Christchurch City Council civil defence and emergency management manager Murray Sinclair, Waimakariri District Council emergency management officer Brennan Wiremu, and Selwyn District Council emergency management manager Wilson Brown have been given time off from managing the earthquake recovery response in Canterbury to attend the annual South Island Civil Defence Emergency Management conference, which opened at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery yesterday.
The three men said being well-trained and prepared was critical to a smooth disaster emergency response, as were good working relationships across all the people and agencies that might be involved in an emergency response.
That was achieved by running regular exercises, holding meetings and networking.
Knowing the different agencies had their planning and assessment work up to date also meant things ran a lot smoother in an emergency, Mr Wiremu said.
"For example, our engineers knew which bridges and buildings would be affected and we were able to use that information ... to assign resources appropriately."
It had been surprising how resilient people and businesses had been in the aftermath of the 7.1 earthquake, Mr Brown said.
The only thing that surprised him was the psychological impact on himself and other people of the ongoing aftershocks.
The men all felt their planning had been sufficient to deal with the disaster response required.
That was made easier by a standardised national response plan, which set out who was in charge and how the response would be organised.
The advice they would give to their counterparts in other parts of the South Island was to keep doing what they had always been doing.
"Network, network, network and talk to your community," Mr Wiremu said.
