking information on hazards relevant to their individual needs and people involved in development looking for authoritative information to make regional and local land use decisions.

Initially the portal will offer existing information from the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council on earthquake fault lines, earthquake liquefaction, tsunami, coastal erosion and flooding.

Hawke’s Bay Civil Defence Emergency Management Group Manager Ian Macdonald said the website was expected to grow as further hazard information became available. 

“Providing accurate public information on natural hazards is vital to reducing our long term risk to these events.  It allows decision makers and individuals to make informed decisions based on the risks they face,” said Mr Macdonald.

The portal can be found at www.hbemergency.govt.nz/hazards/portal

Article submitted by Helen Shea
Communications Specialist, Hawkes Bay Regional Council

The Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management has released two new Director’s Guidelines on Movement Control during emergencies, and Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Group Planning.

The Emergency Movement Control Director’s Guideline and the CDEM Group Planning Director’s Guideline are available on the Ministry’s website at http://www.civildefence.govt.nz/cdem-sector/cdem-framework/guidelines/

Effective movement control and management of cordoned areas during an emergency is important to reduce risk to the public and response personnel, and minimise interruptions to operations during a major response.

The Independent Review of the Response to the 22 February Christchurch Earthquake found that while the cordon management was generally effective following the earthquake, it was hampered by a lack of pre-planning which caused tensions with those seeking access.

The new guidelines address the issues raised in both the independent review and by the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission.

They aim to focus CDEM Controllers and personnel on what to consider when putting in place movement control, to enable them to manage access along public thoroughfares (roads, walkways) and to and from property.

Meanwhile, the new CDEM Group Planning Director’s Guidelines aim to support CDEM Groups in their planning development.

Each of the 16 regional CDEM Groups in New Zealand is responsible for producing a CDEM Group Plan. CDEM Group Plans act as the strategic guiding document for each group, outlining its own goals and describing the arrangements it has in place across the ‘4R’s’ of risk reduction, readiness, response and recovery.

Planning and preparation is fundamental to any successful undertaking, and the planning process is important to ensure the plans developed meet the needs of the people affected.

Group plans should be regarded by CDEM agencies as a key instrument in strengthening our resilience efforts. It is important that they be recognised and afforded a similar status to other key regional or agency policies and strategies.

With less than two months to go until the national Drop, Cover and Hold earthquake drill, now is the time to ramp up your ShakeOut activity! As at 8am on Tuesday 25 August, we have over 700,000 people signed up to take part.

By now you will have received pens, smart wallets, bag tags, flyers, etc. You can also download flyers and posters at www.shakeout.govt.nz. Please use every opportunity to promote ShakeOut to all your stakeholders.

• Do you have posters up in public spaces – libraries, pools, council buildings, service centres?

• Are you promoting ShakeOut at events you attend – home shows, sports events, meetings, conferences?

• Do you have a way for people to sign up if they don’t have computer access? Download the sign up form and encourage people to sign up.

• Are you visiting schools, businesses and other organisations and encouraging them to sign up? We can provide you with a list of who has signed up in your area, email shakeout@dpmc.govt.nz

Planning for Exercise Tangaroa is now underway, with the exercise Steering Group and Governance Groups having met in July and August.

Lock in the dates!

Exercise Tangaroa will be held in August and September 2016, and will involve all 16 CDEM Groups and partner agencies.  There are a number of response and recovery aspects that we would like to test during the exercise, and therefore a phased approach will be taken:

• Wednesday 31 August 2016: focus on response up to tsunami impact.
• Wednesday 14 September 2016: focus on post tsunami impact.
• Wednesday 28 September 2016: focus on the transition from response to recovery.

A regional source tsunami has been agreed as the scenario for the exercise with an aim to test New Zealand’s all of nation arrangements for preparing for, responding to, and recovering from a national tsunami impact. Objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) are still being developed but these will be closely aligned to the objectives of the interagency National Exercise Programme.

