North Island CDEM Conference

It was good to see a large number of health emergency managers at the North Island CDEM conference. There were some excellent speakers and the event was extremely well organised.

One of the speakers for the break out sessions was stuck in the Thailand due to the civil unrest so Greg Wilson, the Environment Bay of Plenty CDEM Group Coordinator and conference organiser, was kind enough to let me fill one of the vacant slots . 20 mins is not a long time to show the national emergency management and GIS capability that is now available to health but the main points were put across I hope - especially the wealth of information that a health agency representative from a DHB, Public Health Unit or Ambulance region could offer to a Group or local EOC.

The CDEM Group also met half of the travel and accommodation costs for Dudley Wait. Dudley is the Deputy Director for the Regional Medical Operations Centre in South Texas, as well as being the Director of Emergency Medical Services for the City of Schertz. Dudley gave a great talk on the Friday around the readiness, response and recovery issues around accommodating 27.000 displaced people during hurricane Ike and Gustav. South Texas has WebEOC available in 82 hospitals as well as a range of city and county EOCs.

Unfortunately I missed the last day of the conference as I had to attend a funeral in Wellington. Luckily I got to hear Dudley speak at the Health Emergency Managers conference in Wellington the Monday afternoon. It was also the third time I've been to Rotorua with work and had plans fall through to get some mountain biking in afterwards...next time.

Thanks to all who organised such a great conference.