Preparing emergency managers and the community for floods

Keys, C. (1996) presented at the 36th Annual Conference of the Floodplain Management Authorities of NSW, Grafton

It is a fundamental principle of emergency management that communities which understand the hazards they face and know how to prepare for and react to them will have a better chance of mitigating the effects of disaster than those which do not (Emergency Management Australia, 1993, 5-6). Some communities, or parts of them, may develop the appropriate expertise by experience - that is, by learning from their exposure to threats how to develop strategies for coping with them. Farmers, for example, are well used to handling floods. The frequency of inundation of rural land near watercourses, combined with the losses which will ensue if stock and equipment are not moved before flood waters arrive, give farmers an expertise generated by learning from exposure to the flood hazard.

Most groups in Australian society lack this sort of regular and potentially threatening exposure to hazards, however, and are therefore unable to develop experientially-based strategies to ensure that the costs are minimised. These days, nearly all of us are isolated from natural hazards and from many of the threats which originate from human activity as well. One result, all too frequently apparent, is the surprise which is expressed by people when they are hit by disaster - especially if the event is of a type or severity which is outside their recent memory or experience. There is abundant evidence that this is true in the case of the flood hazard.

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