New Australian Warning System ‘Will Help Save Lives’
The new Australian Warning System uses nationally consistent icons to show hazards on websites and apps, working on a three-tier scale from Advice to Emergency.
It’s hoped a new Australian Warning System will deliver more consistent safety messages and help save lives across the country.
The system uses a set of icons to show incidents on websites and apps that are supported by calls to action.
Emergency Management Minister David Littleproud says it delivers on the recommendations of the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements.
The commission was established in response to the extreme bushfire season of 2019/20 in which the firefighting effort stretched across the country.
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A cool, gentle, creeping fire came to the bushland that surrounds the Tang Tang and Thunder swamps in central Victoria, north of Bendigo, in 2019. It burnt gently through grasslands and connected up with other fires lit on the forest floor to create a mosaic effect.
This fire was lit by Dja Dja Wurrung people, including employees of Forest Fire Management Victoria, and their non-Aboriginal colleagues. It was the first cultural burn in the area in 170 years.
It was a momentous day, says Trent Nelson, the chairperson of the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation. In the years since cultural burning had been used, the landscape had become degraded and sick . The region, which includes the towns of Daylesford, Bendigo and Boort, used to be cloaked in box-ironbark forests and woodlands but is now one of the most profoundly altered landscapes in Victoria, where agriculture, urban settlement and mining have left ecosystems fragmented.
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Subscriber only THE public has been asked to make submissions regarding the inquiry into the wildfire on Fraser Island. The fires raged for seven weeks on the island, threatening property and coming perilously close to the township of Happy Valley, which was only saved thanks to the hard work of firefighters and residents. Earlier this month, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced there would be an inquiry into the fire, which was first managed by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the handed over to Queensland Fire and Emergency Services when the fire started threatening property. The office of the Inspector-General of Emergency Management will undertake the review.
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Fire authorities are turning their attention to highly populated communities on Melbourne s urban fringe, which they say are at increased risk of dangerous grass fires this summer.
In an interview with
The Age on Friday, Forest Fire Management Victoria chief fire officer Chris Hardman said authorities were especially concerned about the peri-urban pockets around Melbourne due to the density of the population and their close proximity to bushland.
The town of Corryong in Victoria s north-east was hit hard by bushfires in January.
âFrom the Barwon Otways right through those suburbs on the edges of Melbourne through to Daylesford and up into the goldfields area south of Ballarat coming across the north into hills and into Warburton and the Dandenong Ranges, they are the areas with the highest level of risk now,â Mr Hardman said.
2020 s Worst Environmental Disasters, and How Climate Change Played a Role | The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel 12/20/2020 Ron Brackett
In a year of unprecedented disasters, much of the damage done to our planet in 2020 was self-inflicted.
From devastating oil spills in sensitive areas to deadly wildfires that consumed record acreage to failing dams that flooded entire towns, the worst environmental disasters of the year showed the influence of humans.
That influence is clearly evident when a tanker slams into a coral reef and spills thousands of barrels of oil. It s less obvious when climate change is a factor behind raging wildfires across the Western U.S. and Australia.