Don’t panic, we’ve got a plan

WHAT could possibly go wrong? A lot!

Take a look at the ‘History of Emergencies’ for the South Gippsland area, included in the region’s new Municipal Emergency Management Plan, and you realise how quickly we forget.

There’s no problem remembering the ferocious storm of June 9 and 10 this year, which cut a swath through large parts of South Gippsland, leaving powerlines down creating lengthy and costly power outages. There were landslips, roads closed for fallen trees, powerlines and mudslides, extensive property damage and telecommunications outages.

But what about the storm events in 2012, the dam failure at Foster in 2011, and the Wilsons Prom flood of March that year when four helicopters were needed to evacuate stranded campers?

And potentially worst of all, the Delburn complex fires of January 2009, which could have been a whole lot more disastrous for us if they’d arrived a week-and-a-half later, on Black Saturday, when half the state was engulfed, and resources were impossibly thin on the ground.

Since the bushfires of February and March 2009, when 173 lives were lost and more than 2000 houses destroyed, a lot has changed in emergency management and it’s still going on.

A significant one of those changes, designed to integrate the Municipal Emergency Management Plans of every shire across the state, to acknowledge the chain of command in the event of an emergency and standardise the aims of an emergency response, will be finalised at this Wednesday’s South Gippsland Shire Council meeting when councillors will be asked to take note of the new South Gippsland Municipal Emergency Management Plan 2021-2024.

Since December 1, 2020, the local shire council is no longer responsible for the development and maintenance of a Municipal Emergency Management Plan (MEMP) for the municipality.

But it doesn’t mean the shire doesn’t still have several key roles to play; it does.

In April this year, South Gippsland Shire Council established a new Municipal Emergency Management Planning Committee (MEMPC), and in doing so, transferred responsibility for municipal emergency management planning and ownership of the MEMP from council to the MEMPC.

The MEMPC now exists separately to council and is not a committee of council. The MEMPC reports, and is accountable, to the Gippsland Regional Emergency Management Planning Committee (REMPC). This shift of responsibility highlights the intent of recent emergency management planning reform which supports emergency management planning as an integrated, multi-agency and collaborative effort.

All participating MEMPC agencies are required to contribute their expertise and resources to municipal emergency management planning.

The South Gippsland MEMPC was formed in April 2021 and consists of representatives from council, State Emergency Service (SES), Country Fire Authority (CFA), Victoria Police, Red Cross, Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, Regional Roads Victoria (VicRoads), Parks Victoria (PV), Gippsland Ports, Salvation Army and Victorian Council of Churches, as well as a councillor and other organisations and agencies involved in response, relief and recovery activities in the community.

The CEO or a senior officer of council chairs the MEMPC.

One of the roles the local shire retains under the new arrangements, and there are others, is to provide assistance to vulnerable people in the community in the event of an emergency.

“During an emergency, or imminent threat of an emergency, special consideration needs to be given to the safety of vulnerable people in the community.

Some people living in the community may be unable to activate their own evacuation plan and a small number who do not have a personal support network will require assistance to safely evacuate,” according to the MEMP.

“These include people visiting or travelling through South Gippsland who should be considered in response communications.

“The Evacuation Manager (Victoria Police) will be required to identify (where records are available) vulnerable persons in the community and in addition, facilities that house vulnerable people.”

The Vulnerable Persons Register (VPR) contain lists of consenting people living in the community who have been assessed as vulnerable to an emergency because they are:

• Frail and/or physically or cognitively impaired.

• Unable to comprehend warnings and directions and/or respond in an emergency situation.

• Unable to identify personal or community support networks to help them in an emergency.

According to the new emergency response plan, South Gippsland Shire Council has a role in this space to:

• Coordinate local implementation of Vulnerable Persons Registers.

• Develop and maintain a list of local facilities where vulnerable people are likely to be, accessible by Victoria Police.

This list of local facilities identifies buildings where vulnerable people are likely to be situated, including aged care facilities, hospitals, schools, disability group homes and childcare centres. This includes:

• Facilities funded or regulated by DFFH and Department of Education Training [DET];

• Commonwealth funded residential aged care facilities; and

• Other locally identified facilities likely to have vulnerable people situated in them. This information can only be accessed by Victoria Police.

The new Municipal Emergency Management Plan makes good reading and is available under the ‘Agendas and Minutes’ tab on the South Gippsland Shire Council website.