By Amy Mulder. This article first appeared in Issue One 2019 of Fire Australia.
With natural hazards expected to increase in severity and frequency in coming years, the likelihood of disasters causing major economic damage increases too. The United Nations has disaster risk reduction firmly in its sight, which is why it designated 13 October as the International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) in 1989 to celebrate progress made across the globe.
An Australian event hosted by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC has been held on that date each year since 2014. 2018’s public forum, held in Adelaide, was run in partnership with the South Australian Fire and Emergency Services Commission and the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience, with support from the Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs and SA Water. A diverse panel came together, speaking from academic, government and agency perspectives, to explore disaster risk reduction in relation to economic loss.
Chief Executive of the SA Fire and Emergency Services Commission Malcolm Jackman said that a significant number of small businesses close after the occurrence of a natural hazard and never re-open.
“One of the things that we have done as part of our disaster resilience strategy is really engage with business, particularly through South Australia, to try and get a shift in that,” Mr Jackman explained. “Almost no small businesses have business continuity plans.”
Mr Jackman said small business closures also have broader impacts, as the loss affects employees and their families, along with the community served.
Peta O’Donohue, Project Manager Partners in Bushfire Safety at the SA Country Fire Service, shared her experience business culture around natural hazards in South Australia. She stated that while a sense of togetherness was witnessed during local bushfires, a large winemaker had refused grapes from the region, even though they were grown outside the smoke taint area.
“There is a lack of shared responsibility for emergencies. And that means investment and ownership of risk,” Ms O’Donohue said.
The economic losses from natural hazards reach far beyond small business. As the attention in the room was drawn to the 2016 SA statewide power outage, audience member Michael Arman further illustrated the costs of disaster. Mr Arman explained that while it may be easy for some to ismiss losing a fridge full of food, it is not the case for particularly vulnerable members of the community.
“By virtue of illness or income, losing a fridge full of food for some people in the community will actually set them back for months at a time,” Mr Arman said.
Elaborating further on the blackout was Frank Crisci, Manager of Emergency Management at SA Power Networks.
“It was a watershed event. Clearly the ingredients that went into the loss of power were something that may not have been contemplated,” Mr Crisci said. “As a result of that, a lot of soul searching went in at the national level, in terms of the way the electricity grid is managed. A number of steps have been taken to make the grid more robust, and therefore avoid a similar event.”
Mr Crisci explained that a lot had been learned from that experience.
“Certainly, [much was learned] at a local level, especially in terms of keeping customers informed and restoration priorities. And at the national level we configure the network differently now for possibilities of weather being as extreme as they were on that day.
“The emergency brings our thinking together,” he added, noting that without an imperative to change, the difficulty is to bring diverse views together when an emergency is not occurring.
Better integration is a key factor, and there has been a shift towards this, explained Jillian Edwards, Director of the National Resilience Taskforce at the Department of Home Affairs.
“Essentially, the responsibilities for mitigating risk step way outside the emergency management sector,” Ms Edwards said.
“So, we are introducing other sectors to this complex world that we have been occupying and inhabiting.”
Urban planning is one aspect where collaborative progress has been made, explained Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC research leader, Professor Alan March (University of Melbourne). However, challenges are faced around both existing settlements, and creating new areas for people to live in the future.
“We really have learnt a lot,” Prof March said. “But at the same time, once we build a city or invest in a road or pipeline, you name it—there is a high level of permanence in these things. And that is why we really need to be careful about what we do.
“I think we have now a really progressive joining together of science, practice and research, and indeed— the challenging bit—the regulatory components of that as well. But we have to deal with existing settlements as well as new settlements,” Prof March said.
Bringing it all together
While the focus of the forum was on the economic impacts of natural hazards, it is broader than just dollars and cents, explained CRC CEO Dr Richard Thornton.
“Disasters have a significant impact on people’s lives and wellbeing,” Dr Thornton said. “We are not immune to this in Australia, and as our population expands, more and more people are living, working and playing in areas that are at higher risk.
“We are in the bush with an increased risk of bushfire, we are by the coast and more exposed to storm surge, and we are on the floodplains susceptible to rising rivers. With climate change leading to more extreme weather conditions, this risk is only going to grow.
“Discussions like these are essential to realising the underestimated interconnectedness of our systems. We need to do more. We must do more.”
The essence of the discussions was captured by facilitator Dr John Bates, Research Director at the CRC. When summing up the forum, he asked panellists and audience members: “When the emergency is over, what happens when we all go home?”