Every Disaster Can Help Us Learn How To Protect Our Business

75% of Queensland and 25% of Victoria has been flooded. What can we all learn from this?

I could hardly bear to watch the news because it brought back too vividly the three cyclones stationary around Cape Yorke in north Queensland in 1967. We had 39 INCHES of rain in only 36 hours and were totally isolated with a one weekold baby. Unbelievably it was raining sis inches, that is fifteen centimeters every thirty minutes at some stages - when we went outdoors to empty the rain guage, the rain actually hurt it was so heavy.

We were cut off totally with no phone, no road, no power for over a week and no neighbours either, simply watching the water rise and listening to trees falling around us all night and wondering where they were falling. My heart goes right out to people in Queensland because I know where they are.

In 1974 when the last big flood hit most of Queensland and Brisbane I was still in Far North Queensland and the thing I remember most was the impact on business and normal life after the event. The school term was delayed by two weeks because no one could travel and people could not get home. That year we had no paper and no text books for several months where I was teaching at Atherton High School - interesting!

The so called paperless society many be a cause for mirth but that was what we actually had to cope with and in a pre-computer age.

We have heard about the dreadful human cost and the houses lost but spare a thought also for the businesses and the consequent jobs lost. They have not had a lot of publicity. The recovery may well take years. How many won't recover?

STOP and think about YOUR emergency planning even for things you thought were totally unlikely.

Some people I know with businesses along the lower River Murray had carefully thought out flood plans - but no one thought about NO water, collapsing banks, acid sulphate soils etc. Now they are back to floods again only a few months later.

In 2005 I was taking to some people in far North Queensland about cyclones but they were very laid back because they had been through several category 3 cyclones without much problem.

When Cyclone Larry arrived they did have all their records safe so thankfully they had listenned to my 1967 experiences. A lesson I learned from Barramundi farmer at Innisfail; was that insurance is something that needs to be chosen carefully. He had to mortgage everything to pay his workers to clean the farm up and the insurance company failed to pay for three months. Other insurance companies paid with a week or two. Now his farm has a new owner and he is merely the manager as he never recovered financially. Worth thinking about!

Now in early 2001 they have been hit again but this time with a very large category FIVE cyclone, comparable with Hurricane Katrina. Hurricanes and Cyclones are the same thing- just different locations and because they are in opposite hemispheres, they spin in different directions.

Thankfully the cyclone did not hit either Cairns or Townsville and the areas are not as flood susceptible as the Mississippi delta so that damage was less.


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Jean Cannon has spent the last 11 years actively helping small to medium businesses worldwide save costs, increase efficiency and employee loyalty and become a truly sustainable business. For more information go to http://www.enviroaction.com.au and grab Jean's three top tips to simply and easily create a plan to run the business you want to run and receive a free CD and DVD