Beyond the politics and blame: Evaluating crisis responses

摘要

There is an increasing trend in the wake of major crisis events for there to be questions raised in the immediate aftermath of whether appropriate action was taken and whether there was cohesive coordination between the emergency response agencies. An example of such a trend can be found in the case of the Tathra bushfires which occurred in March this year. Tathra is a small coastal village 3 hours from the capital of Australia Canberra and 5 hours from our largest city in Sydney. During the bushfire event, 70 properties were lost in the face of a ferocious fire front which was fuelled by exceptionally high temperatures, low humidity and high winds. The fire front moved quickly and swept into the coastal village with minimal warning available to residents. As a result of its location and known issues with mobile phone reception, not all residents were able to be advised through the emergency warning system and this required a number of conventional means such as door to door evacuations to occur.