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The announcement in the latest Garnaut report of the initial $26/ton price on carbon ends a long wait for many people. We can now focus on who will be impacted, how and where, and by how much.

For Australia to take decisive action on the implementation of a carbon price sends an important signal to both the national and international community. Australia is serious about making a change. Australia recognises it has responsibilities, and is willing to live up to them. Australia is now no longer waiting for others before we make a move. We are now moving to be more of a leader than a follower, and as Ross Garnaut himself said in his somewhat controversial speech, why can’t Australia be one of the leaders in this policy space?

There is no doubt that all societies and all economies have to recognise their impacts on the environment. The introduction of a carbon tax or any other economic instrument to address the poisoned legacy of our behaviour, is long overdue. Yes, it will hit our pockets. Yes, some will try to weasel out of their responsibilities, trying to maintain their company profits and shareholder dividends. But the reality is, the climate is what protects us and keeps our life-supporting ecosystems functioning, and if we continue to erode what is effectively a ‘public good’, we will inevitably produce a ‘public bad’.  

Of course some of the costs of carbon pricing will be passed to individuals and households, (and this is necessary), but this will serve as a driver for change, encouraging us all to become both more discerning and more efficient in our use of resources. By providing tax relief to lower income households, this transition will in reality not be too painful, making everyone more thoughtful about their own actions and consumption choices. And it is important to remember that the way the carbon price impacts on us as individuals will be very closely linked to our own personal consumption choices.

This will also be true for businesses of all sizes. There are many gains to be made by becoming more efficient in the way we do things, and this tax will encourage us to do this.  In some cases, the way we use resources is primitive and thoughtless, and burning coal and other fossil fuels is an example of this. Coal and oil are rich and valuable biochemical compounds, which can offer us many more uses than simply being used for fuel. This carbon tax will provide the momentum for seeking more sensible ways of making use of these resources, which in time, with adequate research, will come to fruition. In the short term, however, for big business, there will be painful impacts, especially in mining, oil exploration, and energy generation. All of these sectors are generally represented by highly profitable companies. If we have to reduce their levels of profit as a result of the introduction of this carbon price, then that will simply reflect the fact that for the first time, real income from the exploitation of our national natural capital stock will be shared not only amongst company shareholders, but also amongst the public stakeholders who effectively hold the property rights (though the state) to these resources.  Of more immediate importance is the fact that pricing carbon and introducing a carbon tax will deliver a valuable revenue stream for the nation that can be used to support a wide range of public goods and services, and a cleaner and healthier environment for the future of Australia.

The introduction of a carbon price and the essential institutional arrangements needed to ensure that it is honest, transparent and fair, is a real step forward in redesigning our future. While the case can be made that this price is too low, or too high, the main achievement in its establishment is in the recognition that it makes of our responsibility to ourselves, to take action on climate change before it’s too late.

At last, I am learning some of the web sites which actually give decent information even if there is very little analysis of the event.  To add to World Nuclear News www.world-nuclear-news.org and the International Atomic Energy Agency web site www.iaea.org there is also the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, NISA, English language site:  www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/

NISA reports. This site is giving updates every 12 hours.  However the documents require careful reading.  Here are some points it reveals the 28th Release as of 17:30 March 17th, 2011.

• Two workers were last seen in a turbine building of Unit 4. They have been missing since the earthquake. Other injury updates are found on Page 14-15.
• The worker radiological exposure report is found on page 13. The worker recording more than 100 mSv has presumably been retired from the site.
• Water levels. The situation is unclear because a great deal of instrumentation is not working (Page 2). Nothing has been recorded in Unit 4 since Monday, 14^th March. On Units 1, 2 and 3 the water levels in the reactors are reported as getting slightly worse between 16^th and 17^th March. The level in each reactor is about 2 m below fuel rod top in each of these reactors (I have information that the rods are 4.7 m long). Unit 5 and 6 are reported for the first time in the latest release and the water levels, though above the rod tops, are probably below normal levels. We are not informed as to what the normal levels are.

