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Coordination of Energy Infrastructure Restoration in Australia

Allan Gillespie FTSE, Hon FIE Aust

1. Introduction

Most Australians do not perceive earthquakes as a serious risk to infrastructure and property. However, the need to respond frequently to other natural disasters such as cyclones, severe storms, flooding and bushfires has resulted in government emergency response organisations at National and State/Territory levels. Through these organisations Australia has developed effective mechanisms to deal with natural disasters including earthquakes. Electricity and gas supply companies interface regularly with the emergency response structure in Australia. The implementation of competitive energy markets in Australia has reduced the level of cooperation between energy companies to a point where the Government controlled emergency response organisations play pivotal roles in supply restoration. Security issues relating to possible terrorist activities are now a major focus for the maintenance and restoration of energy infrastructure.

2. The Government Role in Emergency Management

Under the Australian Constitution, the primary responsibility for the protection of life and property rests with State and Territory governments as they exercise control over most of the functions which are necessary for effective disaster prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. Each of these State and Territory governments has developed counter-disaster arrangements, operates emergency service agencies and coordinates related activities through emergency/disaster management committees. These emergency service agencies rely heavily on the support of hundreds of thousands of trained volunteers who provide services such as search and rescue, fire fighting and medical care.

The Commonwealth Government assists the States and Territories to enhance their capabilities and also provides extra resources if requested. If an emergency occurs, the Commonwealth Government, State and Territory Governments, emergency services, local governments, volunteer organisations and communities work together to respond to the emergency, save lives and property, and assist the community to recover. Booklets and guidelines are issued to companies, schools and the public to help deal with unexpected emergencies. Appendix B provides an example of such a booklet.

2.1National Emergency Management Committee (NEMC)

The National Emergency Management Committee is Australia's peak consultative emergency management forum. It is chaired by the Director General Emergency Management Australia and comprises chairpersons and executive officers of State emergency management committees (the various State and Territory peak consultative committees established to coordinate and advise on emergency management/counter disaster matters). The Committee meets annually to provide advice and direction on the coordination and advancement of Commonwealth and State interests in emergency management issues. As required, it establishes working parties to examine particular issues.

2.2Commonwealth Government Emergency Management Organisation

The Commonwealth Government Minister responsible for disaster and emergency management matters is the Minister for Defence. The agency through which the Minister exercises this responsibility is Emergency Management Australia (EMA). The senior interdepartmental body responsible for providing policy advice and for overseeing interdepartmental arrangements for providing recovery assistance to the States and Territories is the Commonwealth Counter-Disaster Task Force.

As part of its National leadership, EMA is currently sponsoring a project to develop a National Emergency Risk Management methodology and benchmark for utilities aimed at achieving the following:

  • Improved understanding of the capabilities between utility operators and community safety managers
  • Capacity for utility operators to benchmark their emergency risk management processes across the utility industry
  • Ability for utility operators to demonstrate their commitment to corporate social responsibility
  • A benchmark reflecting Australian community expectations, Australian government approaches to emergency risk management and Australian resource levels.

3. Arrangements at Commonwealth Level

3.1 Commonwealth Counter Disaster Task Force

The Commonwealth Counter-Disaster Task Force (CCDTF) is a senior interdepartmental committee, chaired by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, comprised of representatives of Commonwealth Government departments and agencies with a significant role to play in the provision of disaster relief or rehabilitation assistance. It is responsible to the Minister for Defence. On the advice of the Director General EMA, the Chair may activate the CCDTF during the response and recovery phase of a disaster in support of EMA activities.

3.2 Emergency/Disaster Plans at Commonwealth Level

Emergency Management Australia maintains and uses four Commonwealth Government disaster response plans, as follows:

  • Commonwealth Government Disaster Response Plan (COMDISPLAN) - To coordinate the provision of Commonwealth Government physical assistance in the event of a disaster in Australia or its offshore Territories.
  • Commonwealth Government Overseas Disaster Assistance Plan (AUSASSISTPLAN) - To coordinate the provision of Australian emergency assistance, using Commonwealth Government physical and technical resources, following a disaster in another country.
  • Australian Contingency Plan for Space Re-entry Debris (AUSCONPLAN SPRED) - To coordinate and control the activities of Commonwealth agencies in support of State/Territory authorities involved in locating, recovering and removing radioactive space debris and monitoring and neutralising any radiological contamination threat arising from the re-entry of radioactive space debris.
  • Commonwealth Government Reception Plan (COMRECEPLAN) - To coordinate the reception of persons evacuated into Australia following an overseas event.

