Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: The First Draft, in reply to Sacha,
a country that doesn’t even have internationally-deployable USAR assets
But parties like the Police and the Coroner get exposed to similar international events, don’t they?
Completely different things, though. Yes the DVI squad have experience with mass-casualty incidents, but they’re not the managers. Being a grunt and being a manager are totally different sets of skills at this level of complexity. Think back to my summary of CIMS post-Pike River, and imagine scaling that up to a level where you have multiple incidents all being run individually on the CIMS model and then a higher-again level of management over the top. The people competent to be Incident Controllers at a single site are not necessarily competent to be managers at the Emergency Operations Centre which coordinates the logistics for the discrete incidents across the city. It’s the difference between “a country cop” and Gary Knowles, but magnified. To be called that good by senior disaster response managers from the UK and US (and the US is the home of the model on which CIMS is based) is very, very high praise indeed.
Moz, don’t get land SAR and USAR confused. Although a lot of the CD USAR practitioners are involved with land SAR, it’s not true in the converse. The skills are very different. Our USAR Task Forces are very well trained as medium rescue, but they’re not trained to go overseas and contribute managerially to the cohesive whole that makes up the response to the likes of Christchurch. We have people within the rural fire sector who do have that experience, and who have worked within the incident management teams for California wildfires in the past, but not very many at all within USAR.
The international deployment situation for the NZ USAR Task Forces is a very sore point, because when they were created the applicants were told they would be configured for international deployment. So far, the better part of a decade into the TFs’ existence, they’re still only configured for domestic work. -
Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Hilary Stace,
To whom was that directed? We have two conflicting positions.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I thought that most of the 200 missing would in fact be amongst the 147 recovered bodies, all but a handful of which are as yet unnamed.
As I've understood the process, the Police aren't putting a body against the fatality count until they've identified the victim and notified next-of-kin. So, kinda by definition, the missing cannot be amongst the dead.
Some of the missing will have been recovered from the rubble, certainly, but that only puts them as missing-but-pending-identification. Once they're identified, the "missing" count decrements by one and the "dead" count increments by one.Of course, I may have misunderstood the explanation the Police have given as to how they're doing the counting, but there was a snarky comment in the other thread on Wednesday or Thursday about how we must look to the world after having the fatality count cut in half overnight; a cut attributed entirely to the adoption of what is, I assume, a standard methodology for counting deaths in a mass-casualty incident.
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Hard News: The First Draft, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
So we've got the head of the UK USAR team and a senior member of the US team saying roughly the same thing: that we're doing a very good job of managing the response. That's pretty high praise for a country that doesn't even have internationally-deployable USAR assets and has precious little long-term experience with multiple-collapse incidents.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Without in any way suggesting it’s not horrendous, we’re looking at a little over 200, aren’t we? Are you adding the missing to the bodies that have been recovered?
147 confirmed dead according to Granny's banner today, and in excess of 200 missing. Even if only 75% of the missing turn out to be dead (and remember that the estimate is > 120 people unaccounted for in CTV alone), that's nudging very close to 300.
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Hard News: The First Draft, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
The head of the American USAR contingent was sufficiently impressed that he asked Mayor Bob to relay his conclusion that this was the best organised earthquake response he had ever seen
US or UK? I've seen "best-organised" attributed to the latter, not the former. Or were they both that impressed?
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Had to think for a moment there about what the third one was. Not only is it three in one term, it's three in under six months!
You know, Sherlock Holmes had a saying about, once, twice, thrice...
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Hard News: The First Draft, in reply to Russell Brown,
I clicked through to the post about the two looters who stole the generators. Unpleasant immediately.
Darker shades of Collins, one assumes.
On this topic, since I don't think it can be repeated in enough places, definitely suggest that people make official contact with Collins' office seeking clarification on her remarks about "with a cell-mate". This foul utterance must not be left to pass unremarked and unchecked.
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Rochelle,
Do you think Keith that you could keep the English language more accurate and less offensive, by using “mess” and “messing” instead of the f…. words above.
Hate to break it to you, but that's how Keith rolls and he's not alone. The 'f' word is commonplace on PAS.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Andrew Stevenson,
Should we expect to see a change in policy in Wellington as a result of what has happened in Christchurch?
Hopefully, but given the council caved to building owners' demands over timeframe to update to 1/3 current standard I wouldn't hold my breath. If the council looks like it might start getting uppity, expect appeals to the government to blunt the charge.