Sea water injection is occurring in Units 1, 2 and 3.  There are no recent news reports for two reactors: for Unit 1, 6 days ago; Unit 2, 3 days ago; which is an indication of some stability for these two reactors.  Unit 3 is the site for emergency remote water spraying.  Why they are conducting spraying on this reactor is not explained.  There have been fires there as recently as 2 days ago.  TEPCO is reported to have said that the plumes from this Unit may be steam from a fuel storage pond.  Fuel pool problems in this reactor are not reported by NISA.

• Unit 4 remains a concern in the fuel pond, but no water has been showered on that plant. I discuss this unit in more detail below.
• The control rooms are shared between pairs of units and people are using radiological protection while they are working in them. The central control room of Units 3 and 4 was evacuated on 16^th March at 10.45, but was reoccupied oat 11.30 am. We do not know what this means, other than the control room is not adequately shielded. Some workers are complained about using face masks in the control room (Page 15).

The fuel pond on Unit 4 is now the centre of attention.

Water injection on this Unit has stopped.  According to the NISA update, the emergency water cannons are being used on Unit 3.

The situation on Unit 4 is entirely different from the other reactors.  This reactor has been shut down since 30 November 2010 and thus has been cooling for over 15 weeks.  The fuel removed from the reactor has been stored in a fuel storage pool inside the reactor building.  This water in the pool performs two main functions: the water cools the fuel rods and the water is intended to stop radiation from the fuel rods reaching workers.

The 15 weeks of cooling since Unit 4 shutdown is strongly to our advantage in this situation.  The fuel is now much colder in terms of heat given off.

The situation in this fuel store might or might not be satisfactory.  The main interest is in the temperature of the fuel cladding.  If water is present in the pool the temperature of the cladding of the fuel cannot exceed the boiling point of water which is 100°C.  Zircaloy fuel cans have a melting point of about 1850°C.  This large difference in temperature means that there is hope that the cladding may not melt.  The fact that the panels on Unit 4 building have been opened to the air makes air circulation cooling possible at some level.

So should we worry or not?

There is no definitive answer yet.  The capability to predict what may happen is complex and reports about the situation are confused and excessively short.

An example of the confusion: Gregory Jaczko, chairman of US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said to a congress committee that there was no water in the Unit 4 pool.  He retreated from this statement in the press briefing the next day (17 March) saying it was not known what the level was.   Japan’s NISA says that the level and temperature of the water are not known.

Many other issues we have been witnessing may or may not be part of the design considerations for the plant.  General Electric (US), who designed the reactor, should be doing the calculations to find out what the current situation implies for the future, for example, what happens if there is no water in the fuel storage pool.

Basically GE Energy has been almost silent.  I think we deserve to hear more from GE.

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FOOTNOTE: The opinions expressed in all Science Blogs are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Australian Science Media Centre.

These are the personal views of Dr  Don Higson, retired nuclear safety specialist and Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia, Fellow of the Australasian Radiation Protection Society

I believe it will eventually be understood that events over the past few days at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in north-eastern Japan have demonstrated the safety of nuclear power. In what may have been the worst earthquake and tsunami ever to have occurred, the approximately 40-year old nuclear plants have been severely damaged. Three of them are likely to be written off – like many other industrial installations in that part of Japan. However, the reactor containments have remained intact, releases of radioactivity outside the site boundary have not reached dangerous levels and there is no risk to the general public.

There have been deaths and injuries caused by the earthquake and tsunami but none attributable to radiation, and none are likely to occur even in the worst case scenario. It has been reported that about 200 workers at the nuclear power stations are being checked for radiation exposure. One is reported to have received a dose of a little more than 100 mSv. Theoretically, a dose of 100 mSv causes a very small risk of cancer after about 20 or more years, but actually it causes no significant increase in the risk that a person will die from cancer anyhow: About 25% of the population dies from cancer, even without accidental exposure to radiation. Doses in the range of 10 to 100 mSv could be incurred from whole body CT scans.

