Photo by Steven Flanagan, see the Links page.

Mangrove Emergency Planning
& Communications Committee Inc.

A sub-committee of the Hunter & Central Coast District Emergency Management Committee

National Alert System for Emergencies

The MEPCC welcomes the agreement reached by COAG to establish a National Alert System for Emergencies. The MEPCC acknowledges that the while the detail of the proposed National Alert System is yet to be released it would appear that such a National Alert System has the potential to supersede our local Telephone Tree.

The MEPCC will discuss the future of the Telephone Tree and the committee’s function in light of the available information about the National Alert System at its next meeting on Wednesday 17th June 2009, 7.00 pm at the Mangrove Mountain Hall. All interested persons are invited to attend.

Robert Meggs
MEPCC Publicity Officer

COAG agrees on national alert system for major emergencies

Residents in the path of bushfires, floods and other disasters will receive telephone warnings from summer onwards after COAG agreed to a new national alert system. Plans for such a system - which had been stalled since 2003 in the COAG process until the Black Saturday fires revived negotiations - were today approved by all state and leaders and Kevin Rudd. The new system will be designed to send voice and text messages to all landlines and mobiles where the billing address is in the affected area. Read more...

ABC2 Television

Video extract from an interview by Virginia Trioli and Joe O'Brien with Bruce Esplin, Victorian Emergencies Commissioner, on ABC2 Breakfast 1 May 2009: