East Gippsland floods: the aftermath

Flood victims threaten to sue (The Australian, 5/7/07, AAP)

Angry residents of waterlogged Gippsland are threatening legal action against local authorities for not warning homeowners and businesses of the impending deluge when water was released from an upstream reservoir during the flood crisis. Mr Bracks said the Southern Rural Water authority acted properly in releasing water from the Glenmaggie Weir.

Flood victims to get funding (The Age, 9/7/07, David Rood

Premier Steve Bracks has announced $1.2 million for Gippsland areas affected by recent floods, and further multi-million dollar funding announcement is expected tomorrow. Wellington acting mayor Jeff Amos told Mr Bracks and his cabinet the floods had a devastating impact and while the immediate clean-up would be long and arduous, the eventual recovery would be "a hell of a lot longer".

"The pressure on our communities has been great," Mr Amos said.

"What a lot of people haven't realised is a lot of our communities have battled a very long drought, followed then by bushfires, mudslides and now this just tops it all off.

"People in those communities ... are certainly stoic, they're resilient but at the moment things are starting to wear a little bit thin."

Insurers refuse flood claims (the Australian, 9/7/07, Catherine Best)

Flood-stricken residents in Victoria's Gippsland are facing a massive financial hit with some insurance companies refusing to pay out tens of thousands of dollars in damage bills.

Householders and business owners have been left begging as they mop up from the worst floods in decades, on top of bushfires and record drought. Insurers generally don't offer flood insurance, and most insurers do not cover homes and businesses for flood damage.

Update on East Gippsland floods

Hundreds of people have fled their homes and more are preparing to evacuate as rising floodwaters threaten to engulf more towns, including the regional centre of Sale. Vast areas of East Gippsland are under water, main roads and highways are closed, and numerous individuals and communities have been isolated by flooding and the effects of flooding (ie on power lines).

Damage to property is expected to run into millions of dollars, and authorities have warned that the worst flooding may be yet to come. Major flood warnings are current for the Mitchell, Avon, Macalister and Thomson rivers (I think that's 4/5 major rivers, the Tambo River being the 5th major river in East Gippsland??), with moderate warnings for 6 others.

The effects of fires in early 2007 (and perhaps 2003) can be seen in the Mitchell River, which is reportedly heavy with silt and ash from the fire-scarred mountains.

Many individuals and communities in East Gippsland and surrounding regions experience forms of vulnerability which are related to geography and infrastructure and are not experienced in other parts of the State. This is demonstrated by the story of a woman in the Monaro region, adjacent to the East Gippsland region. She made an emergency call from her isolated property at Michelago, a small settlement in the Monaro region. She was suffering an asthma attack, was cold, trapped in her house by a blizzard, and her power had been out for seven hours (something that few Melbournians would tolerate in the depths of winter!!). It took 14 firefighters and 4 ambulance officers 11 hours to reach the woman.

Residents flee rising floodwaters, There's water for miles, Breaking their banks, All stops out for snow rescue, The Age

Another Big Flood?

Almost a decade after The Big Flood, floods hit East Gippsland again.


I've been listening the reports and interviews with SES personnel for the last few days,
I undertook my first ever extensive research project in part of East Gippsland - and my focus happened to be "The Big Flood" of 1998.

In late June 1998, the Shire of East Gippsland (which lies in the far east of the state of Victoria, Australia) was declared to be in a State of Emergency following a one-in-100 year flood event. Media coverage of the “flood mayhem” ( "Flood mayhem: Gippsland braced for worst in 40 years". Herald Sun. Melbourne Wednesday June 24) tended to blame the “natural disaster” on “a record flood on top of a…drought” ("Natural disaster and a loss of hope". The Age. Melbourne Friday 3 July).

During the course of my research, I found that a historical analysis of the conditions creating and shaping vulnerability reveals that the disaster was not the result of an unusual coincidence of abnormal events in nature, but entirely foreseeable. While torrential rain may have provided the trigger for a ‘1-in-100 year flood’, the disaster that resulted was shaped by underlying conditions and processes which had existed for well over a century. These include the physiographic features that characterise much of East Gippsland, such as the harsh climatic conditions, steep terrain and poor soils, and characteristics of local economic and social activity, including limited access to transport, restricted access to markets, a small economic base, and depopulation. What a historical analysis reveals, however, is that at the core of flood disasters in the region, there has always been the coincidence of and interaction between drought, low commodity prices, and poor land management practices. This observation is articulated by A. M. Pearson in his book, Echoes from the Mountains, and has also been noted by local Landcare groups (Gippsland Community Reference Group, 1993, 20).

