Just for those that might be interested...

Over the past 3 days I have been undertaking training of what to do in the event of an emergency from a public health and environmental health stand point.

It was quite amazing being put into the shoes of those in the wake of such events as the Boxing Day Tsunami, New Orleans, and for a more local (Australian) perspective, the Newcastle Earthquake and rail disasters.

Anyhow I found it very interesting and informational. What to do when you are in lack of services people take for granted such as a water supply, what to do with sewerage, other waste, animals, pests, having no electricty, feeding and sheltering all those affected and the rehab of the site.

I won't go into it but it was very good and I enjoyed it anyhow.

How did you sign up/where?

I'm a Environmental Health Officer at Local Government level. The NSW Health department held it and sent their list of contacts an invite.

Dunno how others could get involved in it. Join and Emergency Department :p

don't suppose you could share some of the bits of info you picked up? your posts are always interesting.

Will do in due time, have some uni assignments to do. Once they are off I'll do up a post.

One thing I can say now was a girl from the state coroners was present, had dinner with her on one of the nights. Very interesting haha

Wayyy too much to put into a post (It was an intensive 3 day/21 hour course).

It covered things from the Sydney Water Crisis to Water Suppies and Waste Disposal in Emergencies.

There were talks of real life emergencies (think the Newcastle Earthquake). HAZMAT. Chemical Spills and Hazardous Materials Incidents.

Disposal of the Dead and The Role of the Coroner.

Pest Control and what happens with animals in emergencies (Department of Primary Industries).

There was a scenario given to us, what to do if a train collided with a truck containing unidentifable chemicals - So basically human life is the most important thing, you call emergency services and get all emergency services required onboard and work out each step as new information comes to life e.g. What the chemical is, the fact it's leeching into a waterway, it's fluming toxic smoke towards an aged care facility etc, etc.

And finally something I found interesting, Triple ZERO is the phone number right? Apprantly some people confuse it with triple 'O' and the letter 'O' on the phone is 6. Some people actually call 666 for an emergency - It's always triple 'zero' that you tell people to call.