By Judith Mitrani-Reiser.
We are the last two EERI team members to arrive in New Zealand. The Hopkins crew (Dr. Tom Kirsch and I) arrived in New Zealand yesterday afternoon.
Shortly after arriving, we had our first international team meeting at the Chateau on the Park Hotel, just up the street from where we are staying. The meeting consisted of brief introductions by the leaders of the international teams from the US, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. These overviews described the goals of each team, the data that had been collected so far, and what was expected over the next few days. All the attendees organically broke off into smaller teams afterward and made plans for future collaborations in the coming days and in the future. The format of the meeting was a great success and will be repeated this coming Thursday by those teams still in town and new ones arriving from other countries this week.
This morning we will have our first meeting at the EOC, where we will be coordinating our hospital studies with public health officials to ensure that we are helping (and not obstructing in any way with healthcare delivery). We have modified our survey tool and hope to put it to use today on our first round of hospital inspections. Stay tuned…
Learning from Earthquakes: First person reports
