The ongoing armed conflict in the Ukraine and its raw imagery on our TV and in our social media feeds, is likely to be distressing to many people. Those Ukrainians in Australia with family and friends, and memories in Ukraine. It will also be distressing for Russians in Australia who do not agree with the […]
Read more "What we are seeing"Coping with climate anxiety ahead of COP26, with @Shona Whitton
Read more "Still in the control room….just"Guest blog Hi, preparedness and recovery folk. I’m Margaret McCarthy, a colleague of John at Red Cross, coming to you from a town in storm recovery. I’m here to take give you a break from pandemics, earthquakes and bushfire recovery by taking you on a whirlwind tour of a town called Blackwood in Central Victoria […]
Read more "The calm before and after the storm"The number of times I have been asked, (mainly by our communications people), could you give us the stats that show that preparedness works. There’s usually an uneasy shifting of feet, averting of eyes, a bit of mumbling, and the answer “Well its not that easy…..” When I moved into the preparedness space, I made […]
Read more "Preparedness works!"This was often a response we got when the girls came home from primary school on a rainy day. It meant they had to stay inside and out of the rain and water. In some respects, this is no different to the situation that has been unfolding in New South Wales, as authorities urge people […]
Read more "Wet Day Timetable"One of my strongest and enduring memories from my first year of school in 1970 was sitting on the floor during show and tell and our teacher, Mrs Wilson drawing on the black board, the Westgate Bridge. She proceeded to tell us how the bridge had collapsed the day before. She left us with the […]
Read more "The Span Between Pier 10 and 11"It looks like we are inside the curve here in Australia. We are still struggling to understand what its like inside the curve, even as the measures start to settle, and we fall into some sort of rhythm. How do we make sense of it? This is what I am trying to do. Yes, this […]
Read more "Inside the curve"Hello, its Kate Brady again, I’m crashing John’s blog again from maternity leave with the added layers of bunkering down for social isolation in my parents home with 8 month old twins who are on the move and a 4 year old who is missing her dad like crazy and itching to escape the house […]
Read more "Strange times, but we know how to do this."I’m Winston Wolf, and I solve problems, is my favourite line from Pulp Fiction. I’ve used it in presentations on recovery. Break down a disaster, and at the heart of it, they are problems to be solved. Its why we nurses make good disaster managers, we manage a range of people’s problems, all at once, […]
Read more "The R Word"So, things are moving quickly now and have ramped up another notch, as there is a recognition that containment is no longer possible, and we seek to reduce the impacts on the health system. These measures include social distancing and serve to reduce the transmission of the virus. The early evidence suggests that it works, […]
Read more "The distance between us."
Sastrugi 