Web 2.0 in Government Conference 2009

Bushfire 2.0 Case study: online response to the

2009 Victorian Bushfires

DARREN WHITELAW

Department of Justice, Victoria

24 June 2009

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What I’ll be covering in this session…

• A quick overview of the bushfires

• Victoria’s emergency management procedures

• The first weeks

• Statistics and behaviour in an emergency

• What we learnt

• Opportunities and challenges

• Some things to think about

• Questions.

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Just so we’re all on the same page…

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But first, a little background…

• Victoria’s Justice Department

• About me

• Victoria’s integrated emergency response– All hazards, all agencies

• 60,000 CFA volunteers

• Communication, not emergency response

• Doing more in the online space– Strategic online activity

– New Media Group.

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Let’s first pause a moment…

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The wost natural disaster in Australia’s history

Victorian Fire Map 9 February 2009, dse.vic.gov.au

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Yarra Valley, Black Saturday, Flickr

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Labertouche, Black Saturday, Drouin West CFA

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Gippsland, Black Saturday, Flickr

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Steels Creek home, Black Saturday, Daniel Cleaveley

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Tynong CFA, Black Saturday, Flickr

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CFA, Black Saturday, Flickr

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CFA truck, Black Saturday, Flickr

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Bunyip State Forest, Black Saturday, Anthony Brownhill

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Firestorm, 9 February 2009, Seven News

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Yarra Valley surrounds, March 2009, Elizabeth O’Donoghue

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Flowerdale, 20 February 2009, Bob Meister

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Kinglake Petrol Station, 8 March 2009, Neil Creek

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Marysville, 17 April 2009, Flickr

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Narbethong, near Healesville, The Age

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Kinglake, Aerial view, news.com.au

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Emergency protocols were activated

• State-wide emergency centre (IECC)

Australasian Inter-service Incident Management System

Chief Fire Officer

• Emergency information committee (EMJPIC)

• Fire Communication Taskforce.

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Online was going to be a major factor…

Hitwise Australia, March 2009

• 2007 Californian Bushfires

• Virginia Tech shootings

• Chinese Earthquake 2008

• LAFD, Red-Cross, traffic, CFA– No 1 trending topic on 9/2

• Emergency school closures

• Online most preferred channel

– Visits to government sites up 10.4%

– Outstripping US and UK usage

– Referrals from social media sites up 16.1% on last year

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A small team set about trying to help

• Established operations centre

• Looked at the evidence

• Defined the objective– Promote key messages

– Encourage donations

– Alleviate operational websites.

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The online infrastructure simply couldn’t cope

• CFA and DSE sites melted down

– 80% of all government traffic

– ‘CFA’ the fastest moving search term February 2009

– CFA visits accounted for 5% of all government traffic across Australia

• Red Cross donation page clogged

• IECC systems frantic, online secondary

• Bushfire hotline – 9,000 calls per hour

• Impact on 000

• International traffic magnified problems

• Web taskforce formed.

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• Worked together

• Coordinated all vic.gov online messages

• Developed social networking widget

• Set up SMS system

• Modified sig files to spread key messages

• Listened and reacted to call centre traffic.

We used fast, low-cost ways to react

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The idea of the widget was to divert non-urgent traffic…

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It all started with a single ‘click’

• Spread virally

• 119 installs

– websites, blogs, facebook sites and other social networking pages

• A total of 85,994 views

• Around one-quarter interact with it

• 26,373 latest news

• 1,382 Flickr

• 2,990 Twitter

• 5,504 donate site.

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The rules have now changed

• Traditional mediums couldn’t cope– 1.5m visits to the CFA site

• The cloud and SAAS came to the rescue

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Public support was overwhelming

• $369m raised

• $250K+ online advertising– 2 million ads Ninemsn and news.com

– $30k from Google

• Television, radio ads produced.

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So what did we learn from all this?

• More likely to turn to online news and traditional media outlets for info– ABC News Online, Google News Australia, and The Age

• One million page views on the google maps

• Need for hyper-response– Searches for “bushfire” dropped four weeks after the

crisis

– Chain-of-command

• Use your networks, spread the word

• If you don’t claim the space others will.Source: Hitwise, March 2009

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People are looking for specific information in an emergency

Bushfire searches fell into five categories:

• Appeal (fundraising)

• Education (survival)– News and media; Government 8.9%, Wikipedia

• General (Victorian Bushfires)

• Informational (news, maps)– CFA, ABC News, Google News, DSE, The Age

• Services (CFA, DSE, government agencies).

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Bushfire searches by query type (Jan-Mar 2009)

Source: Hitwise, March 2009

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Some things to think about

• Online is major player– Phones, radio, television

• Don’t underestimate the power of crowd sourcing

• Who ‘owns’ your information?

• Can your infrastructure cope? What’s the alternative?

• How’s your real time evaluation?

• Move fast to harness public support

• Can’t sit back and wait to be asked.

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To wrap up and summarise…

Provided an overview of the bushfires

Explained what happened in the first weeks

Identified some challenges

Shared some of the learnings

Left with some things to think about…

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Over to you… Questions?

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The worst natural disaster in Australia’s history

• A series of fires that ignited or started burning across Victoria on Saturday 7 February 2009

• Total of 173 people killed, another 500 injured

• Up to 400 individual fires recorded

• Started with worst-ever bushfire conditions recorded – intense heat (40°c), strong winds up to 120kph, dry bushland

• More than 4,000 firefighters responded

• Wiped out or severely damaged towns of Kinglake, Marysville, Narbethong, Strathewen and Flowerdale

• Took nearly one month to extinguish all the fires

• Destroyed 2,200 homes.