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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-31 Daily Xml
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Severe Weather Conditions

Mrs PEARCE (King) (14:22): My question is to the Minister for Emergency Services. Can the minister inform the house about the response by emergency services personnel to the recent severe weather in South Australia?

The Hon. J.K. SZAKACS (Cheltenham—Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Correctional Services) (14:22): I thank the member for King for her question and note her strong connection to her King community as well as being one of the individuals in the community who was living through this severe weather of the last 48 hours.

Mr Speaker, as you are no doubt aware, South Australia has been inundated by severe weather over the last 48 hours, with the combination of extreme winds, high rainfall causing significant damage and localised flooding in many areas of the state, with the northern suburbs of metropolitan Adelaide the most affected.

In excess of 400 incidents were recorded over Sunday and Monday; approximately 65 properties have been significantly impacted by this storm. As the recovery from the emergency continues, I express our thoughts for those people affected. I am pleased to report that once again our highly skilled emergency personnel, led by the SES and supported by the CFS and the MFS, have responded remarkably to assist their fellow South Australians in need. I also commend SAPOL for their role in keeping people safe and managing traffic and responding to incidents caused by these dangerous conditions.

The response is entirely reflective of the excellent collaboration and coordination that our emergency services exhibit. While the severe weather warning remains in place today for damaging winds over a reduced area of this state, I urge all South Australians to remain vigilant, particularly during likely severe weather events that will occur further across the cooler months.

Yesterday, I spent some time at the SES State Control Centre to receive a briefing from senior staff, including the chief of the SES, and see firsthand the sophisticated operations of the SCC during this significant event. At the time, emergency services were responding to nearly 130 incidents, and the control centre was managing the deployment across the day of in excess of 150 SES volunteers, almost 300 CFS personnel and volunteers and numerous MFS strike teams.

South Australians can be confident we have world-class operators in charge of these major events. South Australians can also rest assured that we have some of the most highly skilled and dedicated emergency services personnel, both paid and volunteers, responding to incidents on the ground. Yesterday evening, I joined the member for King at the SES Salisbury station, where an incident management team was established, to see directly the incredible work being done to respond to local flooding, downed trees and property damage.

The member for King and I were glad to be able to thank so many emergency services personnel across a couple of hours in person last night and to learn about local conditions on the ground. We spoke at length to not only Salisbury crews but to SES and CFS crews from as far as Port Noarlunga, Mount Barker and Alma.

In particular, I want to thank Christopher Shaw, a Hills-Fleurieu District Officer; Stefanie Zakvzewski, Regional Operations Officer from the SES; the Salisbury SES Captain and good friend of the member for King, Anthony Gunter; and in particular I want to thank Julie-Anne Gunter, the wife of Anthony, for keeping everybody there at the Salisbury station fed through the day and through the night. As my colleague in the other place the Attorney-General would be pleased to note, the sausage rolls were impeccable.

Learning from these events such as those last night to mitigate future risk is a vital but less well-known function that emergency services will now perform in recovery. Today, the SES will be working with the City of Salisbury and Department for Environment and Water hydrologists to better understand the circumstances of localised flooding in this area. Work also continues to resupply consumables and sandbags to emergency service units and community self-help sandbag stockpiles.

I would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of not only the government but I'm sure all members of this house, to recognise and thank our emergency services volunteers and staff for all they did yesterday and all they do on a daily basis.

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