One community's bushfire plan could be a 'gamechanger' in emergencies - ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Who warns you of disaster when your mobile fails? One community has a plan
On January 8, 2026, Victorian authorities began warning a catastrophic fire rating had been declared for the following day. Conditions would be "the most dangerous experienced this summer", the Country Fire Authority (CFA) said. One brigade in central Victoria issued a clarion call on social media: "160 people died on Black Saturday in the district 12 response area" on a similarly risky day.
Further west, in Castlemaine, Fiannuala Morgan was encouraging her parents to leave their property in the bone dry, flinty hills outside of town. Fiannuala would be staying in Castlemaine, a town of around 7,000 people etched out of goldrush-era buildings and wide, sleepy streets.
By 9 o'clock the following morning, it was 31 degrees. "I was aware of this catastrophic rating but did not have an integrated sense of what that actually meant," Fiannuala tells me. "Because when the fire started, it really went from zero to 100 in a matter of seconds."
Everything seemed to happen at once. When a ferocious hot wind arrived, it was as if the door of a giant oven had burst open. The power went out. The emergency app on Fiannuala's phone lit up, showing multiple fires had started. "And then my phone stopped working, but not completely," she says. "The first thing that happened was my emergency app froze. And then I tried to call my mother, and I couldn't get through on the phone. I tried to send a text to either my mother or my father, and that didn't work either."
A few kilometres away, a grass fire was racing through paddocks towards the nearby orchard town of Harcourt, known for its juicy apples. Fiannuala knew about the fire because she was able to call her brother in Melbourne, even though other calls were failing. "So then, he was updating me about what was happening on the VicEmergency app."
At some point, Fiannuala left her house and walked up a nearby hill to try to get reception. From the hill she watched as a thick cloud of smoke turned the blue sky an ominous shade of orange. Her brother told her the wind was pushing the fire towards Castlemaine. "I had always thought that Castlemaine was a very safe place if there was a fire but suddenly you realise, oh gosh, there's actually nowhere in these conditions that is safe," she says.
Back at home Fiannuala put her Persian cat in the bath because the air conditioning had dropped out along with the power. The blackout had also rendered the NBN useless. She didn't have a backup battery-powered radio, so she turned on her car radio to listen to the ABC's emergency broadcast. "But by that point," she says, "the broadcasting tower at Mount Alexander had burned".
Alone, and with dwindling access to information, she decided to find her parents who were now sheltering at a friend's house nearby. "It was not responsible of me to go," she says. "There were no traffic lights … people were driving erratically." Fiannuala found that her parents had patchy mobile phone signals and couldn't access the emergency apps either. "Sometimes you could use your phone and sometimes you couldn't," she says.
As the afternoon progressed, emergency warnings "to shelter indoors now" were being issued for nearby Harcourt. The fast-moving grassfire would eventually destroy 66 dwellings. The only certainty was that there wasn't any. Some houses and business were mangled, blackened wrecks, others stood undamaged beside them. Lives were up-ended. But a wind change turned the flames away from the larger town of Castlemaine.
For Fiannuala, a lecturer in publishing and communications at the University of Melbourne, the day brought a "completely new awareness of risk". She has channelled the experience into understanding why multiple forms of communication failed and what that means for regional communities in Australia facing increasingly severe natural disasters in an era of climate crisis.
The communication networks that support essential services like bushfire warnings have "not been adequately strengthened", she has warned, and recent changes, like the rollout of the NBN, the retirement of copper-wire landlines (which were more reliable during power outages), and the shutdown of the 3G network, have left communities like Castlemaine dangerously unaware of the fragility of the communication systems they should be able to rely on in an emergency.
There is every chance that the next time this happens the outcome could be fatal. In her mind's eye, Fiannuala sees a woman behind the wheel, without access to information, making the ruinous decision to drive into an inferno.
It is not as though there haven't been warnings. The royal commission after the Black Summer fires in 2019-20 meticulously dissected the ways telecommunications failed, mostly due to power outages, and how communities were left without access to crucial emergency information, unable to contact each other or emergency services, or access money to purchase supplies. And the 2024 Regional Telecommunications Review stressed that resilient telecommunication networks were lifesaving, and that more needed to be done to bolster them in the bush.
Then there's the recent Optus and Telstra outages, and the Triple-0 calls that never made it through, which demonstrated just how fallible our networks are.
Into this mess walked Vince Di Pietro. A former naval aviator and commander of the fleet air arm and ex-chief executive of Lockheed Martin Australia. A man who operates with a pilot's attention to detail and situational awareness, who happens to live in a place ravaged by flood and fire. When I meet Vince at his home in Nowra, on NSW's verdant south coast, he shows me into the kitchen and, before he's finished putting the kettle on, launches into explaining the one-of-a-kind project I'm here to ask him about.
In December 2019, weeks after dry lightning ignited a bushfire that would leave the whole region ashen and traumatised, Vince took a call from the local council chief executive asking if he would coordinate the recovery effort. When he arrived at the emergency operations centre and saw the fire maps, he says his first words were, "This isn't looking flash".
