Tuesday 21 Jan, late morning. Phone call, there’s dodgy reception in the office so I skulk outside. “Can you make it, are your family and work OK with it?”. Yeah, no problem. “See you Thursday morning for a pre-brief then and you’ll fly out Thursday night”. Great. But mmm. I’m excited to put all the training and learning into practical application, but then apprehensive, what will I encounter? These people have lost everything, but I am going to help. Yes, I’m going to help, give people a bit of a leg up in their recovery from this tragedy. I zip round work and get everyone on side, work out what needs to be done to minimise the disruption, and think about my kit-list. Just two of us deploying, and they’ve deployed before so I’m sure will be a great source of advice and support. Just two of us are deploying to augment the Australian teams.
