Organising for Effective Emergency Management: Lessons from Research1

The February 2009 bushfires have prompted a debate with regard to contemporary arrangements for dealing with large‐scale disasters. In this article, we seek to contribute to that debate by culling lessons learned from the literature on crisis and disaster management. We discuss what constitutes an effective disaster response system, we identify some key barriers to the effective functioning of such a system, and offer some suggestions for improvement.