Black Saturday at Mt Tassie

17 Mar 2009

Australians will always remember the devastating day of carnage from the 2009 Victorian bush fires as "Black Saturday", when fires swept across regional Victoria wiping out entire towns and sparing nothing in their path, including several Broadcast Australia transmission sites.

One of the most severely impacted Broadcast Australia sites was at Mt Tassie, 29 kilometres south of Traralgon.

 

Mt Tassie provides direct broadcasting and communications services to the Latrobe Valley and also provides program feeds to transmission sites at Mills Trig, Foster North, Jennings Hill, Flagstaff Hill, Mt Livingstone, Donald's Knob and Mt Raymond.

 

On the afternoon of 7 February, the Broadcast Australia Network Operations Centre (NOC), which monitors the operations of the Broadcast Australia network 24/7, received a number of equipment alarms, and as part of its normal procedure contacted its local Mt Tassie First In Maintainer (FIM) to investigate. At this time there was no perceived danger from the distant bushfires. Our FIM entered the facility where he found that some of the power outputs had been reduced and had set off equipment alarms.

 

Under increasingly difficult conditions (smoke and embers starting to rain down on the building), the FIM commenced the shut down of equipment in an attempt to prevent this potentially dangerous matter from being drawn into the building's ventilation systems. These embers could cause damage or set the equipment on fire. The NOC and the local District Supervisor, alerted to the situation, placed a number of calls to arrange for the FIM's evacuation from the site, but by this stage emergency resources were stretched and the fires too close for assistance to be provided. This left the FIM with no option but to stay at the site until the fire front passed.

 

Using the site garden hose our FIM hosed down the walls of the building, trying to keep the fire at bay. Within minutes fire had engulfed the generator room and office, damaging the generator, battery banks and control systems. The transmitter hall escaped direct damage from the fire.

Having been alerted to the scale of the fires and in particular the Mt Tassie situation, Broadcast Australia appointed an overall Victorian Disaster Coordinator to implement its disaster response plan with the main objective of ensuring the safety of all BA personnel and coordinating the re-establishment of services as quickly as possible to those communities which had been left without any form of communication.

 

On Sunday morning, another dedicated FIM was able to gain access to the Mt Tassie site from a safer access route and to assist the original FIM in safely evacuating the site and provide preliminary reports on the site damage. A team of senior transmission technicians had been assembled to assist and manage the Mt Tassie site service restoration, freeing up other local Victorian Broadcast Australia maintenance transmission staff to respond to the impact of the ongoing bushfire emergency.

 

A Site Disaster Coordinator was appointed to manage all local issues and a Field Services Coordinator to coordinate field activities - both reporting to the overall Victorian Disaster Coordinator. Interstate resources were also mobilised to provide technical advice and assist with on site reconfigurations and restorations.

At the same time, requests for information and updates were escalating from all site clients to the NOC and extra staff were deployed to manage resources. By midday on Sunday the NOC established a dedicated service desk and dedicated phone number to address all Victorian issues including site access, information updates for customers and communications with police and emergency services.

 

The Broadcast Australia disaster team worked throughout Sunday organising key tasks and updating clients.

On Monday 9 February, while the area was still cordoned off by emergency service personnel, a team of inspectors from Broadcast Australia, led by the Site Disaster Coordinator, were given special permission by the emergency services to visit the site in order to conduct an assessment of the damage to the building, infrastructure and equipment, and to also identify any existing or potential OH&S issues.

The fire damage to the site was significant, destroying not only a large proportion of the building's structure and contents, but also all mains power into the site.

While fire consumed some of the building, a lot of equipment was damaged by dust, soot, carbon fibres and oily residue that had been spread throughout the transmission hall as a result of the hot and windy conditions. Senior technicians, engineers and replacement equipment arrived at the site from locations around the country. The teams worked around the clock to install and configure temporary power and other site infrastructure, to get services back up and running as quickly as possible for the local community.

With hard work and well targeted efforts, the first service was back on air by 4pm on Monday 9 February, less than 48 hours after the disaster. Other services were gradually restored and by 20 February, less than two weeks later, all services managed by Broadcast Australia from Mt Tassie were restored. Further building work will be required to return the site to its previous condition.

The successful and expedient restoration of services was the result of a well implemented and executed disaster recovery plan, achieved with the support and assistance of ABC, SBS, WIN TV, Prime TV, Southern Cross TV, DDA, Optus, CFA, Victorian Police and the Department of Sustainability and Environment.