For Isaac Orchard, working at Tauranga City Council is all about preparing people for when disaster strikes – and then being there to help when it does.
Isaac works in the Emergency Management Team as a Community Resilience Advisor. For most of the year, he works with people of all ages and abilities to help prepare them to keep themselves safe in an emergency – like a tsunami, earthquake, or severe weather event. When disasters happen, Isaac dons his other hat (and appropriate high-viz) to become an intelligence manager in our Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), which activates when the council responds to disasters in Tauranga.
Being in the EOC is different to a normal role. You’re rostered with other staff who have put their hands up to be part of the EOC, and your focus is entirely on the emergency at hand. It’s something all council staff can participate in. Isaac has also been deployed to other parts of the country to support in emergency situations.
Isaac’s favourite part of his day job is community education and outreach. His Bachelor of Psychology, with a particular focus on community, put him on a great path for this work. The team is constantly challenging themselves to find creative ways to share their message, such as their recent earthquake and tsunami virtual reality module.
Isaac’s post-graduate degree in Disaster Risk Management and Development, coupled with national Coordinated Incident Management System and function-specific training, helps him provide information during an emergency to the people who need it. Intelligence managers focus on gathering enough verified information for incident controllers to make decisions. For example, a controller might need to know the predicted coastal inundation for a particular storm event to help them decide who needs evacuating.
Isaac enjoys his role and team at TCC. “We’re a relatively small team in council, so we know each other very well, which really helps when you’re responding to disasters. We’ve got great flexibility in the way we work – sometimes in the office, sometimes from home, and often out with the community. We get to help people in the worst times, but we also get to help them prepare and educate them in the good times. It’s a very rewarding place to work”.
