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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-02-03 Daily Xml
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Ministerial Statement

HEATWAVE

The Hon. M.D. RANN (Ramsay—Premier, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Social Inclusion, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Sustainability and Climate Change) (14:12): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement.

Leave granted.

The Hon. M.D. RANN: Not since 1908 has South Australia suffered through a heatwave as long or as enduring as the one all of us are experiencing at present. New records have been set. According to my information, the minimum overnight temperature of 33.9ºC recorded on Thursday last week is the highest on record. A maximum temperature of 45.7ºC on Wednesday last week made international headlines around the world. Temperatures remained high on the following days—up to 43.4º on Thursday, then 43.1º, 41.1º, 40.6º and, yesterday, 38.8º (hardly a cool change). The forecast for the remainder of this week is continued high temperatures, peaking at 40ºC on Friday.

While the week before last Adelaide had been the focus of news reports across the world for the brilliant Tour Down Under featuring the comeback race of cycling legend and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, last week international focus was on our record high temperatures. This heatwave has had an appalling impact, especially on the elderly. It appears that some of them have tragically succumbed to the extremely high temperatures impacting on their already vulnerable conditions. Our hospitals were stretched but have coped well with the estimated 550 people who presented to our metropolitan hospitals over the past week with heat-related problems. Obviously, extra doctors, nurses and beds were needed, and surgery was brought forward. There were 87 people admitted to our hospitals between Friday last week and Monday this week with heat-related illnesses.

Train lines buckled as the steel tracks reached temperatures of greater than 75ºC and, while trains were forced to slow down and commuters delayed, transport staff have been handing out more than 4,000 bottles of water each day to customers. Trams became overheated, particularly last Wednesday during the peak of the heatwave, and some were taken off line during off-peak periods to cool down. Local power transformers blew from overheating as everyone sensibly reached to turn on their air conditioners.

Hundreds of trees across Adelaide began shedding limbs, blocking roads and rail lines and bringing down powerlines. And people—many volunteers, good-hearted neighbours, emergency services officers and work crews—began rallying to help the elderly, staying out all night to fix rail lines, donning heavy duty clothes to remove the tree limbs, climbing Stobie poles to fix transformers, and others cared for the old and the young and distressed pets.

This heatwave has brought out the very best of people and their care and consideration for others. On behalf of all South Australians, I thank all those heroes of the heatwave for their kindness and spirit of community in thinking in the plural rather than the singular.

Daily briefings of operational government departments and emergency services in the State Emergency Centre occurred from Wednesday to Saturday last week and again for the last two days. To ensure a well-coordinated and comprehensive response, I spoke to emergency services and other agencies after Tuesday's cabinet meeting and then convened meetings of cabinet on Thursday and then cabinet with the Emergency Management Council on Friday, Saturday and Sunday to coordinate our services and communications.

This government conducted one of the most intensive and extensive community outreach exercises to raise awareness, offer advice and identify people in need, and I gave a series of news conferences about heatwave warnings and our response across government last week.

Last week, we made sure that our government buildings were open to members of the public seeking respite and directed our front counter staff to keep an eye out for any heat-affected and vulnerable members of the public and to offer them a seat and a cool drink or to help people in need to obtain medical attention. For example, the cultural institutions on North Terrace have free bottled water available for the public.

Most importantly, we issued regular targeted messages to the community. The State Emergency Service informed me that these warnings made a real, noticeable difference. Over the past week, the state's Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paddy Phillips, has spearheaded a public health campaign on the excessive heat, warning people to drink plenty of water, avoid caffeine and alcohol, stay indoors in the air conditioning, avoid the sun and seek medical advice if they are feeling unwell.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. M.D. RANN: Can I just say I think it is outrageous to attack the Chief Medical Officer. If you think this is funny, then you are out of step with mainstream opinion in this state.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.D. RANN: While the Leader of the Opposition was asking to be on the catwalk, on the red carpet in New York at a party, people were getting on with the job of saving lives.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.D. RANN: To cope with the extra demand, our hospitals have opened extra beds, calling in additional medical and nursing staff, and opened extra emergency theatres over the weekend.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The house will come to order!

The Hon. M.D. RANN: SA Ambulance has been laudable in its efforts, attending an average of 580 emergency incidents and 798 non-emergency incidents during the heatwave each day, which is nearly 300 more attendances a day than normal. Unfortunately, it has attended an average of about 12 deaths a day compared with about four deaths a day normally, although it is not possible to say how many of those deaths were attributable to the heat until the Coroner's findings.

