Getting Real - The 2010 Inclusive Emergency Management National Capacity Building Training Conference

On Sept 24, Marcie Roth and her incredible team from the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination (ODIC) but on the Getting Real - The 2010 Inclusive Emergency Management National Capacity Building Training Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

If you are not familiar with this FEMA group please follow the following link to learn more:
(http://www.fema.gov/about/odic/)
You can download an agenda of the conference at:
(http://www.fema.gov/pdf/about/odic/odic_getting_real_agenda.pdf )

From what I observed, the audience was a good mixture of emergency management, disability advocates, government agency members, along with new people just entering the "arena" of functional needs and emergency management planning. The entire group was in the range of 250 people, which made it quite manageable to connect with people over the 3 days of the conference.  

The high point of the conference, for me, was the presentation and the Q & A period of FEMA Administrator Craig Frugate. If it was not for him having to catch a plane, I think he would stayed and continued the discussion in the late hours of the evening. 

The conference was built around other great presentations with Q & A sessions to match such as Dave Garret from FEMA National Headquarters, Bill Lynch from the Department of Justice and a joint presentation from Richard Devylder and Gary Talbot.


The lion share of the activities were breakout sessions by FEMA regions, which was a great way to interact with others within your region and make much needed connections.


The overall mantra of the conference was "Getting Real" which was referencing we need to plan for real not easy, which a frequent statement by Craig Frugate. Planning for real is referencing emergency planning for our local communities, with emphasis on knowing who is in our communities regarding the general population and people with functional needs.

What this means for us, in the disability advocacy and services fields is that it is time to "step up" and engage with the emergency management system. The burden for responsibility of learning what this system is OURS!!! The information is there for the asking and in most cases for free.

There are free on line courses from FEMA's Emergency Management Institute, National Incident Management System (NIMS) would be great starting point!)
(http://training.fema.gov/is/crslist.asp) 
The National Response Framework can be found at http://www.fema.gov/emergency/nrf/