Wild Weather

A couple of posts back we discussed External Emergencies (also known as Code Brown). This post has turned out to be sadly prophetic considering the recent wild weather. Our thoughts are with those who have lost homes and had property and lives destroyed.

Paul (our resident expert in First Aid and Security), as some of you may know, is an officer with St John ambulance. Paul will be assisting the disaster relief effort in this capacity.

Read more about the recent storms below:

PM likens Brisbane's storm areas to war zone

BY DAVID BARBELER

19/11/2008 1:00:00 AM

Soldiers, prisoners, the Red Cross and more than 1000 volunteers have joined forces to clean up the devastation left by Brisbane's worst storm in 25 years, amid warnings of more severe weather.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd visited the worst hit north-western suburb of The Gap at first light yesterday and despite more than 24 hours of mopping up, he was shocked by the evidence of the storm's fury.

''It looks like a war zone and feels like a war zone,'' Mr Rudd said after diverting to Brisbane on his way home from Washington where he had attended a G20 summit on the global financial crisis.

''What is good about it is the people pulling together and neighbours looking after each other.''

The Prime Minister announced extra Centrelink help for families and named Human Services Minister Joe Ludwig as cabinet's point-man for the clean-up operation.

Brisbane City Council said the State Emergency Service had cleared 923 calls for help in the past 24 hours, bringing the number of outstanding jobs to about 200.

Overall, 4000 homes were damaged, with about 240 seriously damaged and at least 85 deemed unlivable.

SES members, whose hotline received 17,000 calls, were again out in force yesterday, with 310 volunteers from Queensland and NSW putting tarpaulins on roofs and clearing debris in The Gap, Upper Kedron, Arana Hills and Keperra. Another 190 SES volunteers were to arrive in Brisbane by this morning.

Seventy Queensland police recruits and more than 750 personnel from the Australian Defence Force were also helping to clear trees and debris.

RACQ Insurance chief executive Bradley Heath estimated claims worth at least $25 million would be lodged. A spokesman for the Insurance Council of Australia said 6000 claims had been made by yesterday morning, with numbers likely to double later in the week.

The Queensland Government has donated $500,000 to kick-start a new disaster fund to help those affected.

The Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal, announced by Premier Anna Bligh yesterday, will supplement other government support packages. Ms Bligh said times would be tough for families leading up to Christmas and encouraged others to donate money at any Commonwealth Bank branch.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman said the disaster was unparalleled and defended the time it took to respond after angry calls from residents to talkback radio.

''If you go back to Sunday night, the power was out, streets were dark, there were 560 cables down across the greater Brisbane area, the mobile phone network was affected and landlines were also out in this area,'' he said. ''Could we have done things better? Well, if we all had cell phone implants in our ears or something like that and could have got the message out, maybe.''

Queensland's Gold Coast hinterland, hit hard by Sunday's storm, was in the path of another severe weather event last night, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

The weather bureau issued a severe weather warning for heavy rain and flash flooding for coastal areas south of Brisbane. More storms were expected to lash south-east Queensland tomorrow.

(Source: Canberra Times)

External Emergencies - Code Brown

The area of external emergencies is one that seems to cause some confusion more than fire or bomb threats. The reason for this is that External Emergencies mean different things to different sites. For those who have attended DELTRA Australia's Fire Safety Adviser course it comes as no surprise that a site risk assessment needs to be completed to identify which emergencies are most likely to occur at that site. If you live on a mountain, then flooding is not usually an issue. By the same token Bush fire is unlikely to occur to a building in the middle of the CBD. So likely external emergencies are dictated by our surrounds.

External Emergencies (aka Code Brown) can include any emergency coming from outside our site which causes us to have to initiate an emergency response. External Emergencies can include flooding, fire, bomb threat, chemical spill, storm, earthquake and many others. Obviously our emergency response will differ slightly with each of the types of emergencies. The reason is that we need to move people to safety and our 'point of safety' will differ for each of these emergencies. We cannot always send people to the external Assembly Area, as this may actually place people in greater danger than if they were to 'shelter in place'.

Hospitals have their own unique understanding of 'external emergency'. To a hospital a code brown means that an incident has occured off site and casualties will be arricing shortly. For this reason the emergency response undertaken by a hospital will be vastly different to other sites.

The story below is an example of an recent external emergency, in this case a 'dust storm'. How would an incident such as this affect your site?

Dust storm coats part of Snowy Mountains

September 22, 2008, 8:41 pm
Source: AAP

Parts of the Snowy Mountains are reportedly covered in "dirty snow" after dust storms from the Riverina and lower west deposited topsoil as a massive storm system crossed NSW.

The storm, which is heading for the NSW eastern seaboard, including Sydney, has kept State Emergency Service (SES) crews busy in western NSW with winds over 100 km/h tearing roofs off buildings and felling trees.

More than 150 requests for help have been made to the SES because of wind damage, abut 100 of them coming from the Broken Hill area.

Strong winds and some rain caused a large tree to fall and crush a car at Broken Hill, SES spokesman Phil Campbell said.

He said the Terminus Hotel at Hay and Tattersalls Hotel in Goulburn had been damaged in the storm.

Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) duty forecaster Peter Zmijewski said the storm brought wind gusts of more than 100 km/h through the state's southwest and left a coating of thin dust over the skifields.

"Some of the dust has settled over the Snowy Mountains so I imagine, where there is snow, it would be dirty," he said.

A severe weather warning has been issued for damaging winds and severe thunderstorm warnings are current for most of the state.

The Bureau said damaging winds had been recorded west of the Great Dividing Range.

Wind gusts of 115 km/h were recorded at Fowlers Gap, near Broken Hill.

Rain and thunderstorms are forecast for the northeast of the state.

The severe weather is expected to move to the southeast of the state and affect the Illawarra, southern Sydney suburbs and Central Tablelands on Tuesday before easing later in the day.

Hail is expected in the northwest of the state and gale warnings have been issued for Sydney, the south coast, the Hunter and the mid-north coast.