A historical analysis also revealed that while the biophysical, economic and social environment has always limited the ability of many of East Gippsland's residents to respond to further shocks, many of the conditions affecting vulnerability were heightened by changes occurring since the 1970s and accelerating during the 1990s. Factors that stood out included impact of economic liberalisation on farmers, the discovery of Ovine Johnes' Disease in the area, drought, and low commodity prices - the latter two of which contributed to overstocking, over-grazing, the growth of rabbit populations, and the difficult of feeding families let alone looking after fences and pastures. By the time rain fell in June 1998, a situation of extreme vulnerability had arisen.

Flood disasters are so often blamed on "chance" and "unusual weather events", yet the floods of 2007 have arisen as they did in 1998, 1990, and many times before that...a severe weather event with an intense low pressure system built across the east-coast of Victoria, moved back in on itself and dumped rain on areas suffering from drought. Snows have fallen in alpine areas, and the great rivers of East Gippsland have flooded. Residents of East Gippsland are familiar with flooding...in many areas, rivers flood every spring, and every 2-3 years, a particularly heavy fall of rain will cause flooding that results in erosion, and fence and pasture damage. The difference between a severe weather event and a "disaster" is the extent to which social, political, economic and pre-existing environmental pressures interact to structure and compound the impacts of the severe weather event.

The statistics this year indicate that this weather could surpass that of 1998. Some parts of East Gippsland are already experiencing more severe floods than they did in 1998. At present the damage appears to be far less severe than it was in 1998, and the floods are certainly not being called "a disaster", but it remains to be seen whether this will be the case, and if so, why. Many of the residents of East Gippsland have already experienced bushfires in 2003 and 2007, and damage caused by fire will, in some instances, have compounded the ongoing economic (and social) vulnerability arising from the ongoing drought, as well as pre-existing sources of vulnerability mentioned above. In addition, the effect of bushfire on the landscape exacerbates flooding in numerous complex ways (not least of which is obviously the denundation of land caused by fire).

Quick fixes: alcohol and porn responsible for abuse of indigenous children

It seems ironic that my last post was directed at avoiding simplistic histories and the importance of understanding complexity, given that the Australian Federal Government has now determined that alcohol and porn are the causes of child sexual abuse in indigenous communities.

The Australian Federal Government has declared sexual abuse of Aboriginal children a 'national emergency' and is moving to take control of 60 Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, ban alcohol and porn in them, increase police numbers, and make health checks for children compulsory.

Australia to ban alcohol for Aborigines - Rod McGuirk, The Associated Press

Australia bans alcohol on Aboriginal land - Bernard Lagan, Times Online

Howard announces major Indigenous overhaul for NT - National Indigenous Times

These measures are a response to the Northern Territory Government's Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse, which released their report on June 15.

I'm not sure whether I'm more upset about:

• the discrimination quite clearly based on race - these measures will affect indigenous people, and no other group...isn't this called racism? Note that the inquiry found that children are being abused by both indigenous AND non-indigenous adults!


• the idea that removing grog and porn from indigenous communities will somehow fix damaged "traditions" (all of which are uncritically represented as positive). Never mind the fact that we're talking about communities that are suffering the aftermath of what could be called conflict and genocide;


• the scrapping of the entry-permit system under which indigenous people have controlled access to THEIR land;


• the sheer paternalism of these measures - this heavy-handed, top-down response to problems in indigenous communities is completely disempowering. The Howard government doesn't even PRETEND to have any commitment to "self-determination" anymore!

Federal elections are not far off. In the lead-up to the last federal election, Howard guaranteed himself conservative support by alleging that women aboard a "suspected illegal entry vessel" had been throwing their children overboard (Wikipedia entry, The ALP's "truthoverboard", Project Safecom's "The Unthrown Kids"). During the last federal election, the Howard government engendered and took advantage of public fear about asylum seekers and the need to protect our borders against them. This time, the government appears set to engender fear and garner support by appearing to clamp down on indigenous people who are, via the machinery of political speeches, media etc, inextricably linked with drunkenness and paedophilia.

