Pandemic Planning Resources

It's been quite some time since the H1N1 pandemic has been the talk of the town in the emergency planning arena as well as in everyone's surrounding community.

At the current moment, we do know that countries such as China will be mass producing (or have already started) vaccines that may possibly minimise and hopefully eliminate the H1N1 strain of virus to some targetted groups of its population. Of course other major pharmacuetical companies are also still in perhaps the final testing phase.

While we await for a "cure" to fully crystallize, it is still important for emergency planners, business continuity specialists, as well as all relevant and responsible parties be aware of key resources that will enable them to better prepare and plan for a greater scale of outbreak in the near future.

As such, I've found the following link to be relatively comprehensive and useful for almost everyone to reference with, pertaining to pandemic planning:

Click Here for Pandemic Planning Resource

Always be prepared!

Jakarta New Bombings: Is Your Organisation Ready?

Despite past bombing events at Jakarta or in the Indonesian region, terrorists (as it seems to be for now) have once again struck a successful blow to the tourism industry at The Ritz Carlton, JW Marriots. All this taking place even with the current ramped up security and anti-terrorism measures by the country and the security agencies.

As this blog is being posted, I am being swamped with live radio and television broadcast reports provided by various terrorism experts on what actually happened in Indonesia today, and how all this tragic events could have happened once more.

Definitely very sad.

But what can we learn at the individual or even at the organisational level?

Regardless of where one lives in today, your country's security agency would have by now been ever more prepared for the eventuality of a terrorist strike. It's obvious from all these recent events that no country is spared.

This means that organisations residing in these coubtries would already have in place a certain form of business coninuity plan or currently embarking on a business continuity management journey. For some organisations, this would also be known as emergenecy planning or preparedness. Relevant plans should by now be put in place including the necessary infrastructure required to support such recovery operations.

As an indvidual, you should be familiar with the plans in place in your organisation, such as the faithful practising of annual fire evacuation drills and so on. Of course, there are other equally important procedures one should be familiar as well, to ensure your best chance of survival, as well as recovery to your organisation's business operations.

So, are you prepared?

BCM Vs EM

BCM Vs EM. What's that?



If you're in the field of emergency management or emergency response long enough, you'd probably be able to guess that it literally means "Business Continuity Management versus Emergency Management". Nothing anymore complicated as that.

Have you ever come across situations where folks in our field (or maybe not) have been using these terms loosely? Having said that, is there actually a difference between these two?

For starters, we all know that Emergency Management typically resides in the field of "fast action" emergency response to a given hazard or crisis, and involves response plans and standard operating procedures for situations involving fires, floods, road traffic accidents, rescue operations, and so on (you get the idea). It is generally a subset or a niche in the management field pertaining to managing emergency response situations. Those in the EMT, fire and police organisations would be well aware of this definition and the exercises that come packaged with it.

Business Continuity Management on the other hand, has its roots starting from the commercial and banking industries, and typically involves an overall organisation-wide business continuity plan and requires various internal stakeholders as well as its associated vendors to provide a detailed response plan to support the organisation's critical business objectives (usually decided by senior management in advance). It conceptualizes that main objectives to be fulfilled by the organisation in times of identified crises such that its minimum servic edelivery standards will not be overly compromised.

In a nutshell, that's what these two fields of niche management are about. And if you're in the field of BC, you'll be well aware that "emergency management or response" will form part of your business continuity plan.

Business Continuity Management Framework: The Easy-To-Use, Comprehensive, Business Continuity Tool (third Edition, 2008)

Swine Flu (aka H1N1 virus) Preparation

Currently as I write this post, my country's been upgraded to DORSCON Alert "Orange" in response to WHO's upgrading of the (now known as) H1N1 flu pandemic virus.

At my station, we've stepped up the relevant preparedness measures in accordance to my organisation's business continuity plan.

These steps include:

a) Screening all incoming reporting duty crew and isolating them in a designated isolation room if signs of fever or flu like symptoms are observed.

b) Suspension of all forms of scheduled physical training (with hte exception of classroom lectures and tutorials).

c) All ambulance crew to respond with surgical gloves and N95 mask.

d) Preparation for possible conversion to a 2 Team shift system

That's basically what I can say here as the rest are rather specfic in nature and yes, confidential as well.

What's your organisation or unit doing?

Welcome to "Emergency Command"!

Emergency Responder....Good day!

It's taken me quite a while to proceed with setting up this blog site.

The main reason being that I'm not really that comfortable in blogging and more often, folks like us tend to be more 'operational' or (for some of us) more 'hands on' in our approach to problem solving. Anyway, I figured that since I've been in this industry for quite awhile, I felt that I may have something to share for anyone who may also be in the emergency response industry, or maybe considering a career in this exciting and often, highly rewarding industry.

Wait...'highly rewarding'? Well, that depends on how you look at this industry as well as the specific nature of your work involvement in this field of emergency response. Whether you come from the military, homeland security, allied health industry, police, civil defence, or the fire brigade, there will be ups and downs in your career. But most importantly, its the sense of achievement that I believe keeps most of us here going all this while.

As this site grows (and depending on my time available, seriously), you can expect to see various topics pertaining to emergency response planning, management, business continuity, or other related fields being discussed or featured here.

And if you're looking into certain materials that maybe useful in your information dissemination at your various workplaces, you may expect to find them here as well. And yes... if you're a trainer in the field of EM, do let me know and we may have it featured here as well.

Till then... "Standyby for announcement!"