Making Communities Safer in Times of Flood: The Story of the Floodplain Management Authorities of New South Wales

Citation

Keys, C. (2010), "Making Communities Safer in Times of Flood: The Story of the Floodplain Management Authorities of New South Wales", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 275-275. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2010.19.2.275.3

Australia's made more headlines recently as a continent of drought and fire than water and flood. But this book reminds us these things move in cycles. On April 14, 1999, Sydney was struck by a single severe hailstorm which did about $2.3 billion in damage in less than an hour. “Flooding is a serious threat in Australia,” Keys writes. “Indeed it is amongst the most serious natural hazards which the community faces. Nationally, of the common perils of nature, only heat waves have killed more people over the past two centuries than floods.”

This book chronicles the efforts of flood control in New South Wales since the Floodplain Management Authorities of New South Wales came into existence in 1961.