The local evacuation of more than 200,000 people is justified as a precaution but is probably an over-reaction by officials who want to show that they have done everything possible to protect the public. They may even believe that it is necessary. Let’s hope people are allowed to go home soon. I am sure that they will have enough problems to deal with, without having their lives disrupted by unnecessary fears about radiation.

There is no possibility that the consequences of damage to these plants will approach those of the Chernobyl reactor accident because:
• At Chernobyl, the reactor had no containment. There was a full core melt-down and release of fission products to the atmosphere without delay.
• The most significant fission product, Iodine-131, decays with an 8-day half life. (Hence, the Fukushima reactors’ inventories of Iodine-131 will already be well down compared with Chernobyl’s.) Most of the significant noble gas fission products decay even more rapidly.
• Administration of stable iodine, to block the uptake of radioactive iodine in human thyroids, was delayed by about a week at Chernobyl, whereas it is already taking place in Japan.

The Chernobyl accident was obviously a terrible disaster but even that was not as bad as first feared. The only confirmed physical health effect of radiation to the general public, outside the reactor site boundary, has been an increase in the incidence of child thyroid cancer caused by Iodine-131 (see the IAEA Chernobyl Forum Report, 2005). The only other major health effect of the Chernobyl accident for the general public has been psychological, due to the forced relocation of population and exaggerated fears about radiation. It has long been recognised that most of the relocated population would have been better off left in their homes.

A major problem at Fukushima Daiichi has been that the emergency diesels (intended to provide power to the cooling systems in the event of a loss of normal power supplies) started up properly but were then inundated by the tsunami. The plant was designed to withstand a tsunami (and an earthquake) but what occurred was obviously a much bigger tsunami than anyone anticipated. This loss of power seems to have been the root cause of inadequate cooling of reactor fuel cores and damage to the fuel (“partial meltdown”).

Explosions that have destroyed the turbine halls (apparently) have almost certainly been caused by hydrogen, probably generated by interactions between the coolant and the cladding of the overheated fuel inside the reactor core. In a boiling water reactor (BWR), steam generated inside the reactor pressure vessel (inside the containment) passes out of the containment into the turbine hall, and the hydrogen and any other gases go with it. (Compare this with the indirect cycle PWR at Three Mile Island in the US – TMI2 – where the reactor primary coolant circulated entirely within the containment boundary, so this risk of hydrogen getting into the turbine hall did not exist during the accident there in 1979.)

I am really impressed with the way that these elderly reactors have stood up to the demands on them. Think of driving in a 40-year old car: You might expect more things to go wrong, a greater probability of accidents and worse consequences of accidents than in a 2011-model Volvo. And, if your old car was written off, you would probably buy a 2011-model with all its modern safety features.

The usual approach to safety assessment and design of nuclear plants with respect to earthquakes is to decide first on what has variously been called the “Maximum Credible Earthquake”, “Safe Shutdown Earthquake” or “S2 Event”. This is the greatest level considered likely to occur at the reactor site (or words to that effect). The plant is then designed to be capable of shutting down and being maintained in a safe condition if that event occurs. For the Fukushima reactors, the S2 event was apparently Richter Magnitude 8.2 – I am not sure about how far away, horizontally and vertically – but the largest of a series of earthquakes that occurred last week was reported to have been 9.0. Since the Richter scale is logarithmic, this means that what actually occurred was 8 times greater than the design base event.

Regarding reactor safety assessments generally, a larger but less likely earthquake than the S2 event is usually possible. According to the “deterministic” approach outlined in the foregoing paragraph, the risk of this occurring is sometimes said to be “acceptable” or “tolerable”. However, the deterministic approach provides no idea of what that risk might be. A probabilistic approach could provide an estimate of the risk to the population as a whole (not just to an individual at the site boundary) and this risk could then be assessed against a probabilistic risk limit. This would be informative in decisions about reactor siting and the levels of protection needed on any particular site. Such assessments are not done, although the IAEA (for example) has looked into the matter. I guess a probabilistic approach would be bad for public relations (viz: “they knew it could happen”) or perhaps the reason is that people making the decisions don’t understand probabilities. Experience at Fukushima suggests that there are shortcomings to the deterministic approach.

