Colin Deiner is the Chief Director: Disaster Management and Fire/Rescue Services in the Western Cape Government. He has held this position since September 2010. Previously he was employed as the Head of Fire and Disaster Management in the Gauteng Provincial Government for 5 years. Colin has 40 years of experience in emergency services of which the first 19 years was as a Firefighter and Emergency Medical practitioner.
In 1999, he was involved in the first foreign disaster operation by a South African Urban Search and Rescue team which responded to the earthquake in Turkey in 1999. Since then he has led the South African Search and Rescue teams to disaster affected areas in India (2001), Algeria (2003), Iran (2003/4), Pakistan (2005), Haiti (2010) , Japan (2011) the Malawi Floods (2015) and more recently the Kwa Zulu-Natal floods of 2022.
Colin was responsible for the management of the Knysna Fire Disaster in 2017, the coordination of the (Day Zero) drought disaster in the Western Cape in 2018/9 and the non-medical component of the Covid-19 provincial response since 2020. In May 2024 Colin was responsible for coordinating the provincial response to the George Building Collapse Disaster.