By the time the Currowan fire was extinguished, it had burned for two months, generated its own thunderstorms, destroyed hundreds of homes, and taken three lives. "At its most dangerous," Counsel Assisting Donna Ward told the NSW Bushfires Coronial Inquiry, "it would roar and belt and destroy everything in its path."
Afterwards, as the director of the Shoalhaven City Council's recovery and resilience project, Vince wanted to know why thousands of people had been stranded on the highway during a bushfire, unable to drive north or south because of road closures, at the mercy of a wind change. "How did these people not know to leave earlier?" he says.
People couldn't buy petrol because ATMs were down, and they were unable to call their relatives from a pay phone because their mobile phones were flat, coverage was patchy and they didn't know any numbers off by heart. (This week, a payphone further down the coast in Narooma was heritage listed to commemorate the vital role it played during Black Summer when mobile networks failed.)
"It's all connected," Vince tells me. "The things that fail — it's all about what we're relying on for our lives to run. We're one cell thick the whole way across every discussion.” He holds up his hand in a pincer grasp. “They're that thick, and once you bust that membrane, quite frankly, you're f***ed.”
The local recovery and resilience project identified three critical things the community would need so it could receive accurate and timely information the next time a natural disaster struck. "The first one was power, the second one was telecommunications, and the third one was an ability to get messaging out that didn't rely on either of those two when shit was trumps," Vince says.
Put another way, relying on mains electricity to power telecommunications networks affects their resilience. Between 19 December, 2019 and 31 January, 2020, 1,390 telecommunication facilities were impacted by bushfires and half of them experienced outages of four hours or more, according to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). The overwhelming majority of incidents were caused by power outages — direct fire damage accounted for only 1 per cent of incidents, ACMA reported. The median length of outage was 1.6 days.
The Shoalhaven resilience project settled on creating 26 "community information hubs", built into existing council buildings, that have their own solar and battery power system, and can also run off a generator. The hubs have information screens inside and outside the buildings, controlled by the local emergency operational controller and council, and satellite "voice over IP" phones. The system relies on a geo-stationary satellite network to function when the cellular link becomes congested or unavailable. While the buildings themselves aren't bunkers and could be impacted by fire, Vince says they're situated in the centres of towns and villages — areas most likely to receive firefighter protection during a fire front.
Built thanks to a $2 million state and federal grant, the community information hubs are understood to be the only network of its kind in Australia. Shoalhaven City Council told ABC News it had renewed its telecommunications contract with Pivotel and said its ongoing operation was now covered by council after the bushfire recovery grant ended. In its first year of operation, council listed Pivotel's internet services as costing around $170,000.
Not far from Vince's house, a TV screen in a custom-built protective box hangs outside the local community hall which has been transformed into one of the 26 information hubs. At night it glows like a lighthouse, advertising local events and information including fire-danger ratings. Another screen is visible from inside the building.
Vince envisaged the screens working like a "digital piazza" where locals and tourists alike — in summer, the region's population swells by thousands and four of the hubs are located within council-owned caravan parks — could build a habit of checking important information on the screens as they visit a hall for an event or simply walk past.
Then, during an emergency like a bushfire or a flood, the screens would switch to "red mode", displaying emergency information that can be tailored to each location. The screens can also display a code to a lockbox containing a key to unlock the hall and access the satellite VoIP phone, alongside instructions on how to use it and important photo numbers. "If you're at that stage, at any of these hubs, it's pretty grim," Vince says. "But hopefully you're not there at that stage because you've left."
One of the most widely shared photographs from the Black Summer fires is of a kangaroo bouncing past a blazing house. The frightened roo is silhouetted by a wall of red-hot flames. Photographer Matthew Abbott said he took the shot at Conjola, where he saw "unmatched mayhem: crowds trying to evacuate down a single country road as thick smoke rose above them".
In the days afterwards, the ABC reported: "Residents had no warning, no road out, no power or phone lines, and a failing water supply when an inferno ravaged Conjola Park and its tourist-thronged neighbour, Lake Conjola."
Vince hopes that if fire returns to Conjola in the future, the community information hubs — of which there are two in the immediate area — will make all the difference. He says one piece of vital information that didn't flow through in 2019 was that the water supply was going to run out because of a melted pump further north.
This, along with the standard emergency warnings, he says, is the type of detailed information that could be conveyed on information hub screens. "With the comms person from council sitting right next to you with the box that controls the information screens, you could say, 'Tell them to get out of Dodge now', and you would have had said 'The water will not flow from about three o'clock because the pump house has melted'."
Richard Hart, the Local Emergency Management Officer, says once emergency mode is activated, information can be conveyed "almost instantaneously". But the option to open the centres and provide access to the satellite VoIP phone would work on a "case by case basis", he says, and likely only be activated in the aftermath of an event — to avoid people congregating at these sites as they're not evacuation centres. Richard says the hubs are ideal places to set up temporary recovery centres where people could make calls, store medication in the fridge, or use a charger.
