Planning for severe weather events
This information bulletin contains information to help you prepare for the severe weather events giving rise to emergencies that may be encountered in the Northern Territory.
Severe weather events are increasingly threatening many work sites safety and pose an increasingly high unanticipated costs to the organisation. Destructive winds and heavy rain can damage surface structures, infrastructures cause site or access road flooding, flying debris and lead to dangerous conditions for workers. These events present a range of safety and business risks that must be considered by a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU).
The Bureau of Meteorology website suggests a 73% chance of more cyclones in Australia with a 61% chance of more than three in the Northern Territory for 2022-23 (and beyond).
The NT legislation requires all work sites to have appropriate site safety management systems in place including emergency plans.
Planning for emergencies is a requirement under Regulation 43 of the Work Health and Safety (National Uniform Legislation) Act 2011. All work sites must have adequate resources, facilities and procedures in place to maintain effective emergency management before, during and after a severe weather events.
Remember the time to prepare is not when an event strikes and being unprepared can pose a safety risk and threatens your organisation as a whole. Having strategies in place to help cope with these events will make it easier for your work site to minimise losses, maintain business continuity and recover quickly.
Getting ready for these types of events includes conducting a risk assessment to cover extreme weather conditions, developing, or reviewing, your emergency management plan (EMP) each year recognising activities (on and off-site), training staff in first aid and emergency procedures, and ensuring communication mechanisms are available and reliable.
A key component of emergency planning is identifying the likely events and situations that may occur in order to determine what an adequate level of site preparation and response capability needs to be implemented. It is critical that risks associated with severe weather events are identified and adequate controls established, particularly those related to principal hazards at the site. It is essential that sites develop an adequate level of response capability based on the risks identified, including first aid, firefighting and rescue arrangements.
Using a team approach (i.e. consult with workers) to review your Emergency Plan will ensure that a majority of the risk are identified and controlled. Don’t forget you will need to assign responsibilities for actions to individuals and ensure that completed actions are tracked.
Remember the event may have passed, but hazards may remain.
Undertake a risk assessment and check your site
Sites may change over time. Before each wet season commences, conduct a risk assessment based on the specific hazards that might be present on site at that time. This assessment can be assisted by using information from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. We encourage you to become familiar and take into consideration the “Local Emergency Plan” for your area.
While not an exhaustive list, some key risks to consider are:
- loss of access to and from the site which may include possible medical evacuations
- loss of communication systems both internal and external
- instability of high walls, road, ramps, stockpiles and emplacement areas throughout a mine site
- flooding of pit or underground workings due to excess water flows or power failures to run pumps
- portable infrastructure and buildings being overturned or moved due to high winds
- wind blowing moveable items causing damage or injuries
- lightning strikes causing damage and related fires possibly sparking other fires from flying embers
- fire related damage or injuries
- loss of power to critical systems such as pumps, medical equipment or communications
- loss of plant and equipment under flood water
- hazardous chemical escape and thereby having reactions due to accidental mixing causing toxic clouds, heat or water exposure
- smoke entering underground ventilation systems from a surface or underground fire
- loss of control of vehicles caused by slippery conditions or lightning strikes
- working in or around water and mud (i.e. drowning or loss of mobility)
- recovery operations needed to re-establish power, communications and access.
Some of the suggested actions that could be undertaken at your site can include:
- review the existing emergency plan to ensure its currency and validity with current activities on your site
- visually inspect the site, including drainage structures (such as drains – ensure cleaned, dam stabilities and current water levels).
- You may need to survey pick-ups to ascertain where drainage issues may exist or even start due to excess rains.
- You may require further drainage to divert possible large volumes of water from sensitive areas.
- Review the water management on site considering of current levels and possible rain. Be aware slope stability can be impacted by large weather events (i.e. large volumes of water causing pit wall slope failures or underground flooding and wall failures)
- inspect buildings, workshops, tanks, demountable and shipping containers to ensure they can withstand the events (i.e. tie-down and ensure proper connection to hold down devices such as concrete blocks. While some equipment may handle these events some may require special consideration (i.e. tie down, crane securing, antenna lay-down). Some events have resulted in improperly secured buildings being over-turned by strong winds;
- inspect equipment or mobile equipment (including conveyor systems) and ensure they can handle the event and if special consideration is to be given (i.e. tie down, crane securing, antenna lay-down, protection of sensitive equipment from water damage)
- use appropriate technical information and reports (e.g. water level reports, structural integrity, geotechnical hazards) seeking appropriate advice from experts
- consider developing a site-specific checklist (a good example is “Preparing for a storm checklist 2022-23” from Resources Health & Safety QLD or NT WorkSafe’s “Mine site emergency planning checklist”)
- check general equipment for readiness. This may include ensuring vehicles generators, chainsaws etc are all fuelled and ready to be used; and
- ensure workers are reminded of the emergency protocols on site.