This piece is adapted from a news.com.au article at www.news.com.au/world/japan-attempts-to-cool-nuclear-reactor/story-e6frfkyi-1226020670565

The earthquake at 14:46 local time on 11 March 2011 affected at least fourteen nuclear reactors at power stations in Japan.  I write this piece based on what I have seen and heard in the media and my general understanding of the safety philosophy of boiling water reactors (BWR).  It is difficult to sort out these reports and even the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has admitted some errors in their reporting.

Most of the reactors have already achieved safe shut down and have established core cooling.  However it is clear that Fukushima Daiichi Units 1-3, are now working within a design level known as “emergency level”.  At this level of damage it is intended that a major release of radioactivity is avoided but the reactor is likely never to operate again, at least not without major repairs.  The key issue is the extent of damage to the fuel core of the reactor.  The avoidance of core damage in any nuclear power station is achieved by a long series of cascading safety measures known in safety philosophy as, “defence in depth”.

The first point of great importance is that all the reactors shut down when the earthquake occurred at.  At that time the control rods entered the core and shut down the nuclear reaction.

When the reactor shuts down it does not immediately produce zero power.  The core has in it large quantities of radioactive products of the reaction, which still take time to decay.  After shut down the power levels fall to a small proportion of what the power station was generating.  The information I have seen suggests 7% of the energy continues immediately after shut down and this drops to 2% within an hour and 1% within a day.

Even at these lower levels of power production, the reactor core has to be cooled by circulating water through it.  In the BWR, the water normally boils as it passes through the core and in doing so the steam carries away heat from the core.  After shut down it is necessary to supply a flow of water to the core and to keep cooling water pumps operating.  The motive power for the pumps is off-site power which comes from the electricity grid or, if this not available, from emergency diesel generators.

An important feature of the Japanese nuclear incidents seems to be that in some of the plants electricity failed, that is, there was a black out.  According to what I have seen, this blackout was caused by the arrival of the effects of the earthquake or perhaps the tsunami.  These effects may have caused fires or damaged wiring or otherwise blacked out parts of the stations.

There is a second level of electric supply in the power station which uses batteries.  This smaller level of electricity supply is not enough to drive the pumps, but should enable some control of what is happening in the reactor by monitoring conditions and operating valves.  As far as I can tell these systems are operating in the damaged reactors though there is some debate about whether all the data being collected is correct.

In the power stations affected there seems to have been a range of successes at this point.  In some stations cooling water pumps may have worked after the earthquake but in others there may have been failures.

If the cooling fails at this stage, the plant moves to a more difficult stage in the safety cascade which is called “passive cooling”.  Having lost electricity, the cooling of the core must be accomplished by water already in the reactor circuit.  The water circuit heats up and increases in temperature, and at some point will blow the safety valves, releasing steam.  The steam is slightly radioactive; the radioactivity is in a form called tritium. This isotope is not normally thought to be safety hazard even in the near vicinity: – it has soft Beta radiation and is dispersed quickly through the atmosphere.  If there are solid particles in the discharge, then these could be radioactive but this depends on their origin and composition.

At Fukushima Daiichi 1 a building exploded on Saturday.  There was a larger explosion at Daiichi 3 on Monday and today a report of an explosion in Unit 2.  On the video of the Unit 3 explosion I can see flame immediately after the explosion.  This indicates a hydrocarbon-air explosion has occurred.  The operators are describing this as a hydrogen explosion.

The source of hydrogen has not been explained.  My lead possibility is the dissociation of the water resulting in hydrogen gas.  Such a reaction is aided by higher temperatures.  Hydrogen is also on the plant because the reactor cooling water is injected with hydrogen to suppress stress corrosion cracking in stainless steel components.  Another source of hydrogen is from the electrical generators which are probably cooled with hydrogen gas.  These last two could be the cause of the hydrogen build up if their pipework has been damaged; however they are unlikely to cause multiple explosions.