4. State/Territory Organisations

Each State and Territory has established a peak committee of senior members of appropriate departments and agencies to consider emergency management matters. The names and functions of these organisations differ, but they are basically responsible for ensuring that proper plans and arrangements are made at State or Territory and local government level to deal with emergencies and disasters. State and Territory legislation allows the relevant Minister to appoint an Emergency/Disaster Controller to coordinate all essential service organisation activities and to liaise with the Commonwealth Counter Disaster Task Force as appropriate. Dedicated control/communication centres have been established in each jurisdiction. The organisations that are normally subject to this overriding coordination are:

  • State Emergency Service Organisation (SES)
  • Police
  • Fire Services (both Urban and Rural)
  • Communications
  • Water
  • Electricity and Gas utilities
  • Transport

A typical state structure is shown below in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Queensland, AustraliaDisaster Management SystemSource: SES Queensland

The most common events subject to coordination and control are:

  • Cyclone
  • Severe Hail and Thunder Storms
  • Flooding
  • Bushfires

For each of the above, the local State Emergency Services play a pivotal role in the coordination of repair crews rescue work and restoration of services.

Except for the Newcastle earthquake in 1989 there has been very little experience throughout Australia for the management and restoration of services subjected to earthquake damage.

5. State Emergency Services Organisations (SES)

The State Emergency Service is a National Network operating in each State and Territory under complementary jurisdictional legislation. It is an emergency and rescue service dedicated to assisting the community. Its personnel are almost entirely volunteers. While its major responsibilities are for flood and storm operations, the State Emergency Service provides an invaluable resource of trained rescuers to support the full-time emergency services in the event of a major disaster. In the rural areas of the States and territories, the Service provides the majority of the rescue effort, and units are involved in road accident rescue, bush search and rescue, rescue from heights and depths and many specialist forms of rescue which may be required due to local threats.

6. Energy Supply Organisations

Australian Energy Supply organisations have little experience with the management and restoration of services subjected to earthquake damage. They do, however have considerable experiences in managing the more common events such as bushfires, cyclones and storm damage. The resources available to each organisation are limited and heavy reliance has been placed on the provision of resources from other electricity organisations not affected. As noted under 7 below, however, the introduction of competitive energy markets in Australia has reduced the shared resource capacity.

6.1 Coordination and Planning

Eachenergy supply organisation is required to have an Emergency Management Plan. These plans, which are updated annually, are made available to the respective State and Territory counter disaster organisations. Generally the following information is included in the plans:

  • Formal Organisation Structure
  • Key Personnel and contact details
  • Emergency Management structure
  • Key Assets by location
  • Equipment and stores logistics
  • Personnel deployment
  • Backup computer and communications arrangements
  • Public and Government Relations

Usually a key executive is nominated as the controller for the organisation and forms part of the relevant State or Territory counter disaster committee.

6.2 Logistics

Because of the reliance on other energy supply organisations and contractors it is each organisation has to plan for an influx of personnel, equipment and stores during an emergency. Supply system maps, street guides and meal provision are some of the things that must be taken account. Radio communication is vital and mobile communication standards generally have been established which allow common emergency channels to be used between electricity supply organisations and other emergency services organisations. Non - compatibility of computer operating systems between organisations has proved to be an emerging issue.

Stores items such as overhead conductor, underground cable, transformers and switchgear, are not always available at short notice to enable restoration of services. Considerable work has been undertaken in Australia to achieve standardisation of these items and other hardware. This has largely been achieved on the East Coast of Australia. Prior to the major risk period from October through to April each year an assessment is made by each organisation of its stock situation and the possible availability of large critical items such as major substation transformers and switchgear from other organisations.

6.3System DesignConfiguration

6.3.1 Electricity

The electricity infrastructure of Australia is characterised by a “skinny” backbone transmission system connecting the major urban areas. While there is duplication of all major transmission lines there is little scope for switching around major system constraint points outside of the major urban areas. Within the urban areas sub transmission and high voltage feeders have good interconnection with remote monitoring, data acquisition and control facilities. Generally a substantial amount of automatic reconfiguration of high voltage systems is possible for a range of failures due to faults. Under frequency protection also provides automatic load shedding to mitigate the likelihood of cascaded failure of the system. All new line infrastructures in urban areas are underground and older infrastructure is progressively being replaced with underground systems. The major earthquake risk is for above ground support structures and these are now designed to appropriate standards to reduce failure during earthquakes. There is still a considerable amount of low voltage infrastructure in urban areas which is subject to tree damage during high winds. Restoration of the low voltage systems is generally labour intensive and requires considerable coordination with emergency authorities. The current major concern for electricity infrastructure is its vulnerability potential terrorist attack

6.3.2 Gas

The gas infrastructure of Australia is even more vulnerable to failure than the electricity infrastructure. It has very little capacity to by pass constraint points and damage. Automatic shut down valves are installed on Trunk feeders at city gateways and these can also be remotely operated. Unlike the Japanese systems, the Australian urban gas supply systems operate at high pressure and the “line pack” quantity of gas in the pipes can continue to supply gas for up to 5 days following shut down of the trunk feeders. This presents a significant problem during emergencies such as fire and earthquakes as most of the system requires manual operation to shut down supply at all levels. Cooperation is required from consumers to turn off their gas supplies when there is threat from fires or earthquakes. A considerable amount of the urban distribution systems is now via “plastic pipes ‘which are generally unlikely to suffer much damage during earthquakes.

6.4 Disaster Simulation Trials

Most organisations carry out at least one Disaster Simulation per annum to test all procedures and processes. These simulations usually involve other emergency service organisations and some major customers that need to respond quickly to electricity supply failure.

6.5 Damage Assessment

A general weakness that has been hard to overcome is the time taken to assess damage. Quite often the damage is more widespread than thought initially and this results in extended supply outages while sufficient additional resources are mobilised. In recent years a number of organisations have moved to over resource initially and reduce if necessary. In addition office staff are being utilised to assist with damage assessment.

7. Effect of National Competitive Energy Markets

Generally the introduction of National Energy Markets in Australia over the past decade has resulted in reduced co-operation between the various energy companies and effectively reduced their ability to respond to major emergency. Large vertically integrated organisations have been broken up into separate functional businesses and even these have been broken down to smaller businesses to increase competition. In some cases, however, there has been has been the formation of companies that now operate joint gas and electricity businesses. Overall, a greater reliance on government emergency response systems and management is emerging.

A related problem is the difficulty of integrating and coordinating of system protection, particularly for electricity at network ownership boundary points. A consequence of this may be ineffective automatic load shedding and switching during emergencies and cascaded system and generation failure.

8. Effect of National Security Concerns

The threat of damage to energy infrastructure for terrorist activity has resulted in a more and earlier intervention from government at all levels. Risk assessment of all energy system components is required and these assessments are progressively being audited. State governments have formed committees to review critical infrastructure. Energy companies believe that, at least initially, for major infrastructure failure events, security concerns will override all other considerations for restoration of supply.

9. Conclusion

There is an effective coordinating emergency response structure operating across Australia that is integrated with the energy supply response mechanisms to deal with the most common emergencies such as cyclones, floods, storms and bushfires. This structure is capable of responding adequately to earthquakes. Infrastructure security considerations are now overriding previous response plans and actions.

