Flood Warning and Damages in Alice Springs: Part 1 Executive Summary. Part 2 Tangible Damages Part 3 Intangible Damages & Emergency Procedures
Handmer, John; Smith, D. I.; Greenaway, Mark
E-Publications; E-Books; PublicationNT; Report ; 53/1989
1989-04-01
Made available via the Publications (Legal Deposit) Act 2004 (NT).
Date:1989-04
English
Power and Water Authority
Alice Springs
Report ; 53/1989
application/pdf.
Check within Publication or with content Publisher.
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/228902
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/673596
Technical Report WRA89053 Viewed at 03:02:00 on 18/02/2010 Page 83 of 139. ~he f~?od brochure 7he c:ccept of the brochure was generally endorsed by :~ter'::ewees f~om the d~~feren~ g~oups. !t has strong 2UppC~: from the projec~ tean. B~oc~ures are ~o~ usually seen as effective vehicles for public informacion, but the reca:~ level 0: over 50% is probably slightly becter than average for this type of program. The useful ~ap of Alice 2prings probably helped ensure thac people retained the 8roct~re for longer ~han would o~herwlse have been the case. ~arn2~q and emergency management ~hose ~looded did not ~eceive officia~ warnl~gs. ~owever, :~ is :mporta~~ that apparen~ deflc~e~cies in the Alice 3prin~s flood ~a:ning and emerge~cy ~espo~se syscen are place~ Nithin a natioGal context. F:oodwarr.ings are ~ot well ~eveloped within Australia. One major faccor has been ~ncer~ainty as to which level of governnent has lead :-espc:-.sibility, federal, state or local. (Smit:'1 and Handzner, 1986). For example, the serlOUS flooding in Sydney during Augus~ 1986, highlighted many def~ciencies. Warnings for ::ood:~g from ~he Georges ~iver ~ere based o~ ~nformation from :ive manually read rain gauges, only ~wo of which managed to report to the Bureau of Meteorology, the responslble auchority. Warni~g message dissem~nation was also ~oor. Many thousands are at r~s~ and an extre~e flood ~ould be devastating as it woluld be many metres higher than the 1986 event. In addit~on, no formal flood warning system ~hatscever exists for ~ost urbanised catc~ments . .. Thus, Alice springs with a flood detection system, a caca base of property at risk, a~d a brochure decailing the flood problem, was co~siderably more prepared than many Australian communities. ~oweve~, as always imp~ove~ents can be made to this basic framework. REFERENCES ~ollman, G. 1987 ?ringe campers and welfare. Queensland Press. Br:sbane: Universlty of r:andmer, J.W. 1986 ~loodplain maps: uses and limicat~ons as public . lnfor~ation. Magee, A. and L. Chalmers (eds) Proceedlngs c)( the thirteenth Ne;v Zealand Geography Conference. Hamil:on: New Zealand Geographical Society: 82-89. Clandmer, J.W. and 2:.C. ?enning-Ro',oIsell (eds) Risk communication and response. Aldershot: Techn:cal ?ress. (In press) . 1989 Gower I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I