I saw yesterday a plume of black smoke.  If such a plume occurs it contains soot or carbon indicating that the fire is from a fuel rich hydro-carbon fuel.  Unless diesel fuel has been ignited, I cannot explain this since there will be only limited quantities of hydrocarbon, mainly electrical insulation in the plant.  I don’t believe such a plume could come from the nuclear circuit.

Even if all these systems were to fail there are still some safety systems left.  The systems which may still be intact are the reactor containment building, the reactor pressure vessel and the cladding on the nuclear fuel rods.  It is not until all of these are breached that large releases are possible.  As the time from shutdown increases, after a few days or weeks, the likelihood of success of avoiding damage to these systems increases.

If some of the fuel rods are not perfectly sealed then releases can occur in the steam.  This is not, in my view, defined as a meltdown.  A meltdown is an extremely high temperature in the core which could cause the fuel cladding to melt and fuel and cladding to drop to the bottom of the reactor vessel.  In the current situation this material would then be cooled by water and quickly become solid again.  Real meltdown, where a hot liquid mass burns through the vessel, probably only occurs if the nuclear reaction shut down is not achieved at the beginning of the incident.  As I have said, shut down was achieved on all reactors.

Breakage of the fuel cladding may occur at a much lower temperature due to internal pressurisation and a damage phenomenon of the cladding known as “creep”.  I believe that meltdown has been averted in all the plants though there are some reports saying there has been “partial meltdown”.  World Nuclear News is today reporting that Tepco made a notification at 8.50 pm (Monday 14 March) that some fuel rods were presumed broken based on radiation detected.

There is another issue in the safety cascade which is apparently affecting Daiichi units 1-3.  After blowing off the safety valves there is a need to supply make up water to the reactor circuit to continue cooling the core.  The fact that sea water cooling has been mentioned indicates that this step is difficult in some of the plants, in particular, Daiichi 2 where there is also some discussion about the correct operation of a water level gauge.  I suspect that one of the results of the tsunami is that fresh water supplies to the local area may be short so the operators will pump water from the sea to make up the cooling water supply.  This will irrevocably damage the reactor.

There have also been recent mentions of Onagawa where there are three reactors.  On Saturday there was a fire there but probably nowhere near the reactors and it also appears to have been extinguished.  However in certain areas of the plant, a fire might pick up small particles and blow them into the air which may explain recent reports of radioactive releases at this plant.

This is not Chernobyl!  Chernobyl was a fire, this reactor contains water which does not burn.  There are also numerous other differences which make the comparison irrelevant.  It is more like Three Mile Island 1979 where major core damage did occur due to loss of cooling, but no significant radioactive releases occurred.

The most reliable sites for news I have found are World Nuclear News www.world-nuclear-news.org and the International Atomic Energy Agency web site www.iaea.org.

Feel free to use this blog in your stories. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

1. Response and recovery management in the midst of a crisis
2. Some key issues and realities in successful response and recovery efforts
3. Human responses in crisis and recovery phases (psychology/behaviour)

1.   Response and recovery management in the midst of a crisis

Crisis or disaster management in some respects is like any management.  Fundamentally, management of anything involves gaining and sending information, deploying and coordinating use of resources (human, physical, and cognitive), and collating and transporting those resources (logistics).  Decisions are made about how to best use and handle resources to meet a desired or required goal based on information received. There is mostly an orderly collection and assessment of information, one dominant goal that has a number of aligned and attached secondary decisions and efforts, and sufficient time to manage more or less the achievement of those goals.

