As this is a public blog and it is entirely possible that Big Brother may peer over my E-shoulder. As a result: I'm not discussing my employer's completely unused State Government resources or skills. <100kms from the unfolding crisis. I'm not discussing EMQ's choice to put recreational & volunteer boat drivers @ risk, while commercially qualified boat drivers sat around preparing memoranda. I'm certainly not going to "play the sob story" of people trying to retrieve wedding and baby photos from the encroaching flood. I won't bring to your attention that we had 2 latest model Hiluxs sitting in the shed when EMQ were pleading for 4x4s for the Lockyer Valley search for survivors & victims. It would not be professional for me to hypothesize that upper management were more concerned for their overtime budget than for the well being of the people who pay them. So I wont.
I will however say how damned proud I am of The Bobette & SWMBO.
And I might mention I'm looking for a new job.
As you should be. (Proud I mean, not the job thing - though fair enough on that count too.) Slightly bizarre that the local rag has felt compelled to give the relationship status of Bobette and friend in the caption. Why is that information necessary to explain the picture? Makes it sound like they're on a romantic river cruise rather than busting their arses to help inner-suburban Brisbane. (None of which detracts from the actual deeds of course.)
ReplyDeleteWe have a new emergency notification system that sends out emergency notices that it is about to rain, that failed to notify residents that they are about to get flooded. We have a new dam that promised residents that the 74 floods would never be repeated, when all it really did was give people a false sense of secuirty. We have a SES service that turned up days late to servey the wreckage, but missing when really needed to evacuate people. A police service that plans to be in place by next tuesday to protect property that would have been handy last tuesday. Broadcasts about sandbags without any guidance on if they are going to help you and how to use them such that people who really had no need for them prevented those who could have benefited from them having access. An emergency disaster network and victim registration systems that can't cope in emergencies. We had 25000 people isolated in moggill without food, power and phones and it took 4 days for the army to arrive with a chinook to drop off food. We had mixed messages being broadcast like don't forget to take your pets, don't bring your pets to evacuation centres and my personal favorite leave your pets with your nieghbours?! Last but not least a mindset in the citizens that says this only happens every 100 years so we can excuse these failings rather than a mindset that says we've had a 100 years to plan for this so how on earth did we make such a cockup of it.
ReplyDeleteTalking about this event in terms of it being a 1 in 100 event adds to the problem because it fails to recognise that climate change is behind all this and there is nothing stopping this from happening again in 2 weeks. Australia is rolling from floods in nsw sa vic act and qld 2 weeks prior and floods again in vic today.
Having been in 74 floods, chilean and christchurch earthquakes and the canberra bushfires I've got a bit of experience under my belt with disasters and ignorance is bliss, but once you've seen how well other countries with less resources than us leave us for dead in terms of planning preparation prevention and management then you'd be mad as hell at the negligence and incompetance of all levels of our government.
My scorecard: planning amongst the worlds worst and prevention ie dealing with climate change dead last.
Proud of you Bob (And Bobette of course) and the twelve thousand plus like you. Bloody well done!
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