This isn't to say, of course, that indigenous communities would necessarily fare much better under an ALP government. Larissa Behrendt has warned that we should not raise Howard's opposition up as some kind of saviour.

Edit: Howard appears to have acknowledged the inherant racism of the announcements of Thursday 21 June, and today, Friday 22 June, has announced that these welfare restrictions could be extended to all Australians.

Dealing with complexity, avoiding simplistic histories

Bruce Pascoe, writing in The Age, neatly highlights the bias in Australian history.

I share his outrage, but just as he advocates for a more sophisticated approach to history, so too would I advocate for a more sophisticated approach to "laying blame". Pascoe argues for a more nuanced history, one that recognises that indigenous Australians were not "all the same", and were not merely "hapless" and "wandering aimlessly over the continent and failing to resist European invasion". In other words, he advocates an approach that acknowledges that the indigenous population of Australia was characterised by diversity, and that indigenous Australians were not merely victims but had capacities and forms of resilience in the face of the European invasion. Pascoe highlights the problems of simplistic histories, and yet provides and overly-simplistic solution. He comes close to laying all the blame at the feet of school teachers, despite having begun his argument with a tale about the ignorance of two of Australia's "best journalists".

While writing a first-year geography essay at Monash University in 1998, I came across details of the complex eel harvesting, elaborate systems of water control and stone housing that existed in Victoria’s Western District in pre-colonial times. It’s rare for me to be moved to tears while reading an academic text in a university library, but on that day, I was.

I bombarded friends and family with my new knowledge for weeks, perhaps even months. Pascoe is right to suggest that our children would be fascinated that such technology existed in their country - I was thrilled by this new information. It challenged my assumptions and I felt my worldview shift. However I was also angry, and overwhelmed by a sense of having been lied to. I had gone to school with indigenous children and I thought that I knew something of indigenous history. Both my parents are teachers with a dedication to their work and a commitment to social justice. Despite this, I had somehow managed to reach university with the belief that prior to the arrival of Europeans, indigenous Australians were a nomadic people whose technological skills were essentially confined to carving spears and boomerangs.

I share Pascoe's outrage but do not regard the gaps in my knowledge of history as the product of "poor teaching". I was taught by dedicated professionals doing the best they could with the legacy of their own educations. While I felt that I had been lied to, I wasn’t sure who was responsible. Now I believe that this is a problem that all us, including the media, bear some responsibility for. Pascoe writes that he never felt blacker than when Jon Faine and Jill Singer reacted with incredulity to his description of the technological feats of pre-colonial Australia. When I first read of these feats, I never felt whiter.

Time to meet the Aborigines you weren't taught about

Bruce Pascoe
May 31, 2007

The hapless blackfella, once a handy myth,lives on through poor teaching.

I'M NOT very black. I'm sure that in years to come the Aboriginal community will be under pressure from bureaucracies to exclude people whose heritage is from a great-grandmother who did everything she could to become white, to merge with the master class.

Plenty of blackfellas think that a separation of two generations and failure to be present at formation of the Aboriginal Advancement League, the 1967 referendum or Charlie Perkins' bus trips invalidates us; we weren't around when it mattered most. Fair enough too. We had squibbed it along with a million other cross-cultural Aboriginal refugees.

But I never felt blacker than when I looked out of the ABC studio window this week and saw that perfect autumn sky. I had to look out the window because I couldn't look Jon Faine or Jill Singer in the face.

We were discussing my new book, Convincing Ground, on Radio 774's Conversation Hour and Singer had just chastised me for giving the wrong date for the waterside workers' dispute.

Faine and I had discussed the contact history of the Western District before and he thought I was still gilding the black lily, that my claim of Aboriginal people at war with white settlers was a romanticisation of contact history, that my reference to stone houses, grain harvests and fish aquaculture was somehow a fabrication or at best a distortion of history. Here are two of Australia's best journalists who cannot believe the story I have lifted from the same pages that ABC board member Keith Windschuttle must have read.