Crisis and disaster management in some respects is unlike any management.  A number of factors reduce and even remove the orderly process. There is:

1.      Missing, uncertain, and rapidly changing information,

2.      A sense of limited or next to no time in which to make decisions,

3.      A sense of potential loss of things of value not only dependant on the decisions being made, but loss or threat of loss forms the context of the decisions being made, and,

4.      A sense that the demand for resources exceeds the available resources.

The 2011 Queensland Floods echo these four factors. Decision makers need to be focused yet flexible, goal-directed yet adaptable, comfortable in an environment that not only has fluid and potentially unreliable information and in an environment full of noise from distracting voices. This becomes truer when managing large-scale human-caused or natural disasters.

The next factor that constrains effective crisis/disaster management is that of scale. A building fire or car accident, for example has a small physical footprint that enables reasonably efficient management – the manager can see all variables and the extent of loss is relatively limited. The sense of loss to victims and their families can be the same regardless of this scale, but for management the scale is small.

Shift the boundaries to several buildings or cars and a complete oversight by the incident manager may be reduced. Shift the boundaries so that many square kilometres are needing attention and management divides into field, operational and strategic components (the doers, the coordinators of the doers, and the coordinators of the coordinators of the doers). Each layer of management not only adds a physical remove from the incident, but also heightens the stress on information flows AND adds a time delay. The pressure of time and the lack of information uncertainty (two of the above factors) become critical issues for crisis/disaster management.

This is even more the case as we extend the physical size of an incident. The majority of natural disasters fall in what can be termed regional in size. In the Australian context these equate with the impact of a cyclone on a coastal region or one of those large scale 1-in-20-or-50 year bushfires (such as experienced recently in Victoria). Management requires collation of information from a number of sources, and response moves from unimpacted areas into impacted areas to work alongside those responding within the impacted areas.

The rarer yet larger scale disasters such as  the current Queensland floods (transregional events) again change the nature of management – even greater time to response delays may arise in terms of central resource coordination and the distance to be travelled by unimpacted responders is greater. In short resource flexibility is spread thin, reserves of resources are no longer close by, and many need to manage as best they can with the resources they have to hand.

This is what confronts those managing the response AND the recovery management for these floods.

2.   Some key issues and realities in successful response and recovery efforts

While this is a simplified and non-exhaustive list, there are four criteria that shape the effectiveness and success of management – and you may note that these apply equally to response and recovery efforts.

1. Effective management of crisis/disaster starts from the worst management case then continues to manage toward establishing the level of management reality for that crisis/disaster.

There are a number of reasons to pitch the management effort at the “worst-case to manage” level until ongoing management establishes the necessary level of management:

• It is easier to stand respondents down than to have ongoing call-out with associated need for information re-distribution and thus loss of information integrity (validity).
• By definition, having more than sufficient available resources reduces the critical nature and increases positive psychology.
• The most effective way of managing when information is missing, uncertain and rapidly changing is to be conservative (err toward worst case rather than optimistic case).

2. Effective crisis/disaster manage is shaped by managing information flows.

While the prime information management focus for management is on event management-type information, there are two parallel information flows that need sensitive management (and thus a deal of pre-event thought and skill training) – information for those impacted or likely to be impacted and information for general public (including the traditional area of media “management”).

Because the shifting and unreliable levels of information are usually transmitted by respondents as they encounter elements of the crisis/disaster and this is mixed with the associated minutiae of managing these contacts, the rule of thumb is to keep this operational response information separate from the other two information flows. Both of these need sensitive judgment that balances the need to be told with the need to give valid (“hard” or verified) information. This takes time and thus leads to apparent delays between gaining and releasing information.

3. Effective crisis/disaster management depends on the understanding and capacity to use logistics (or perhaps more pedantically, logistics and transportation.

This point tends to surprise many people. Disaster/crisis managers, especially at strategic levels, need clear understanding and skills in three areas – information management, logistics/transportation, and group/social psychology.

It is one thing to make decisions; it is another thing to have the decisions enacted in a timely fashion. Most public and media commentators are poor in their understanding of this – possibly because too many of us appear to have a belief that each of us has our own personal search and rescue/evacuation/medical evacuation team/helicopter just over the horizon (part of the relatively modern “safety-net” and “perfectly safe” syndrome that permeates Western and English as a first language cultures).

