DELTRA Australia as part of our Emergency Response training often talk about various types of emergencies which may force an evacuation of a site or area. The External Emergency (Code Brown) is a category of emergency which includes fire, gas leak, hazardous material incident or bomb threat at a neighbouring site. External Emergency also includes Bush Fire and FLOODS. How prepared would you be if your site flooded today?
Floods, as we've seen lately in Northern and Central Queensland, are often unpredictable. Communication failures often leave little time to prepare even if warnings are issued. The Mackay floods were caused by 625mm of rain in three hours! See the story here and pictures here. The Mackay Hospital, Airport and Phone Services were all greatly affected.
If you have a large number of people at your site, how are you going to evacuate them in a flood situation? If you are an aged care facility or respite centre, how would you care for your residents if you became cut-off from the outside world? How are you going to rapidly move non-ambulant residents?
There is an unfortunate irony in a drought-affected country being subject to sudden and violent storms and flooding. Sadly, predictions are for more of this type of weather in the immediate future.
A complete Emergency Response plan should consider not only Fire and Bomb Threat, but also Medical Emergencies, Internal and External Emergencies.