Theirs wasn't a case of ill will or mischief-making as displayed by others in the debate — they'd just never read this stuff before.

It's a failure of education. We persist in teaching the young that Aboriginal history is no older than 40,000 years, that the people were nomads and had no "real" houses or agriculture and did not fight to protect their land.

It's a failure of education that English visitors to the Port Phillip District in 1835 reported Aboriginal towns where houses were built with basalt blocks, timber and turf, some capable of accommodating 30 people, and yet we don't advise our 12 year-olds of this fact.

It's a failure of education that we read of the aquaculture systems covering more than 100 square kilometres at Lake Condah and elsewhere and assume that a society capable of the engineering to tunnel into rock and build sophisticated structures must have been advised by an Englishman.

It's a failure of education to read that the search party for Ludwig Leichhardt observed Aboriginal people in central Australia harvesting, irrigating and sowing grain, and allow that information to disappear from our history. Grain was stored in stone silos, wooden dishes and sewn kangaroo skins, some collections weighing over a tonne. Doesn't this prick your interest? Don't you think your children would find it fascinating that this was going on in their country?

It's a failure of education to read that parties of 200 to 300 Aboriginal warriors attack white settlements and not to conceive that a war might be under way.

A cynic would say we hide behind a myth of the hapless Aborigine wandering aimlessly over the continent and failing to resist European invasion so that we might validate our occupation of the continent. But I think that, while the myth may have grown from that source, we persist in believing it because our education has failed us.

Normally intelligent people have been told they need not search the public record because it bears no evidence other than proof of the haplessness and brutishness of indigenous Australians. We advise our best minds to ignore Australian history because nothing happened. We resort to reconciliation as an expression of our compassion and understanding for a benighted race.

Young Australians, I beg you to thank your parents for their earnest response to indigenous disadvantage, but then go back to the early documents — you're in for a surprise.

None of us are going anywhere until we believe our history. Argue about it by all means, speculate on what it represents, but when you read of the warfare, the houses, the agriculture, don't fail to mention this to your own children. It's their country, and they deserve to know.

Bruce Pascoe's latest book, Convincing Ground, is published by Aboriginal Studies Press.

Solomon Islands relief effort: the headlines

Death toll still rising

43 people have now been confirmed dead in the Western and Choiseul provinces and sixty people are still missing. The majority of those dead were from Simbo, while others were from Titiana, Rannogah, Vella La Vella, Gizo, Munda and Sasamunga.

Proper coordination of assistance needed

Coordination (or rather lack of it) of the relief effort appears to be a growing problem in the Solomons. Some donors are channelling assistance through NGOs while others are channelling it via the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO). This opinion piece in the Solomon Star suggests - quite rightly - that the NDMO should also seek outside assistance from those who have experience similar situations around the world.

The National Council of Women has also appealed for better coordination.

Premier Kiloe has raised concerns about the fact that expensive trips have been made to assess the affected areas, yet relief has not been delivered with them.

PNG has made another aircraft available for the relief effort - one that is small enough to reach areas that the larger planes from RNZAF and RAAF cannot! Hopefully this will speed up the delivery of aid to the more isolated areas that have not yet been reached.

Several large ships have also headed off loaded with material assistance.

Identifying vulnerability and capacity

The tireless John Roughan identifies some of the capacities and vulnerabilities in this article, Responding to Disaster!

Rev. Kevin Rietveld identifies some of the positives to emerge from the disaster.

The Most Rev. Sir Ellison Pogo identifies the parallels with the Easter Story.

Sanitation is a growing problem, particularly in camps in the mountains. Thousands of people are now sheltering in the hills, and use of nearby bushes as toilets is becoming a problem. Malaria is also likely to become a problem as many people are sleeping outside, in the bush, without mosquito nets.

I am hearing many reports, both through friends, through friends of friends, and through the media, of people being too frightened to return to the coastal areas because of the aftershocks and the fear that there may be another tsunami. However most people's livelihoods depend on fishing and coastal gardens. I have heard that some people intend to rebuild up in the hills, but given that the hills are often used for gardening, this may cause increased competition for land, and therefore social tension.

Unsurprisingly, more suggestions have emerged that the wantok system is affecting the delivery of aid (here). In my view it is likely that some people are preferring their wantoks when delivering aid, however even if this is not the case, perception is important, and the perception that some people are beeing preferred over others is likely to contribute to rising social tension.

