Jewish Emergency Management Provider Inc.

Project Summary

The Jewish Emergency Management Provider Inc. (JEMP) exists to

1. Provide disaster response and recovery services to the Victorian Jewish community, affected by major emergencies, through its component agencies, communal resources and personnel.
2. Strengthen the Victorian Jewish community's resilience to major emergencies.

Background and Situation Context

JEMP was founded in April 2001 in direct response to a number of emergencies in the 1990s but, in particular, in response to two tragedies which significantly affected the Victorian Jewish community. The first of these events was the death of four, and injury of 60, Australian Jewish athletes and officials at the 1997 Maccabiah Games in Israel. The second was the fatal accident outside of Bialik College in 1998 in which many students witnessed a 17-year-old student killed by a car.

These tragedies highlighted a need for the Jewish community to improve the flow of information during emergencies and to improve access to the Jewish community for Emergency Service Organisations (ESOs). David Michelson, Danny Elbaum and Rabbi Ronnie Figdor – each respected members of the Jewish community with extensive emergency experience – took the initiative to bring together existing Jewish organisations including Chevrah Hatzolah, the Community Security Group (CSG) and Jewish Care to talk about working together in emergencies. As a result, JEMP was established. JEMP’s approach was to build the Jewish community’s resilience in disasters by promoting self-reliance and mutual support, and maximise the benefits of coming from a community, which actively looks after its members. That other Australian and international jurisdictions including NSW, the UK and South Africa adopted the model demonstrates success of JEMP’s. In addition, the Islamic Council of Victoria has modelled its Muslim Emergency Management Plan on JEMP’s example.

Activities

JEMP initially established a team of people within the Jewish community with emergency service organisation experience.

This Technical Committee identified the needs of the community, namely that

• There needed to be one source of messaging for the Jewish community
• There is a need for timely, accurate information so that community members are not making up or embellishing aspects of the incident and generating panic in the community
• There needed to be a single point of contact between the Jewish community and the government agencies dealing with the incident.

In its development, we engaged with emergency service agencies. There was some initial scepticism because the model had not been used before and ESOs were concerned that we may be duplicating existing services. The fact that the community had already established a first-aid first responder team (Hatzolah) and a security service (Community Security Group) working well with Ambulance Victoria and Victoria Police, respectively, resulted in much of the caution being set aside. Indeed, not only did the Emergency Management Manual of Victoria encourage community engagement but also JEMP was able to demonstrate that it could provide community-specific value-added service to the preparedness, planning, response and recovery to an incident. In 2001, the then-Minister of Police and Emergency Services, Andre Haermeyer, personally launched JEMP with much fanfare.

The JEMP’s Technical Committee, although some of its members have changed over time, continues to meet monthly in the preparedness and planning phases of EM and is answerable to a Board comprising key stakeholders of the Jewish community’s organisational structure. It attends local and state emergency exercises, is recognised in regional emergency arrangements, has membership on the Municipal Emergency Management Planning Committees of many municipalities and holds quarterly Emergency Service Organisation meetings bringing together the state’s largest players in emergency management.

Results

The project has now been active for almost 20 years, having held its first meeting in May 1998. Over time, JEMP has seen many activations and has been regularly called to assist in incidents. Over the years, JEMP has conducted many urban searches for missing persons including Jewish school children and elderly missing from Jewish aged care services. It was activated during a shooting incident in Monash University when early reports suggested that the shooting occurred at the Jewish Centre for Civilisation. During the Boxing Day tsunami, in the first 24 hours JEMP collated a list of 140 members of Australian Jewish persons who were known to be in the affected areas in the days leading up to the tsunami and utilising resources on the ground, was able to update DFAT twice a day while each and every person was accounted for. Following the major terrorist bombings in London, JEMP received a call from the Hertfordshire Constabulary in relation to an Australian Jew caught up in the bombings who would be returning to Australia and would require Jewish social services follow-up upon his return. JEMP has continued to run sessions for Victoria Police on dealing with persons of the Jewish faith and JEMP has published a 20-questions booklet for ESOs.

What knowledge or product outcomes did the project accomplish?

JEMP provides a useful resource by services working in the emergency management space, including in all phases of the PPRR model. In 2008, JEMP NSW was awarded the EMA Safer Communities Award in the Volunteer Organisation category recognising JEMP as best practice and a model for other communities.

Reflection

The JEMP aims to strengthen community resilience (that is, restoring the community’s capacity to the same level or greater following a major emergency than its capacity prior to the emergency) by

• Educating Jewish communal organisations and members of the Victorian Jewish community about preparing and planning for major emergencies;
• Eliminating or reducing the incidence or severity of emergencies and mitigating their effects;
• Implementing a coordinated community-based emergency management plan dealing with a major emergency that may affect Victorian Jewish communal organisations or a broad section of the Victorian Jewish community;
• Providing direct relief, where possible, to affected persons of the Victorian Jewish community by utilising the community’s resources in a prompt and efficient manner;
• Providing a single, central, Jewish communal point of contact in a major emergency for members of the public, community leaders, government agencies, organisations and emergency service organisations;
• Assisting emergency service organisations in dealing with issues affecting the Victorian Jewish community;
• Promoting the recovery of the Jewish way of the life to the Victorian Jewish community following a major emergency.
• Initially, ESOs and EM stakeholders were concerned that JEMP would be doing work already undertaken by existing agencies. Because of regular meetings and joint exercises, JEMP is now valued as a resource that can support existing agencies. ESOs realise that JEMP has EM and ESO expertise. ESOs and government agencies now call the JEMP hotline when they face a matter involving members of the Jewish community.
• JEMP continues to redefine itself as it faces a changing landscape. Originally, it established a 1800 number for community members to call into the hotline during an emergency to ask about loved ones and get timely, accurate information. However, the nature of public access to information has evolved and people more likely to check Facebook than making a call. After investing time into training emergency call takers, we no longer offer a communal hotline.
• The ‘JEMP model’ model relies on existing communal building blocks like the community’s First Aid first responder service (Hatzolah), Community Security Group (CSG) and the community equivalent of DHHS (Jewish Care). In the absence of these building blocks, communities wishing to adopt the model may leave aside the response phase and work on communal preparedness, planning and recovery.

Additional Project Details