Page 121 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 12 February 2020
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I did not speak yesterday, but I do want to play tribute to all those who kept us safe in the last month. You have all done a fine job. I also want to pay tribute to the Top Naas Road community, particularly the Curtis family and the Hogan family and others around them who stared down the beast on a number of occasions and came up trumps. Again, as was reflected by my words on Sky News quoted by Minister Gentleman, it is not by chance that their houses are still there. They really did face a great threat. Those of us in the suburbs who think we have been through a crisis in the last month have no comprehension of what was faced by those rural landholders.
I want to reflect briefly on some of the differences in our response to these fires as opposed to the fires in 2003. We did learn a hell of a lot in 2003 and those lessons were very clearly seen on many fronts. I do not know a great deal about fighting fires, but I do know a fair bit about communication, and I want to reflect on our response to the fires in that space.
I was here, as you were, Madam Speaker, in 2003. On 18 January 2003 I was living in Florey and I remember standing in the backyard and watching that menacing plume of black smoke as it reached high into the sky way to the south. I can remember very clearly that when I heard the official advice which was given to us all on that day—the official advice, which was, of course, that the fires were not going to impact the suburbs—I struggled to believe it. It was, history shows, a disastrous message that was given, and when the fire did reach the suburbs on that day it caught many of us by surprise. We were not getting a great deal of information from the authorities. That has been well documented, but it became apparent to me early in that afternoon that we had a major emergency on our hands and that the provision of relevant information was woefully inadequate.
At the time, I was the breakfast announcer on Mix 106.3 and so I jumped in the car and drove to the radio station at Crace. One of our casual announcers was on air doing a normal, run-of-the-mill music shift. I pulled rank and took over at around 3 o’clock and commenced a nine-hour emergency information broadcast. I had done genuine emergency broadcasts before. I had mounted a marathon shift back in 1995 in Coffs Harbour as that city was swallowed by floodwaters. Again, it was immediately clear to me on that day how important instant and relevant information was in the time of emergency.
On that occasion in Coffs Harbour, the emergency services headquarters, including all of their communications infrastructure, ended up under water. On the night of those floods the only citywide source of information was the radio. On that day, I just opened up the phone lines and received rolling updates on water inundation, where people were in need of assistance, and police and other emergency services personnel all put their radios on to 2CS to keep up with the latest information.
After that experience on the North Coast, I was extremely aware in 2003 how important current relevant information is to all of us dealing with a natural emergency and how that importance increases dramatically if there is no other information available, official or otherwise. On the afternoon and evening of 18 January 2003, I opened up the phone lines and took literally hundreds of calls from all over the
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