As someone who has been a researcher, educator, and consultant in the emergency management field, the Diva is especially pained to hear of closing of  EM education and training organizations in first world countries. I find it truly tragic that short-sighted budget concerns will affect the emergency management community at a time when global climate and weather threats, to name just a few, are  growing larger and more serious. I truly rue the loss of knowledge acquisition and the improvement of practice in the EM field.

The latest training institute to be cut is in Australia.  See Federal Budget 2014: Mount Macedon’s Australian Emergency Management Institute to close. Last year Canada closed its EM training organization.

Here in the U.S. we saw some budget tightening moves in 2013 at the Emergency Management Institute, which is the training academy for FEMA and DHS,  Last year EMI cancelled a long-standing annual conference for the Higher Education in Emergency Management community. Fortunately, the conference will take place this year and the institution appears to be continuing with no threat of closure.

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Thanks to Franklin MacDonald for the Australian citation.