Several agencies have identified the need for trauma counselling. The last time I was in the Solomons - in 2003 - the people I spoke to consistently stated that there was no trauma counselling available after the Tensions. I knew of only one group of women from the Weathercoast who, without any financial support from any institution, were travelling back to their villages from Honiara on a regular basis to conduct what they called "trauma counselling". Even if trauma counselling was provided or supported by international or local NGOs, it was very clear that very few people knew it existed, let alone had accessed it. Hopefully any trauma counselling provided or supported by NGOs in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami will be appropriate, widely-publicised, and very accessible.

Quake lifts island by several metres, affecting fishing, tourism

(AFP Photo)

'Solomons quake raises island from sea', reports Michael McKenna for The Australian:

A mountainous island has been lifted several metres out of the sea by the tumultuous seismic jolt that triggered the devastating Solomons tsunami. Ranongga Island is now surrounded by a moonscape of dying white and brown coral that has been exposed by the remarkable phenomenon that has extended the shoreline out to sea by up to 100m.

...

Villagers have been shocked by the aftermath of the seismic impact, which has uncovered the once-submerged reefs that their boats easily cleared until Monday's quake. One of the many sunken Japanese military vessels that litter the seabed around the island has also been uncovered - a relic of the area's fierce fighting between Allied and Japanese forces during World War II.

...

Solomons' geologists late yesterday also inspected the island, which has a lush, mountainous spine and appears to have been lifted between two and three metres out of the surrounding pristine waters.

...

"People are very scared on the island. They don't know if this is temporary or permanent and if they should leave," he said.

...

In some parts, the shoreline has extended out to sea by up to 100m, with the waves now lapping the uncovered reef which rings the island.

Ranongga Island is a long, narrow, rugged island in the Western Province. The earthquake and tsunami has caused dramatic physical changes which are likely to have a psychological/emotional impact on the people of Ranongga - imagine waking up to find that the environment you've always known like the back of your hand has changed beyond recognition! Further, these changes are affecting livelihood security, as locals were heavily reliant on the reefs for fishing and shells for tools (here), . Livelihood security may also be negatively affected by a drop in tourism.

Relief to tsunami-affected areas: water, sanitation and the politicisation of aid

The death toll in the Solomon Islands continues to rise as reports flow back in from more islated areas ('Aid flows grow in Solomon Islands, tsunami tolls set to rise').

I just spoke to a friend, J, who lives in Honiara but is from Choiseul and has a lot of family in the Western Province (esp. Gizo). He said that he's heard from his family in Gizo, who have lost their homes and all their property and are now living 'up in the hills'. Neither J nor his family in Gizo have heard from their wantoks in Choiseul - communication with people in Choiseul is difficult at the best of times (most Solomon Islanders depend on radio rather than telephone), but is virtually impossible at present due to reduced movement between the islands.

J said that while there were originally hold ups with the distribution of aid because some of the airports had been damaged by the earthquake, aid was now getting through. He also reported water shortages for people who lived in Gizo - unlike people in many of the villages, people in Gizo rely on rainwater and their tanks cracked during the earthquake (see also here and here).

People in Gizo do, however, have access to food, because most people's gardens are up in the hills, and weren't affected by the tsunami (see also Solomon Star News, 'People Are Now Starving' and The Age, 'Water shortage hits Solomons').

Aid workers have warned that disease could take a greater number of lives than the tsunami event itself ('Disease could kill more than tsunami').

Michael McKenna for The Australian reports from the Western Province that relief effrot is now surrounded by "political infighting and allegations of poor co-ordination and pilfering" (here):

Village elders accuse government authorities of favouring their own racial groups. Australian police, in the country with the Regional Mission to the Solomon Islands,
say their counterparts are lazy, (nice!!) and regional politicians argue that Honiara is not doing enough.

The Sydney Morning Herald also carries reports of the politicisation of aid ('Rescue efforts all at sea'). As was the case during the Boxing Day Tsunami, it appears that in some areas children (perhaps adults, too?) got excited about the unusual behaviour of the sea and ran down to the waters edge, only to lose their lives as the waves came racing back in.