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Appendix A

Report From EMA on Canberra Bushfire Event

Event Details
Event Title / Canberra ACT - Bushfire
Event Category / Bushfire
GLIDE Number
Event Start Date / 18/01/2003
Event End Date / 18/01/2003
Duration of Event / 0 day/s
Location
Zone / ACT
Region / Canberra
Map / 95
Human Casualties
People Killed / 4
People Injured / 260
People Affected / 52,500
People Homeless / 100
People Evacuated / 2,500
Property Damaged / Damaged / Destroyed
Home / 100 / 530
Infrastructure / 500 / 535
Buildings / 15 / 20
Industrial Premises / 3
Financial Cost
Insured Cost / $30,000,000.00
Loss Assessment Cost / $70,000,000.00
Total Cost / $100,000,000.00
Commercial/Industry Cost
Cost Source
Information Sources
Source/s / Printed Press - Sydney Morning Herald
Printed Press - The Age
Printed Press - Canberra Times
Description
Severity/ Impact / Severe
ImpactRange / ACT
Details
There were unparalleled scenes of chaos in Canberra's suburbs as a massive week-old bushfire finally burst through the city's western perimeter on a 10km front and destroyed homes across 19 suburbs and rural settlements. The suddeness of the onslaught, heralded by billowing clouds of choking black smoke, caught residents by surprise early in the afternoon and found fire crews unable to cope. A man, aged 61 died from smoke inhalation in his home in Duffy., A woman, 83, died at Stromlo Forestry settlement in uncetain circumstances.
Duffy was the first casualty, losing as many as 40 homes as firefighting resources were overwhelmed by the ferocity of a fire driven on by 65km winds and soaring temperatures. Streets resembled war-time destruction, with houses reduced to smouldering shells, flanked by downed power poles, arcing power lines and wrecked and abandoned cars.
Power and water pressure failures across the city undermined the efforts by 500 firefighters and 100 police who fought a game rearguard action in more the 40 degree heat. Among dozens of horrifying spectacles, the BP service station in Duffy became a fireball, the RSPCA was lost, and TAFE at Weston, the AustralianDefenceCollege and Kambah Fire Station were damaged. Flaming embers driven ahead by the wind rained fire down on hundreds of houses, igniting parklands and trees, destroying gardens and leaving cars and homes in flames. Four evacuation centres were providing emergency accommodation to 2000 families displaced by the inferno.
As houses burnt down and people's efforts were focused on preventing further damage, approximately 25 per cent of Canberra's households, mainly in the outer north and west, were left without electricity. Many of ActewAGL's major assets were damaged by the fires, with little hope of restoring the power overnight, with serious damage to a zone substation in Lyons it would be several days before the Woden and Weston Creek areas could be reconnected. Actew chief executive said the water treatment plants at Stromlo and Googong had cut out because of power problems created by the bushfires. The impact of the bushfires also meant gas supply had been isolated to all parts of Weston and people were urged to turn off gas and electricity supplies to their houses if they experienced fire damage.
Driven by the strong winds, the fires that burned in nearby NamadgiNational Park roared through containment lines and into the outskirts of the capital. Dozens of homes in the suburbs of Duffy and Rivett were destroyed as flames rolled out of the pine forests and along whole streets. More were engulfed in Pearce, Torrens, Chapman and Giralang.
Mobile phone networks were clogged with calls from frantic fire-bound Canberrans as well as their many interstate friends and relatives. The crush on the lines did not cause long-term delays, but many callers were forced to wait their turn to get on the busy systems.
The fires threatened about 30 suburbs in the Belconnen, Tuggeranong and Weston Creek areas. Water-bombing helicpoters crisscrossed the city, filling their giant buckets from Lake Burley Girffin in its centre, residents were advised to fill bathtubs and buckets to put out spot fires as surging winds carried smouldering leaves and tinders.
One of five fire fronts threatened the ACT EMergency Services Bureau headquarters in the suburb of Curtain, forcing emergency teams to call in water-bombing helicopters and unroll hoses to defend the building. Several major roads in and around the capital were cut by fire.
Mt Stromol Observatory and its four telescopes were destroyed. Two of Australia's largest and oldest research telescopes were housed at the facility. The Australian National Universtiy, which runs the observatory, estimated the damage bill would exceed 20 million. Mt Stromlo and the Siding Springs Observatory, in northern NSW have made some of the world's most important space finds, recently discovering the oldest star. Stromlo's two telescopes were Australia's third and fourth largest and included the historic 1.3m telescope built in Vicotria in the 1870s.
Assets damaged or destroyed: 500 power poles - 35 electricity substations - Mt Stromlo Observatory - AustralianDefenceCollege - Kambah fire and ambulance station - Weston pathology laboratories - Holder phamaceutical store - Chapman reservoir - Lower Molonglo water treatment plant - Plantation forests - 40 public housing properties - kilometres of power lines.
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Appendix B
  • About Australia's Emergency Management System
  • Foreword
  • Preparing for Emergencies
  • Involve your family or household
  • Store important documents safely
  • Learn about your home
  • Find out about your local emergency services
  • Learn some basic first aid
  • Find out about emergency plans
  • Prepare an emergency kit and keep it handy
  • What to Do if an Emergency Occurs
  • What to do in specific emergency situations
  • 1. Bomb explosion
  • 2. Fire
  • 3. Receiving a suspicious package
  • 4. Hazardous chemicals release
  • 5. Biological agent release
  • 6. Radiological incident
  • If you are asked to evacuate your area
  • How to Cope Emotionally
  • Natural reactions
  • What to do
  • Helping children
  • First Aid Tips
  • Six key steps
  • Bleeding
  • Burns
  • Shock
  • Injuries to muscles, bones and joints
  • Where to go for more information

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