When the flooding hit Woodend on October 13, residents said the lack of mobile coverage and inability to get in contact with loved ones elsewhere had been “dangerous”.
Reception is an ongoing issue in the town, a fight reignited by fires, storms or floods, or any disaster where it’s vital to access information.
During the recent severe weather event, which cut power at thousands of homes and inundated streets, parks and homes, resident Andrew Price said he hadn’t been able to make calls all day, and without a landline, he was cut off.
“[Mobile coverage is] an inconvenience all the time, and in a disaster situation it’s obviously dangerous,” he said.
“You don’t have access to the information you need, you don’t know where road closures are, you don’t get flood warnings.
“My daughter who lives in Geelong was panicking because four of us couldn’t receive phone calls.”
At a Macedon Ranges council storms community information session on October 19, another Woodend resident and former emergency manager with SES, Pete Stanley, raised the same concerns.
“When we lose power, most people in town do not have access to internet at all… if this was a fire, we would be in dire straits – I say that as a community member but also as an incident controller as well,” he said.
Council emergency management co-ordinator Eliza Tipping said there were council projects under way to improve off-grid power sources to assist communications.
“Unfortunately it hasn’t been ready for this even t… If your battery powers out on your device then you may not get [access to the VicEmergency app], so we rely on common sense, which I know sometimes doesn’t prevail,” she said.
She reiterated it was important to have community members who can take charge and provide advice in disaster situations.
Telstra regional manager Marcus Swinburne said power outages had not impacted the network, but the overload of people using the network which caused communications problems. He said work was being done to construct another mobile tower.
“The challenge with Woodend is not coverage per se, it’s a capacity and congestion issue … when NBN and fixed lines go down, everyone piles onto the mobile network,” he said.
He said the tower in Woodend was hoped to be completed by December 15, depending on challenges faced during installation including the wet weather.
Elsie Lange