Metro Home Link, Domiciliary Care, the Red Cross and its wonderful volunteers, St Vincent de Paul, the Hutt Street Day Centre, Street to Home, Westcare Day Centre, the Royal District Nursing Service of South Australia and many other workers and volunteers were mobilised to call and home visit thousands of elderly, vulnerable and homeless people during this period to ensure that they are using their fans and air conditioners and are staying well hydrated and fed and staying cool. There have been thousands and thousands of home visits and also calls to people's homes.

Many of our backbenchers have been calling their local constituents over the age of 80 to ensure that they are staying cool and to feed out useful information to help them cope. I am sure that has happened on both sides of the house.

I want to commend not only those members I know on the government backbenches who issued statements and leaflets about how to stay cool in the heat but also those members who personally rang elderly constituents to offer a helping hand. The Animal Welfare Unit of the department of environment has provided advice and a public communications campaign on keeping pets and animals safe, while the RSPCA, the Animal Welfare League and vets have all been responding to calls from the public on specific cases, inquiries and issues around animals during the heatwave.

It was an unfortunate consequence of this extreme weather condition that stretched across south-eastern Australia that our power supply was affected through the national electricity grid. South Australia signed up to the national electricity grid during the period of the last government prior to the Liberal government later privatising our electricity assets. As it is now part of the national grid, South Australia is affected by events in Victoria, especially, and in Tasmania, unusually. At 2.35 pm on 29 January last week the Basslink interconnector between Victoria and Tasmania shut down. Basslink advised that the interconnector operated in accordance with its design in that a protective block shut it down as the ambient temperature at George Town in Tasmania raised above its limitation of 35° Celsius, which apparently had never been reached before.

The outage of the Basslink interconnector resulted in NEMMCO instructing that load shedding be undertaken in both South Australia and Victoria to ensure that the electricity system did not suffer a catastrophic failure. In fact, 10 minutes after the Basslink interconnector shut down, about 130 megawatts were shed in South Australia and 300 megawatts in Victoria in accordance with the 'sharing the pain' protocol, where load is shed in proportion to the demand in the respective regions.

At the time, South Australian demand was around 3,300 megawatts, while Victorian demand was around 10,400 megawatts. NEMMCO instructed that all load could be restored at 3.45pm following the Basslink interconnector returning to service. ETSA Utilities published a press release indicating that 95,000 customers were affected across 39 suburbs when it was directed by the national market operator to ration electricity supplies that afternoon. Localised faults unrelated to load shedding persisted with ETSA Utilities' distribution network as transformers blew up, and so on.

On the following day (Friday last week), as a result of the extreme heat tripping the Basslink interconnector, at approximately 12.50 pm NEMMCO instructed Victoria to shed 350 megawatts and ETSA Utilities was required to shed 90 megawatts in South Australia under the same 'sharing the pain' protocol. Again, ETSA published a press release indicating that 83 suburbs, representing 170,000 customers across all parts of Adelaide, were affected from 1.30pm to approximately 4pm. I share the view of many South Australians that we needed more information about where the load shedding would occur and what it would mean to individual households, given that this was the first time this had happened since 2002.

For instance, I believe it was important that people understood that load shedding meant that power in their homes would be shut down for a maximum of 40 minutes, but usually 30 minutes, during a day. I have today written to NEMMCO asking it to review its protocols for information sharing during periods leading up to and in the event of load shedding to see what improvements can be made about communicating with the public as quickly as possible. This heatwave will endure for the remainder of this working week. I am told that on Saturday we are in for a cooler change, so that by Sunday the maximum temperature is forecast to be a welcome 25°Celsius. There is no way of knowing whether we will get a recurrence of this heatwave again this season, next year or the year after.

As I said, this is the worst heatwave in 100 years. What I do know is that, after every major emergency event such as this, the government reviews its protocols, how it has coped with all its human services, its emergency services, its transport and many other services, and examines where it can make improvements; and this we will do. As a government we can always do better, and I am asking NEMMCO, ETSA and other companies to do likewise.

What will remain with me out of this heatwave is the extraordinary effort made by many thousands of people who have made such a difference to the wellbeing of others, even if it was just crossing the street to ask an elderly neighbour whether they were keeping cool and out of harm's way. The spirit of thought and giving is the sign of a healthy community, and every South Australian should be proud of their efforts during this time of extreme circumstances.

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