Editorial

As 2018 draws to a close, we bear witness to a variety of hazards around the globe.Catastrophic incidents such as the Japanese Flooding and Mudslides ( July 2018), the daring Cave Rescue mission in Thailand ( July 2018), the Indonesian Earthquake and Tsunami (September 2018) and the Hurricane Michael in the USA (October 2018) clearly demonstrate the need to foster better inter-agency collaboration and enhance local and national emergency preparedness.In this issue, the International Journal of Emergency Services (IJES) is publishing six original articles that explore search and rescue operations, dealing with blame culture, cost effectiveness in emergency services, leadership mentoring, social media and how volunteers process information during times of tragedy and crisis.These articles seek to close the information gap by making significant contributions to the emergency management literature and the way we view the role of emergency management practitioners.The first article, "Providing rescue services in remote areas of Estonia", by Tarmo Puolokainen, Annika Jaansoo and Margo Klaos, provides a systematic analysis of the benefits and risks when a society shifts from the public provision of rescue services to providing it in an extensive co-operation with voluntary rescuers.Such a paradigm shift brought in an extensive network of voluntary fire and rescue brigades and enhanced the scope and effectiveness of the service provided.Findings from this study offer real-world implementation insight to other practitioners, while planning a change in service provision/provider understanding.Our second article, "The safe tweet: social media use by Ontario Fire Services", fills a literature gap by addressing how social media communicates information about all three lines of defence against fire.The authors, Sharon Lauricella and Kirsty-Lynn Pankhurst, while identifying both efficient and inefficient use of social media, hope to invite positive and meaningful innovation in how fire services staff use social media to educate the public about safety and fire prevention.Sparsely populated wilderness and wildland areas pose a unique challenge for rescue planners and rescue unit operations managers.Our third article, "Network analysis for search areas in WiSAR operations", authored by Sebastian Drexel, Suzanne Zimmermann-Janschitz and Robert Koester, is set in the European Alps where network analysis and GPS are being employed to assist in scientifically advancing the accuracy of search and rescue missions.The aim of the project is to increase that chance of survival for persons missing in mountainous terrains where geotechnical tools are critical in providing assistance to search planners.The study has implications for similar rescue operations undertaken in a wide variety of setting across different countries.Often, disasters have little context until survivors, volunteers or first responders provide contextual meaning to the phenomena.In our next article, "A need to help: stories of emergent behaviour from the scene of accident", author Linda Kvarnlf analyses emergent behaviours and norms as part of everyday emergencies such as traffic accidents where spontaneous volunteers can play an important role by filling the void before the arrival of emergency services.In her analysis, she argues that study participants frame actions through norms of how one should act, while framing their own actions in presenting themselves as a person of a certain type, sometimes positioned against an real or imaginative "other" when faced with disaster or crisis.Using a qualitative approach to capitalise on nuanced shades of meaning, the fifth article, "The impact of blame culture on paramedic practice: a qualitative study exploring English and Finnish paramedic perceptions", by

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