“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?"My colleague and local resident, Kat Haynes from Risk Frontiers published a piece in today’s Conversation on flood deaths. Floods are, heatwaves aside, our deadliest hazard. Yet we see people take risks all the time (and I put my own hand up here, having waded waist deep through flood waters in Elwood with my dog […]
Read more "When the flood calls"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"I couldn’t wait to leave school, to stop wearing a uniform. To my horror, when I started nursing, I had to start wearing one again. (the irony of it all, I am glad that my children wear uniforms to school, saves on clothes!). So, naturally, I gravitate towards a project called Out of Uniform, Building […]
Read more "Out of Uniform"Last week, sadly, four people lost their lives in fires in Esperance, in Western Australia, in tragic circumstance, they appeared to take a wrong turn, for the worst. El Nino is here, and is already wreaking vengeance. El Nino or ENSO (EL Nino Southern Oscillation) is the phenomena when warm water wells up on the […]
Read more "The boy child strikes"
Sastrugi 