The Planning Group will be meeting soon to start getting stuck into the detail of the exercise, and the Steering Group will be meeting every couple of months from now on to manage the strategic direction of the exercise.  

For any queries, please contact Sara Leighton at MCDEM by emailing sara.leighton@dpmc.govt.nz or call (04) 817 8588.

Over the last 18 months, the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management has been working with the New Zealand Fire Service to develop an ARCGIS Online application in support of the guidance that was published in 2013 (Rapid Impact Assessment: Information for the CDEM sector [IS 14/13]).  

The app has been developed to instantly give a situational awareness in real time for Controllers to support operational planning and decision making, and to support and assist those working in the CDEM environment who in the event of an emergency are tasked to carry out rapid impact assessments in the field.

The CDEM app is an extension of the NZ Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Task Force Rapid Disaster Assessment solution which was fully deployed into production in December 2014.

The CDEM app is a beta version and is currently being tested in a number of district councils around New Zealand.

Following the beta testing the app will be released in September 2015 for use by those local authorities that have ARCGIS Online accounts.

For more information please contact Simon Chambers at MCDEM by emailing simon.chambers@dpmc.govt.nz

The next Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management-led Public Information Management workshop will be held on Tuesday 17 and Wednesday 18 November at Cliftons Conference Centre, Wellington.

If you are interested in attending this workshop, please complete a nomination form available on the MCDEM website www.civildefence.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/capability-development/PIM-Workshop-Nov2015-Nomination.doc and submit it to your Group Manager.

Nominations for the workshop will close on Friday 23 October, and selected participants will be notified shortly after.

If you have any queries, please contact Aimee Flanagan, Capability Development Advisor (04) 817 8583 or MCDEMCapDev@dpmc.govt.nz

You may have heard that Spark New Zealand have decided to decommission the paging network on 31 March 2017 and from 1 September 2015, paging-related charges will increase by 20%.

We will be working with Spark and other agencies on finding alternative solutions during the long lead-in to network shutdown.

Spark advised that this decision has been made after several years of review and comes after customer demand has been on a perpetual decline for more than a decade. As the underlying analogue network ages it has become more vulnerable to outages and increasingly uneconomic to maintain.

Take a look at the messaging solutions Spark recommends as alternatives here - and read the official media release below.

Article contributed by Tess Williamson
Emergency Management Advisor – Operations Advisor, MCDEM

Spark New Zealand Media Release, 31 July 2015

The days of getting ‘beeped’ are coming to an end. After several years of review Spark New Zealand has announced its decision to decommission the legacy paging network on 31 March 2017.

Nowadays, paging is being retired around the world as businesses move to alternatives like mobiles and smartphones that offer far richer two-way interactions, and reduce the need for users to carry separate devices.  Many of the major global telecommunications companies have turned-off their networks or sold off Paging to third parties as the needs of their customers are integrated with mobile technology.

The paging system was introduced to New Zealand in 1988 – the year that the Hubble space Telescope was put into space, the first transatlantic fibre optic cable was laid able to carry 40,000 telephone calls simultaneously and ten years before Google arrived.  At its peak in 1994 there were 61 million paging users globally.

While paging has historically been used as a messaging option in many industries, customer demand has been on a perpetual decline for more than a decade as businesses have moved to mobile-based messaging solutions, and as the underlying analogue network ages it has become more vulnerable to outages and increasingly uneconomic to maintain.  In the past two years paging in New Zealand has declined by 65%.  As a result, Spark New Zealand will work with its remaining paging customers over the next 20 months to transition them to newer digital technology solutions.

Today there is a proliferation of mobile-based mobile messaging solutions that are feature rich compared with paging.  Many Spark Digital customers have moved from paging to eTXT™ as an immediate, quick, cost effective and simple way to message straight to a mobile phone. Over-The-Top messaging apps such as WhatsApp, and Kik also provide the ability for groups to communicate over any data network connected to the internet.  Spark Digital along with a selection of its software development partners is working on bringing the best mix of messaging services to customers who want to modernise the way they engage with their staff and customers.