When Vince first imagined these "digital piazzas" he hoped they might also address a malaise of our time perhaps even bigger than our fallible telecommunications networks — misinformation and disinformation. Disaster disinformation is a growing problem in Australia, and can harm both preparedness and recovery. Effective response also relies on people trusting the information authorities are sharing in emergency. And trust in institutions is shrinking. Official channels aren't always the public's first point of call for information, as one study into the 2022 floods found.
But whether residents know about the community information hubs, let alone trust them, is up for debate. Vince believes the hubs could be better promoted, and the information screens could be used more to provide community information outside of emergencies.
According to council minutes, last year council asked the Lions, Rotary, Apex clubs and the Country Women's Association if they were aware the information screens at the hubs could be used for promotion — three of the four said they hadn't heard of them, one club said it was aware but unsure how they work. A volunteer on the management committee of one of the halls which houses a community information hub also raised concerns that the technology in the hubs wasn't being tested — something council denies.
For Richard, the hubs are "a game changer" but he concedes community engagement remains a challenge — getting residents to come along to disaster preparedness expos, for instance, hasn't been easy.
Brett Cripps was in Lake Conjola during the 2019 fire. His family has owned a holiday house overlooking the lake since the 1970s. Brett made national news headlines when he saved people with his boat, including his neighbours. "They were getting their cars ready to go and they would have been…" he trails off. A photo of him driving a family to safety on the other side of the lake was circulated on Instagram in the hours afterwards; he says this was the only way his own family, who were in Sydney, knew he was safe because he lost communications about 10 minutes before the fire front hit.
Brett's family have rebuilt their holiday house, and he travels down the coast from his home in Cronulla as often as he can. He hopes communication will be better next time there's a fire. But he didn't know about the community information hubs and the local information system until I called him up.
He's confused about their purported benefit. Why use physical screens rather than social media? What would access to a satellite VoIP phone do? Would anyone come if you called for help? "I'm just probably a bit pessimistic because we're on the other side of the of the lake, we're one of the first ones that were hit,” Brett says. There are things that those who have lived through a fire can never forget. But he can see how they could work in the hours and days afterwards. “I get that, that's a good idea,” he says.
As Vince drives me between several of the community information hubs around Nowra, in towns and hamlets that feel slightly shuttered because it's winter and the holiday houses are empty, the sky is blue and the water is shimmering. On a day like today you wouldn't believe that the sky could turn black, he says, "but I've seen it happen".
After the Shoalhaven's community info hub project was rolled out in 2023, several ministers toured the site, and Vince hoped it would lead to a wider rollout of the system in other high-risk areas. So far, at least one other NSW council, plans to replicate the system.
There are also other community initiatives, like Channon's CB radio networks, and piecemeal private funding for battery and solar upgrades to community halls such as Strathbogie in regional Victoria, which has received a private grant to install solar power and batteries to run wi-fi, lights and a kitchen during outages.
At a federal government level, there's a program to provide satellite internet connections to evacuation centres, and community wi-fi sites (although not with back-up power). There's also a program to improve the resilience of facilities like mobile towers.
The biggest challenge to improving resilience, says Paul Box, a senior principal research consultant with the CSIRO's Sustainability Pathways Program, is the coordination and collaboration that is required between different service providers. And while a lot of work is being undertaken, Paul says, "funds are oversubscribed and the magnitude of the risk that we face is quite significant".
But some believe not enough is being done. "The number of times that telecommunications is raised as being a massive risk to life, and still we don't have things like an obligation on power backup, still we don't have temporary disaster roaming," says independent MP Dr Helen Haines. (Temporary disaster roaming is due to come into effect this fire season.) "We need to build these obligations into primary legislation. So, it's a must, not a hope."
Helen has introduced a private member's bill to obligate Optus and Telstra to provide 24 hours of back-up power to mobile towers in high-risk areas — so far it hasn't progressed. Under her proposal approximately 3,200 mobile network sites in Australia would require the upgrades.
She has also pushed for changes to the Universal Mobile Service Obligation bill, which would require Telstra, Optus and TPG Telecom to provide voice and text coverage to everywhere in Australia. Her amendment means the discretionary powers a minister can use to exempt providers from their obligation to provide these services must be published to ensure transparency. Asked if we're better off than we were before Black Summer, Helen says: "I have very, very low confidence that we won't find ourselves in exactly the situation that we find ourselves in every bushfire."
Fiannuala is also critical of the current piecemeal approach which relies more on individual effort than a shared responsibility between government and industry. "Preparedness should not be left to individuals," she says. "Especially when research shows disadvantage compounds one's ability to prepare for and survive natural disasters."
A small brick building hides in the corner of the Nowra showgrounds, near a free campsite. One of the community information hubs, its screen blinks from the afternoon shadows. A group of school kids and their dads walk past it. "People said no one would see this screen," Vince says. "But look at the people passing by."
Vince is in constant conversation with the naysayers, real and imaginary. He hopes, one day, that the project will be embraced nationally. But it may never happen. "Now, some folks are saying, 'Well, we're well beyond the satellite now because we've got so much better mobile phone communications'," he says. "Every time I hear that, I think it's the first thing that fails and it still will be. When the fire goes up that mountain, I'll tell you, the mast is going to get hit."
