Essential services disruption
The loss of electricity, water or telephone reception can be disruptive, and in some cases life threatening.
While service providers generally work quickly to restore services, planning how you might manage without essential services for a short period can reduce the impacts.
The Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions, and the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) are the leads for this emergency for the Surf Coast Shire.
Why are essential services disruptions a risk?
This is the loss or breakdown of essential infrastructure and services that the community relies on daily, such as electricity, water, telecommunications, or transport networks. Losing one of these often happens alongside another disaster (a storm taking down powerlines, for example) rather than on its own.
Who and what is most at risk?
- People who rely on power for medical equipment or refrigerated medication
- Aged care facilities, healthcare services and vulnerable households
- Businesses that depend on power, water or telecommunications to operate
- Isolated communities that rely on a single access road
What you can do
Being ready to look after yourself for 72 hours can make any outage much less stressful, whatever the cause. The First 72 Hours planning tool includes information on how to prepare for essential services disruptions or other circumstances where you are isolated. See the General planning tools section on the Make a plan page.
If you rely on electricity for medical equipment, make sure you advise your energy provider so they can help you prepare for and manage impacts of essential services outages. You can find out more about this program here.
You can find further general advice here on what to do before, during and after an energy outage.