Both articles indicate that the wantok system is preventing some people from participating in the relief effort and/or receiving aid. Interestingly, none of this is reported in the Solomon Star, which frequently features rather robust articles and opinion pieces.

Quite apart from the obstacles posed by regional and local politics, the geography of the Solomon Islands is inevitably posing logistical problems:

The logistics in the disaster zone are highly problematic. Western Province has a population of 80,000 and more than 600 islands out of the 900-plus islands in the entire Solomon Islands archipelago ('Rescue efforts all at sea').

The SMH also features a note about the Gilbertese, who form a substantial minority in the Solomon Islands. The Gilbertese originate from Kirbati, and being Micronesian (rather than Melansian, like Solomon Islanders), are easily identifiable. They experience a degree of social marginalisation that is expressed partly through their physical marginalisation - the Gilbertese live predominantly in fishing settlements along the coast, and were highly exposed to the tsunami. For example, while the tsunami barely affected Honiara, Gilbertese villages were affected although no lives were lost (the Gilbertese saw the water going out too far, and ran for higher ground). As the article in the SMH indicates, however, the Gilbertese around the epicentre of the quake were not so lucky.

The limited infrastructure in Solomon Islands is perhaps best captured by this piece, which notes that Save the Children has donated 20 chairs, a desktop computer and a printer to the National Disaster Council. I was last in Honiara in 2003 - and regularly saw workers not only from NGOs, but from the UN, using computers in one of the two internet cafes in Honiara.

AlertNet now has a page dedicated to the quake and tsunami (South Pacific quake) as does ReliefWeb (Solomon Islands Earthquake and Tsunami).

What's farming got to do with it?

Farmer Jess is laughing about the fact that her Masters in Humanitarian Action will actually result in a Masters in Ag Science...so what's Ag Science got to do with humanitarian action?

Several years ago I undertook an in-depth analysis of vulnerability in the Tambo Valley, located in East Gippsland Shire, in north-east Victoria. While focusing on the underlying root causes of the 1998 flood disaster, I found that historical analysis showed a pretty clear pattern - when a drop in commodity prices coincided with drought, farmers would over-stock their land because they didn't want to sell their stock at such low prices. This would compound the effects of drought, resulting in over-grazing, which is particularly problematic in this area, which is characterised by very steep terrain and poor quality soils. Financial constraints of farmers limited their ability to maintain their farms, so rabbit numbers would increase. The small populations have - at least since the end of the gold mining era - been vulnerable to any economic change, and the entire community would suffer as farmers did. Sometimes, bushfires would occur before the drought broke, denuding the landscape even further. When the drought did finally break, it would often do so with torrential rain, which would tear down the steep, denuded slopes, taking with it the valuable top soil and leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. These patterns aren't unique to the Tambo Valley, or even to Australian contexts - similar patterns can be found in many places throughout the world. Since natural disasters are intimitely related to the ways we use the land and other resources, the link between agricultural science and humanitarian action doesn't seem a particularly tenuous one to me. Indeed, since many civil conflicts stem from the struggle for secure livelihoods, I think it's often going to be helpful to understanding the root causes of civil conflict too.

An interesting article that again raises the links between livelihood security and vulnerability to natural disaster in the Australian context was published in The Age yesterday: Fire hits drought-ravaged farm. The phrase, "it's just one thing after another" was one I heard regularly while conducting my research in the Tambo Valley - again and again, people said "it was just one thing after another", and similarly, I regularly heard the phrase "it was the straw that broke the camel's back" to describe "The Big Flood" of 1998. Here, fire has hit farmers already struggling to cope with the effects of the drought - in academic-speak, they were already vulnerable, they had more limited resilience and their coping mechanisms were already weakened by the drought.

Stay...or Go?

Fires start early this year...and so far the death toll is already at 1. It's going to be a bad summer, and new research shows that bushfires cause the greatest number of deaths and injuries of any natural disaster in Australia.

For some of the most recent and best thinking on bushfires, check out the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre. There are some fantastic resources on what you should do in preparation for or during a bushfire, including the background briefings for fire managers here.

See also this note on a recent workshop I was involved in, looking at the legal and other aspects of 'Stay or Go' policies and community warnings.

