A few weeks before the January fires, ActewAGL conducted a simulation exercise involving a truck crashing into a main water-supply dam.
This exercise tested matters like water contamination, how to respond and deal with the threat to the water supply.
Low and behold, on January 13, five days before the fires hit Canberra, a helicopter fighting fires crashed into Bendora Dam, one of the ACT’s major water storages. It created potential health concerns over aviation fuel in the drinking water.
The real test was to come.
ActewAGL continuously looks at its engineering, environmental management, innovation, contingency planning, safety and management of infrastructure restoration.
It looks at risk assessment and mitigation, regular crisis simulation and extensive emergency response training. It has a specialist risk management engineer.
Before January 18, ActewAGL had identified both bushfires and water supply contamination as high operational risks.
It has conducted regular disaster simulation and emergency exercises to train staff and test systems under emergency conditions.
Aside from the truck-in-the-dam exercise, in December 2002, the electricity division conducted an exercise specifically in preparation for the anticipated severe bushfire season. It involved the entire engineering and operations leadership team. The exercise simulated a fire approaching Canberra’s western suburbs into the precise area hit by the real fires in January. The experience proved invaluable after January 18.
Every member of the ActewAGL crisis management team (including executives) carries a crisis management manual in their vehicle and a miniature version in their wallet. It includes contact details for all relevant internal and external parties, enabling ActewAGL to rapidly establish lines of communication with the media, government, emergency services and the like.
ActewAGL has duplicate crisis control centres that can be set up very quickly.
Within hours of the bushfire emergency being identified, ActewAGL had a crisis centre in place – coincidentally with maps still on the walls from the recent bushfire emergency simulation. The centre was rapidly equipped with full IT and communications infrastructure following procedure worked out as a result of previous simulations. This ensured that senior staff had access to corporate information systems as well as telephone communications with the network control centres and the outside world. This became vital as it soon became impossible for field staff to physically monitor networks in fire-affected areas, especially as police evacuated areas under threat.
Aside from training and simulations, ActewAGL had a program of removing undergrowth and high-risk trees from around critical facilities before January. The area around the Stromlo water treatment plant was cleared throughout the summer. A fire-break was bulldozed around the essential electricity substation at Holt.
The water reservoirs around the town (which can store up to a week’s worth of water) were kept full, just in case the fires disrupted supply from the dams. This proved crucial in the days following the fire, when water treatment was affected.
ActewAGL was as well prepared for the January fires as anyone could expect given the severity of the emergency. Proof of that lies in the fact that services were restored so quickly.
The damage to infrastructure would, in the normal course of events and using standard resources and procedures, have taken months to repair. Instead essential services were restored in just days.