Historical Disaster Inquires in Australia
In a previous post, I’ve attempted to catalogue all the disaster related inquiries in Australia since the year 2000. In the course of collecting that list I naturally came across a range of lists and other information on disaster inquiries and commissions that pre-date that. I’m collating that information in this post.
Update on the Climate Change and Emergency Preparedness Senate Inquiry
Over 150 submissions have been received for the Recent trends in and preparedness for extreme weather events and they’re still coming. No doubt the recent bushfires and floods have intensified interest in the inquiry. I have doubts that the inquiry will be able to report by its current deadline of 20 March. Likewise I suspect that more hearings might be added to the three that have been currently announced.
Raising Warragamba Dam could lead to a greater catastrophe
This post originally appeared in New Matilda under the title “Floodwaters Could Rise In Sydney”
Queensland and NSW are again recovering from record breaking floods and again many are questioning the state of flood mitigation in Australia. While attention remains on flood affected parts of Queensland attention is starting to turn to what could be the worst flood risk in the country: the Hawkesbury-Nepean River in Western Sydney.
Tsunami Warnings and Getting it wrong
This morning a large earthquake hit the Solomon Islands and generated a tsunami.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was quick to respond with a watch/warning advisory issued within 6 minutes. Australia was one of the countries included in the watch area. The Australian Tsunami Warning Centre (which is jointly run by the Bureau of Meteorology and Geoscience Australia) issued its own advice that there was ‘No Threat’ to Australia.
This didn’t stop many Australian media outlets from mentioning the PTWC advisory in their coverage of the earthquake/tsunami.
Factcheck: More properties inundated in 2011 floods?
It’s been an oft repeated statement that more properties were flooded in the 2011 Brisbane floods than in 1974 despite the flood peak being a metre lower. As part of something I’m working on I decided to look further into it.
Casus Calamitas 