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IAEM Scholarship Fund Nets More Than $22,000 from Conference Fundraising Activities!
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Sponsored by Upper Iowa University, the Live Auction was definitely one of the most exciting activities at the IAEM 2007 Annual Conference. Add up the funds raised through the silent auction, basket bonanza, and the live auction -- and the IAEM Scholarship Fund is up more than $22,000!! Many thanks to all members and supporters who donated items for the auctions and baskets, and to those who placed bids and bought raffle tickets. Kudos to Dawn Shiley, IAEM's Communications & Marketing Director, and the IAEM Scholarship Commission, for planning, organizing, and running these most successful-ever events. And don't forget - you can still support the future of emergency management through your donations to scholarships at any time. It's tax deductible, and we take donations online to make it easy for you to participate.
“Plans Are Useless – Planning Is Everything”
Plenary Presentation: “We Gotta Get it Right: Planning for Catastrophic Casualty Events," Peter Marghella
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The major premise of Marghella’s plenary presentation was on how disaster planning, as a continuous process, needs to change to deal with asymmetrical events. Marghella began his presentation using a video depicting an attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1999, using aerosolized anthrax. Audio quotes in the video from President Roosevelt in his speech to Congress on Dec. 8, 1941, were contrasted with a visual display showing mass casualties occurring on Oahu as a result of this simulated anthrax attack.
Marghella stated that over many years, disaster planning had been done using a military methodology of linear planning, much like battle lines are drawn. He asserted that events such as the attacks on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, were asymmetrical – that is, a disaster that had not been planned for by following traditional planning concepts based on expected situations.
Marghella declared that we are in a new era of threats, which will result in a catastrophic casualty event. There are different levels of such an event, defined by the number of casualties – from the hundreds to hundreds of thousands. The National Planning Scenarios (see fact sheet), which have been developed for 15 natural, technological, and human-caused hazards, should be used for disaster planning. By a display of a show of hands of session attendees, few emergency managers indicated that they were unaware and unfamiliar with these scenarios. The fact sheet (linked above) describes from which secure servers these scenarios are available. He urged emergency managers at all levels – local, state, and federal – to become familiar and plan against these scenarios.
Marghella said that there is no common approach to how we do planning at any level of government, and that there should be a form of a National Planning and Exercise System, which would emplace cyclic, repetitive, and ongoing deliberate planning processes that are replicable. The process must include anticipating a large number of casualties and managing the response and care for those injured and killed by a catastrophic event.
Winners of IAEM Second Annual Student Research Poster Presentation Contest Announced
by Ernest Wheeler, IAEM Student Region President (2006-2007)
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The IAEM Student Region is pleased to announce the winners of the Second IAEM Annual Research Poster Presentation Contest. Presentations in this form afforded students an opportunity to interact with practitioners as they explained their research and received feedback from professionals and educators in the emergency management field. This served as an opportunity to identify and analyze an issue, research it, and articulate conclusions and proposed solutions. These skills are integral to the future success of students in the emergency management field.
There were eight total entries, and six students actually presented their research during the IAEM 55th Annual Conference & EMEX 2007 in Reno, Nevada. The first place poster, entitled "A New Paradigm in Post-Disaster Redevelopment (Recovery) Planning," was presented by Brian Silva, graduate student at Metropolitan College of New York, who was given a certificate and cash award of $300. Second place and a cash award of $150 were given to Richard Monroe, a doctoral student at the University of South Dakota, for his poster entitled "Disaster Mental Health in Emergency Management: Principles and Practices." Third place and a cash award of $50 were presented to Deon Pfenning, an undergraduate student at the University of North Texas, for his poster entitled "Human Capital in the 9/11 Waterborne Evacuations."
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