Man Dies Protecting House from Bushfire
By 7 News

A man has died while trying to protect his home from encroaching bushfires, as wind changes overnight increased the risk of blazes burning out of control in New South Wales.

Police say the unnamed man was overcome by smoke and flames on his rural property near Nelligan, on the NSW south coast late on Tuesday.

Dozens of bushfires are burning across the south east of Australia, but improved weather conditions in Victoria and South Australia mean the danger of flames spreading to homes there has decreased.

Around 4,000 firefighters worked through the night in South Australia, where 60 fires are burning.

And in Victoria, a total fire ban has been lifted after crews managed to contain a blaze which has burnt out more than 9,000 hectares in the west of the state.

But in New South Wales, unpredictable winds have hampered firefighters' efforts to tackle blazes which are raging across the state.

Firefighters in the Blue Mountains are urging householders to fire-proof their homes and prepare for the worst, as a fire which has already destroyed 14,500 hectares of park and private land continues to burn out of control.

Attempts to contain the flames by backburning overnight failed, and the state's Rural Fire Service is expecting further trouble on Wednesday, in the face of difficult winds and hot weather.

"It is very difficult," said Gillian Katz, of the NSW Rural Fire Brigade. "The wind has changed direction nearly every 10 minutes, it's making it very hard to predict the fire paths but there are some known fire paths through the Gore Valley that could be where the fire goes."

More than 40 water-bombing aircraft will be working to put out flames across New South Wales on Wednesday, 15 in the Blue Mountains alone.

A number of roads in the region have been closed, and heavy smoke is affecting driving conditions across the area - motorists are advised to take care. The Blue Mountains National Park is shut until further notice.

Does a rights-based approach make a difference? The role of public law in vulnerability reduction

Handmer, John, and Rebecca Monson, "Does a Rights Based Approach Make a Difference? The Role of Public Law in Vulnerability Reduction," International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, Vol. 22, No. 3 (November 2004): 43-59.

ABSTRACT

Reducing the impact of climate-related disasters can be conceptualised as being about reducing or managing ‘vulnerability’. ‘Vulnerability’ is a multi-faceted concept incorporating issues of livelihood, housing, security and gender among many others. For example, groups of people may be more or less vulnerable to climate-related disasters due to the security of their livelihoods or the quality of their housing. Social norms and custom, international law, and national public and private law may regulate these constituents of vulnerability. In some jurisdictions, such as countries in the European Union and the Council of Europe, and countries with new constitutions, there is a range of specific rights that may be mobilised to reduce vulnerability.

Much of the work on the link between vulnerability reduction and human rights focuses on international law. However national law is generally more accessible and enforceable than international conventions, no matter how attractive the conventions may seem. National public law is of particular value to vulnerability reduction because governments are often those with the clearest responsibilities and the greatest resources for reducing vulnerability. We draw on three recent South African cases to illustrate the potential for citizens to mobilise public law to reduce their own vulnerability:

• In the case of Minister of Public Works & Ors v Kyalami Ridge Environmental Association & Anor [2001] ICHRL 33 (29 May 2001), the Court found a constitutional obligation to provide disaster relief, and established that when administrative action is taken to address the plight of victims of disaster, it will not necessarily be a denial of natural justice to fail to provide a hearing to all those who object to the emergency measures.

• In the 2001 decision of Government of the Republic of South Africa and Others v Grootboom and Others (2001) (1) SA 46 (CC); 2000(11) BCLR 1169 (CC), the South African Constitutional Court was required to consider the scope of s.26 of the South African Constitution, which provides that everyone has the right of access to adequate housing.

• A later case, Minister of Health and others v Treatment Action Campaign and others (2002) (5) SA 721; 2002 (10) BCLR 1033; [2002] ZACC 15 (5 July 2002), is of great significance to the attempt to combat HIV/AIDs. In that case, the South African Constitutional Court ruled that the government had a constitutional obligation to provide HIV treatment to pregnant women to help prevent transmission of the virus to their unborn children.
  

We also briefly examine the potential role of the European Court of Human Rights in reducing vulnerability through the enforcement of the law common to the Council of Europe. Finally, we raise the question of whether a rights-based approach might be effective in countries without mechanisms similar to those in South Africa and the Council of Europe.