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2005 (c) Peninsula Community Access Newspaper Inc
Education needed with emergency plan |
Natural disasters require inadequate forethought and emergency plans.
We do not need think-tanks, professorial scholarships, lobbyists, cronyism or overpaid consultants to advise us.
What is needed is the immediate empowerment and activation of a simple plan of citizen education and warning.
The plan should include:
*the use of a klaxon with annual compulsory training, as occurs in some 'backward' countries caring for its citizens. * immediate commandeering of one local community radio station and one commercial radio station to broadcast at least 10 second updates of the situation 24 hours a day. Longer than 10 seconds is inadequate - a fire front travelling at 60kph will traverse 100 metres four seconds faster than an Olympic sprinter. * commandeer all local buses and trains to move residents to points of safety. A 10,000 person suburb requires about 200 buses to move its residents. The 30,000 Woy Woy Peninsula residents will have a problem escaping on Woy Woy Rd from a tsunami even if given one hour's notice. In five minutes the road will be impassable from private vehicle smashes and gawking disaster chasers. * educate everyone where their designated assembly point is. All points under the control of civil authorities, whether police, council or special Civil Guardia, are located. All points store emergency food and water with adequate sewage removal for the duration. * ·council employees cease normal day-to-day routine to take-up predesignated emergency roles such as radio station manning, emergency service support, evacuation centre control and management, field hospital manning, hostel and elderly evacuations. The above points are not conclusive or foolproof.
They do represent more disaster forethought than state and federal government's have passed on, educated or prepared the ordinary citizen with to date.
Perhaps governments believe the myth that lightning does not strike in the same place twice.
Richard J. Newby, Woy Woy