As a quick example, around 300 people needed to be evacuated from Forest Hills in Queensland’s Lockyer valley. Let us keep this example over-simplified – perfect flying conditions, short range base-to-evacuation site- to base flying of 45 minutes each way, 3 helicopters each with 10 person passenger loads available, efficient turnaround management at evacuation site (5 minutes), and very efficient turnarounds at base of an average of 15 minutes (including offloads, air crew rotations, refuelling, and service/safety checks). This means 95 minutes per flight or an overall operational time of 950 minutes (more than 15 hours). Even halving the flight times of each leg of the journey still means an operational time of more than 7 hours. This is with everything else being perfect.

The larger the area needing to be managed, the longer will be the transportation times and thus the longer will be the time taken to begin and do the tasks.

Recovery management of regional and transregional events also has some added logistic (availability and accessibility of resources) and transportation (need to check state of roads, rail tracks and bridges). The larger the areas being managed also means greater distances by which replenishment and materiel being brought in. This leads to patchy and erratic recovery rates across the region(s), with those areas closer to supply hubs (then closer to within region(s) supply bases – larger communities – tending to get “preference” in terms of action access. To make this seem (let alone be) more even (and “fair”) will require an ongoing degree of management action.

4. The perceived success of crisis/disaster management depends on how the expectations (and more profoundly, beliefs) of the victims, bystanders, respondents, and general public are managed.

This is where an extraordinary degree of political and social awareness is needed. Unhappily, Australians tend to over-expect (and this in varying degrees is found in Western societies). They tend to judge (and even act) as if their beliefs and opinions and aspirations are fact and real and thus get quickly frustrated when their expectations are not met and met quickly. This is, of course, a sweeping simplification, but nonetheless there is a core perception that society is always safe, always fair and always happy (what can be termed the “safety net syndrome”).

Few really seem to want to accept that life is unfair or rather neutral and unheeding. Things do go wrong, at least half our time is likely to be unhappy, people get hurt, people get old, and people die. Even public figures add to this perception, making claims that “this loss of life/type of natural disaster must not happen again”. It will.

Likewise people tend to opt for simple black-and-white solutions as these require little thinking and personal effort or cost. Thus bushfire management becomes all about warnings (which people will or will not heed no matter how these are presented) and floods lead to calls for dams (which technically may work in hilly and mountain territory, but are less than workable on flat surfaces, let alone change the nature of natural and normal river flows). Any solution that is simple in appeal is likely to be unconnected with the messiness of a complex real world.

Expectation management (not manipulation) is something we need to do before, during, and after any event.

This is of course a brief and non-exhaustive outline of some of the management perspectives in disaster/crisis management.

Management also encounters cognitive factors that can lower effectiveness of those management outcomes.

Three of these are:

• “First cab off the rank” type solutions/action choices where action choice moves quickly to select the first apparently reasonable choice/solution (“the first cab that comes along”) rather than the best option. This is where good information systems, well practiced team management capabilities, and the cognitive calmness of the “commanding” manager are needed.
• Over-focus of attention (termed “black holes) arises where too much attention is placed on a site or a number of sites at the potential cost to management of other areas/sites. Due to a number of reasons (too much information, large media presence, importance assigned to the site) attention keeps on returning to those sites. More even management can arise when the strategic level of management steps back from specific site control and where – as the area of impact grows larger – degrees of self-sufficiency for units within the overall area are built so that resources and attention are “fairly” distributed.
• Loss of focus (distraction) arises when factors within the crisis area become more salient. This can lead to diversion of intended effort to the “new” or distracting site at the cost of original sites and actions. Moreover shifting resources from one focal point to another can often lead to time loss in redeployment (logistics and transportation again) and confusion (and frustration).

The presence of black hole possibilities and distraction can be seen as Toowoomba then Brisbane grabbed much of the media, political, and senior management attention for obvious reasons. Whether these two factors unduly distracted attention from elsewhere may emerge post the Flood event.

