I spoke today at Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre and RMIT Forum for International Day of Disaster Risk Reduction #IDDRR on personal stories of death and survival #LiveToTell I have been privileged, having been with many people, as they have taken their last breath, and passed from this world to the next. As a […]
Read more "Living to tell the tale"As we Melburnians move through Grand Final week, there’s lots of talk about the tragedies of the Grand Final, of players not being selected because of injury or poor form. Or fans not getting tickets because of corporate greed. These things are sad, and heartbreaking when that’s what you have been working towards in your […]
Read more "Fifteen Young Men"My favourite Australian band The Panics, have released a new song, Weatherman. The Panics, like The Triffids before them, hail from Perth. You can feel the big West Australian sky in all of their music. It seems simple, five guys, pretty standard line up, nasally vocals. But the more you listen, the more you realise […]
Read more "Weatherman"“I thought I was prepared, but when it came, I knew I wasn’t. I’m never staying with my house again, it is too fuckin’ scary”. So said a guy to me, after bushfires in Victoria. We have always focused, in preparedness, on the practical stuff. But much of our advice is counter initutive. When faced […]
Read more "Get your mind right"It’s footy finals fever time. For those of us with our teams playing, excitement and obsession levels increase. For others, there’s still an interest, because you pick a team ie #2dayweareallbulldogs (The Western Bulldogs pulled off an unlikely victory last night). Of course some people have absolutely no interest in this parochial little game played […]
Read more "Fever"Tell us a story, daddy, you know, one with us in it, our friends, rock n rollers, fairies, and Og, Gog and Magog. We used to hear this on long car journeys, when I made the mistake of telling a long convoluted story in order to keep the girls occupied. I became the storyteller. It […]
Read more "What’s the Story, Morning Glory"We’ve been having the old disaster versus emergency debate at work recently. “How long have we got?” I hear you ask. It’s come about for two reasons. One is through our strategy planning process where we talk about responding to disasters and significant emergencies. The other is through framing our campaign messaging with our marketing […]
Read more "It’s a disaster!"When I talk about psycho-social preparedness, I often see people start to shift a little bit nervously, eyes darting around the room. “You mean psychological preparedness?” Well, no it’s not, it incorporates psychological preparedness, but it is more. So what is it then? It is the term that we have coined to cover the unique […]
Read more "Psycho- what?"It’s been a busy few months, and I’ve gone to ground a little bit while having to juggle many, many balls, and not all of them keeping in the air. One of the exciting new projects I am involved in is Building the Disaster Resilience of the Homelessness Community . We’ve partnered up with the […]
Read more "Basket (that is too hard)"A report that I have had a lot of involvement in has been released today. The Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience and Safer Communities, a grouping of Insurance Australia Group, Westpac, Optus, Investa, and Munich Re commissioned Deloitte Access Economics to look into the economic costs of the social impacts of disasters. No mean […]
Read more "Counting the uncountable"
Sastrugi 