Ensure warning and evacuation systems work
A site's safety system should have:
- a process for identifying and warning anyone who could be affected by severe events
- a system for moving people to a place of safety including considerations for evacuation of people off site
- a system to ensure that temporary and semi-permanent relocatable structures on a site are adequately designed, located, constructed and anchored
- timely actions to bring risk into acceptable limits; and
- a system for recovery following the event.
To prevent movement during a storm, single or multi-modular semi-permanent (or permanent) units (mobile dongas, offices, crib rooms or ablution blocks) must be mounted and anchored to pre-established concrete and steel pedestals and/or other specifically designed anchoring points, in accordance with building standards. You should also consider precautions for other structures vulnerable to the effects of strong wind, including workshops, tanks, conveyor belts or mobile equipment such as cranes.
Have a rescue system ready. An adequate emergency response and rescue system should be in place in case a severe weather event causes injury, entrapment or damage to buildings or infrastructure.
Communicate
As part of the overall preparation process, everyone on site, including contractors, must be made aware of the site’s emergency response plan (including location of safe places) and what is expected of them.
All employees must be made aware of increased risk during lightning strikes. Refer to Resources Safety & Health Queensland's Bulletin - Risk management during lightning events for additional information.
Sites should also check their communication and mutual assistance protocols with adjacent work sites or other offsite resources.
It is always advisable to include staff in any communication. This can be through emergency planning groups and recovery planning groups.
Explosives in mines
There is an increased propensity for fume events and potential misfires in wet weather. Sites should take particular attention to the selection of explosives if blasting is to continue during the wet season.
If wild weather is forecasted, as a precaution sites should consult explosives manufactures and substitute dry hole products for wet hole equivalents and consider postponing the blast until well after the event.
Lightning
Lightning conditions during storms create hazards that need to be managed to ensure that risk to workers are considered and eliminated.
The best control to ensure risk to workers remains at an acceptable level is to cease work, park vehicles up in a safe location away from workers and ensure workers remain in a safe shelter that has been designed with lightning protection systems to industrial standards, such as AS1768:2021 Lightning protection, until lightning has ceased.
Scaffolding or external temporary structures or equipment
During a weather event scaffolding or other external temporary structures may pose a significant risk of flying debris.
Again the best control is to reduce the risk by ensuring that temporary structures and equipment are well secured and any part of them can’t be dislodged (i.e. tie down loose scaffold planks) and that no personnel are exposed to being struck by projectiles. Smaller items of equipment should be either relocated to a safe storage location or securely tied down.
Emergency response during an event
Emergency response personnel are exposed to additional hazards when responding to incidents and accidents at work sites as they are more likely to be required to leave their vehicles to carry out their duties during an event. This increases their risk of exposure to being struck by projectiles, exposure to high voltage from lightning strikes, flashover injury, touch or step potential.
Recovery post event
If an event strikes it may have some devastating effects. This would require some form of recovery. This may something as simple of site clearing of vegetation and fix roads due to erosion.
In mine sites water management may be an issue post event (i.e. pit water). Careful planning and risk assessment consideration should be applied to any post event activities. Risks may include traffic risks (i.e. vehicular slipping, personal drowning risks, subsidence risk on roads, fallen trees, chainsaw usage, heat exhaustion just to name a few).
Even if the event has passed you should conduct a post event review to review your plan’s effectiveness and any alterations that may be needed. Once completed communicate this to all your workers and remember to train.
Recommendations
Work site operators must ensure that they have adequately assessed the risks associated with severe weather events and have suitable and sufficient, safety management, emergency response and recovery plans in place. The risk assessment and careful preparation will ultimately save lives and reduce overall operating costs.
As severe weather is often infrequent and localised, it is important that everyone on a site, including contractors and visitors, are made aware of the site’s emergency plan, emergency response and rescue systems.
Each year an operator / PCBU should review their emergency plans to ensure they remain effective and reliable for all incidents that may affect their workers or their activities.
Further information