“Our decision to shut the paging network has not been taken lightly – we’ve spent the last 18 months reviewing other options, but demand has been declining for more than 10 years and it has become apparent that it’s time to plan for the retirement of the paging service,” says Chief Operating Officer David Havercroft. “We’ve explored selling the paging network and so far we haven’t found a buyer.”

“How we communicate with each other has evolved well beyond the capability allowed for by one-way Paging. Much of our customer base has migrated away from pagers to mobile telephony using 4G LTE networks and smartphones.”

Mr Havercroft adds, “We plan to work closely with all our customers including important government, health and emergency services over the next 20 months to identify their needs and transition them to a new appropriate digital solution.  Options for some customers, like the health industry could include providing their own on-site paging network at hospitals.”

Graham Leonard (GNS Science), Tom Wilson (University of Canterbury) and Carol Stewart (Joint Centre for Disaster Research, Massey University/GNS Science), joined by Kristi Wallace of the US Geological Survey (USGS) Alaska Volcano Observatory, spent two weeks in Hawai’i in June, hosted by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

This visit was funded by the joint NZ/US JCM (Joint Commission Meeting on Science and Technology Cooperation). The major task tackled by our team was a comprehensive upgrade of the USGS-hosted volcanic ash impacts website, to be unveiled in the near future.

We also took the opportunity to set up fact-finding meetings with government departments, utility companies and emergency managers to discuss impacts of the recent lava flows that affected the township of Pahoa, and the effects of the ongoing volcanic gas emissions from Kilauea volcano.

Article submitted by Dr Natalia Deligne
Volcanic Hazard and Risk Modeller, GNS Science

A Youth in Emergency Services (YES) collective collaboration between the United Fire Brigades’ Association (UFBA) and the Ministry of Youth Development, is delivering training by experienced and qualified instructors through FETS (Fire & Emergency Training Solutions) to students aged 15-19 years old.

Senior Firefighter Judith Stanley and Deanna Roa are managing the project for UFBA. The aim is to develop a learner-centred approach for risk awareness, emergency response, and readiness training.

Over a week, the students take part in a series of activities and drills including safety awareness, risk management, hose-drills, use of fire extinguishers, evacuation procedures, and safety warden roles and responsibilities.

Learning and developing problem-solving, team-building and leadership skills creates opportunities for the young people to contribute to more resilient and positive communities.
Participants are assessed for four emergency management unit standards totalling ten credits at Levels 1 to 3 on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF).

Internal Affairs Minister Hon Peter Dunne met the most recent training team at Tawa Rural Fire Force Depot in Wellington on 10 July.

After watching the participants undertake two Waterway Challenges, the Minister thanked the students for their dedication in giving up their school holidays to train and for becoming a professional, smart and hardened crew in just a week.

He said it was encouraging to see the next wave of volunteers coming through and was impressed by their skills and camaraderie. This, along with the confidence they had developed, would be of immense benefit to their communities.

For more visit www.ufba.org.nz/news/Youth_Emergency_Services

Article submitted by Loralee Hyde
Marketing & Communications Manager, United Fire Brigades’ Association

The Volcanic Impact Study Group (VISG) has launched a quarterly newsletter, which is available at http://www.aelg.org.nz/volcanic-impacts/visg-newsletters/

Please contact Natalia Deligne (n.deligne@gns.cri.nz) if you wish to receive future newsletters.

The Ministry of Social Development has an exciting opportunity for you to join its Emergency Management and Business Continuity Group.

Bring your skills, knowledge and experience to develop plans and resources that support the Ministry's coordination and delivery of its welfare functions and responsibilities before, during and after an emergency.

This role combines emergency and relationship management skills and requires the proven ability to develop and implement effective strategies and plans. We are a small and friendly team dedicated to ensuring the effective management of welfare in emergencies through our work with MSD business groups, service lines and our social sector partners.

Please follow the link for more details - https://msdcareers.msd.govt.nz/jobdetails?ajid=3hZC8