by Chris Madsen*
As severe tropical Cyclone Ului maintained its path for a direct hit on the Whitsundays in March, the Whitsunday Disaster Management Group was quick to put a Guardian Control Centre into action.
The Category 3 cyclone caused extensive damage to houses, boats and vegetation, but response and recovery efforts were enhanced by forward planning and preparation.
As the host site for a Guardian Control Centre, Whitsunday staff and supporting agencies were well trained and practised in using this software to manage the disaster event.
“Everyone involved had full understanding of their jobs and the maps helped us to quickly assess the overall impact that we had to manage,” said Disaster Management Coordinator Glenn Gatton. “The total operation was completed in record time – within four days of impact.”
Prior to the cyclone crossing the coast, Whitsunday Regional Council staff set up an operation room with laptops, printers and phones, and ensured remote connections for Cannonvale Police, SES sheds and the Bowen office were right to go. Council staff, SES and the police all checked in prior to the cyclone to review how the operation would be managed and were able to quickly refresh their memories of the program’s operation within the training environment.
The SES commenced remote access and entering jobs into Guardian before the cyclone, ensuring that centres that could be used for support and recovery were contacted and put on standby.
Staff from Council and the SES were rostered and ready to go as soon as the call was made by Glenn Gatton to activate the Disaster Coordination Centre. Once the call was made, the lines were opened to start receiving calls.
Telephone operators wrote the details onto Initial Notification Forms and these were passed to loggers to enter into Guardian. Emails with kit referrals received from the call centre were also entered into Guardian, ensuring addresses were corrected, duplicates were detected and tasks were allocated to the right regions for SES operators.
Within the operations control room, Council, the SES, Police and Ambulance reviewed maps of the whole operation and managed lists of tasks allocated to each group.
Council, the SES and Police all had remote sites operational and they were able to also manage jobs from these centres.
When the main internet connection was lost and remote access was unavailable, job sheets were still being sent through via an alternate email address and wireless internet.
Power was lost, the generator even had a hose disconnected and the circuit breaker cut power, and each time Guardian was able to recover any incomplete tasks for operators to continue work without any loss of information.
“The big difference for our field operations was that we didn’t send our resources out to tasks that had already been completed,” said SES Local Controller Mark Connors.
For further feedback from the Cyclone Ului event, contact Chris Madsen or Phill Glindemann at QIT Plus on (07) 4947 1742 or Whitsunday Regional Council Mayor Mike Brunker on (07) 4945 0200.
*Chris Madsen is a Software Developer at QIT Plus Pty Ltd – the developer of Guardian software.