3.   Human responses in crisis and recovery phases (psychology/ behaviour)

In the first 24-36 hours those within a crisis/disaster site typically are more alert than usual (more active, stronger, more physically ready to run away or fight) – due to adrenaline and other physiological compounds being released in their bodies. Typically there is a fatigue factor (unless managed by training and shift-type approach work structures) in the 36 to 50 hour zone. At this point many wish to return to their homes and familiar life/work patterns, particularly those in refuge centres and staying with relatives and friends and among those doing little but sitting and waiting. This peaks every 24 hours until either release happens or more than 20 days have passed where a number have adjusted the normalcy of their lives to where they are and what they are doing.

Respondents can become over fixated with their tasks which makes change in tasks difficult when they feel the current job has not been completed. Regular rest, food and water, reduced consumption of alcohol and caffeine are recommended for better and safer work practices, decision making and long term health.

Those impacted by the crisis/disaster also have elevated responses of the fight-or-flight nature.

For those impacted and responding to an event there can be a number of sharp contact memories that are vivid and seem to be disturbing or painful. These need to be cognitively processed – and many do this successfully over time (somewhere between 1 to 3 years). Talking through these with good listeners in a familiar and non-threatening environment often helps in the adjustment process.

It is also worth noting that we cannot “go back to normal”. Pedantically we have not yet got the technology to travel back to the past. We need to adjust to a new normalcy – and this we do on a regular basis as we absorb the experiences of lives.

When we state a wish to return to normal we may be expressing a desire for the time when what we have lost or experienced had not happened. Equally we are likely to be expressing a desire to return to a predictable and familiar (and thus relatively non-threatening) life experience. The vividness and shock of experiencing the unpredictable and/or unfamiliar shakes our belief in our ability to predict what happens in our environment. The sooner we accept that there are times where things are unpredictable and unfamiliar, the sooner we actually return to a sense of a familiar and predictable world.

So what can we do to self-manage and help others?

1.      Remember that we will feel better in time.

2.      Increase healthy living (gentle/moderate exercise, hobbies that are different to the tasks done in the crisis, water, food and sleep – and at least after the post-event get-together, reduce stimulants such as alcohol and caffeine).

3.      Talk to others in familiar and non-threatening environments – and listen to yourself talk (this helps decompress the unprocessed information in the brain).

4.      Listen to others while providing a friendly and non-judging environment, as this helps them decompress but also helps you cognitively register that others also had bad experiences (and that you are not alone in your feelings and/or memories).

5.      Remember anything you are feeling is real and valid at that point in time. There are no right ways to emotionally respond so you are no worse or better if you appear to respond differently to those around you.

6.      If flashback recall of your experiences does not fade or interferes in your life, try to welcome the experience rather than blocking or stopping it. One way of doing this is to make a mental note of this and a time in which you will process this at your convenience. Something like: “Okay. Obviously I need to think this throough. I need to do (what I am focusing on now) so I will think this through tonight at eight o’clock. Okay?”  You do need to mean this and follow through with the action of sitting down at the specified time. This agreement/contract forming component may need to be tried a number of times. So long as the intended action is genuine, the immediate sense of stress can be reduced. Sometimes you do have to actually think some painful experiences through, but there will come a time (sooner than many expect) where you genuinely forget to do this and nothing happens or when you are ready at the appointed time and the brain no longer feels agitated.

Perhaps a few helpful points allow us to finish here:

• The remembered pain and sense of loss of control and even perceptions of your failings will not kill you – the pain is a cognitively induced sensation. Not dealing with these memories and thoughts may kill you.
• You can express your pain and cry if you want. It is somewhat surprisingly empowering for some people to receive this permission.
• Look for competence, not incompetence when assessing your life after a severe shock or trauma.
• Your perceptions, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours are ultimately what your brain selects as “true” – so you can change this if you really want to do so.
• Life is too short to waste it on fear-based rules of behaviour – but is long enough to heal all mental pain if we choose to do this.