City of Toronto Emergency Management Office (OEM) is the emergency co-ordination office for the city of Toronto, Canada.
OEM was created in 1998 and succeeded a number of other emergency operations teams that existed prior to the amalgamation of Toronto with its suburbs:
- Metropolitan Toronto Civil Defence Organization 1955
- Metropolitan Toronto Emergency Measures Organization (EMO) 1961
- EMO and City of Toronto Public Health Department staff redeployed to new Department of Emergency Services; later as Metropolitan Toronto Emergency Services 1966
- MTES disbanded 1974-1975
- Metro Toronto Police forms Emergency Planning Unit 1976
- EPU and Public Order Unit merged to form Toronto Police Service Public Safety Unit, Emergency Management Section 1996-1997
- Works and Emergency Services Department established Emergency Planning Office 1998-1999
- PSU-EMS transferred to EPO 2000
OEM's Emergency Operations Centre is based in an undisclosed location in the Don Mills, Ontario area (703 Don Mills Road). It was used during the SARS crisis, the blackout in 2003 and after September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001.
OEM works with other emergency services units in the city:
- Toronto Police Service
- Toronto EMS
- Toronto Fire Services
- Toronto (CAN-TF3) Heavy Urban Search and Rescue
OEM operates an amateur radio station (VA3EOT) with volunteers to help in disasters.
Famous quotes containing the words city, emergency, management and/or office:
“But they who give straight judgements to strangers and to those of the land and do not transgress what is just, for them the city flourishes and its people prosper.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)
“War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view “realistically”; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In all-out war, expenditure is all-out, unprudent—war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Borrow a child and get on welfare.
Borrow a child and stay in the house all day with the child,
or go to the public park with the child, and take the child
to the welfare office and cry and say your man left you and
be humble and wear your dress and your smile, and don’t talk
back ...”
—Susan Griffin (b. 1943)