narrandera – devotions by wednesday
christa_six@hotmail.com
The other weekend I had the pleasure and privilege of co-coordinating my 4th River Camp for the region in which I minister, it’s a regional camp held annually that attracts over 100 young people and 90 odd leaders from the rural areas across the Riverina. the camp’s been going ever since I was a baby and many of those who went back then are still supportive of the event and some still come as leaders.
Actually, we hold two of these camps in the region, one down south and another centrally, the weekend before last I was at the Southern camp soaking in the atmosphere of the Murray.
This time however was the first camp where I’ve ever had to participate in, and co-coordinate a mass evacuation of the campsite.
Yes, we evacuated 190 people (120 kids, 60 leaders).
I thought I’d post some of what helped us to perform the evacuation so smoothly and safely for all of you out there, as well as maybe telling a little of our story (but not too much) for those of you who are interested.
It had rained Friday night leaving the dirt road from the main road to the campsite difficult for cars to travel on, we had a number of 4×4 vehicles on site that could make the journey and so we transported people in on The friday via 4×4 and trailers. Unfortunately it also decided to rain a lot more than the weather forecast had suggested it would, it took a while to get tents up and we had a few kids with wet tents and sleeping gear. A few of the leaders brought extra gear with them, I had 9 spare dome tents in my car, so over the evening we sorted things out for everyone. The decision was to stay at the campsite, Saturday’s forecast was a dry day, warm and sunny, we’d go ahead as planned and make use of the good weather on Saturday while reassessing our plans for Sunday.
Saturday was a dry day, tents and gear ere able to be dried, we were able to run all of our water activities and the mud left from the night before’s weather was manageable, but would still only be good for 4×4 vehicles. We were able to get our electrical gear in, use the projector and microphones and have a musical band set up. What’s more the weather forecast for the evening was good as well, no sign of storms, perhaps a light rain at night and another Sunday morning with a possible storm Sunday afternoon.
We made plans to alter the program for Sunday in order to have everything packed up before the storm was to hit and all seemed well.
At 8pm though, all of that started to change. Very quickly a storm came on in, high winds were causing dangerous branches to start to fall and tents to blow around. We managed to get all the electrical equipment packed away, the band managed to transport all their equipment t the shed up the road before the storm hit. Very quickly a number of decisions needed to be made, here’s what helped us get everything going.
a) We had an emergency assembly area, and we knew where it was.
b) We had a line of authority, people knew who would make the decisions and they were trusted.
c) We had contacted the emergency services prior to the camp, the SES, the police, the ambulance services all had knowledge of our camp and where it was, maps had been sent to them with the information of our camp.
d) We had all the contact details of the emergency services and contacted them when appropriate.
e) We had enough vehicles to perform the evacuation
f) We had leaders who were responsible, and who were ready to help out in any way.
g) We had a tight team of leaders
h) We had First Aid Officers who were ready to take on tasks when they arose
i) We had all the appropriate forms and contact details for all the campers, so when we decided to evacuate everyone to their homes we could perform the task relatively easily (some campers lived over 2 hours from the campsite)
j) We had an emergency plan that included all of the above.
In the end what we needed to do was evacuate to the safe shed area up the road where we set up a bbq and warm food, dry clothing and sleeping bags, a first aid area and where the SES met us and helped us out. We held leaders meeting in which we decided that it would be safer to send everyone home, which is where we phoned everyones parents and arranged transport for all campers to make it home.
After the completed evacuation a handful of leaders stayed back and slept overnight so we could pack everything up, all the tents and all the equipment and all the clothes on Sunday before the storm hit… Which we did.
The impressive thing is that after we left the site (and towed my car out) we were hit by the storm forecasted for the Sunday afternoon.
Wagga Wagga received over 11cm of rain in that storm.
We got out just in time…
The other weekend I had the pleasure and privilege of co-coordinating my 4th River Camp for the region in which I minister, it’s a regional camp held annually that attracts over 100 young people and 90 odd leaders from the rural areas across the Riverina. the camp’s been going ever since I was a baby and many of those who went back then are still supportive of the event and some still come as leaders.
Actually, we hold two of these camps in the region, one down south and another centrally, the weekend before last I was at the Southern camp soaking in the atmosphere of the Murray.
This time however was the first camp where I’ve ever had to participate in, and co-coordinate a mass evacuation of the campsite.
Yes, we evacuated 190 people (120 kids, 60 leaders).
I thought I’d post some of what helped us to perform the evacuation so smoothly and safely for all of you out there, as well as maybe telling a little of our story (but not too much) for those of you who are interested.
It had rained Friday night leaving the dirt road from the main road to the campsite difficult for cars to travel on, we had a number of 4×4 vehicles on site that could make the journey and so we transported people in on The friday via 4×4 and trailers. Unfortunately it also decided to rain a lot more than the weather forecast had suggested it would, it took a while to get tents up and we had a few kids with wet tents and sleeping gear. A few of the leaders brought extra gear with them, I had 9 spare dome tents in my car, so over the evening we sorted things out for everyone. The decision was to stay at the campsite, Saturday’s forecast was a dry day, warm and sunny, we’d go ahead as planned and make use of the good weather on Saturday while reassessing our plans for Sunday.
Saturday was a dry day, tents and gear ere able to be dried, we were able to run all of our water activities and the mud left from the night before’s weather was manageable, but would still only be good for 4×4 vehicles. We were able to get our electrical gear in, use the projector and microphones and have a musical band set up. What’s more the weather forecast for the evening was good as well, no sign of storms, perhaps a light rain at night and another Sunday morning with a possible storm Sunday afternoon.
We made plans to alter the program for Sunday in order to have everything packed up before the storm was to hit and all seemed well.
At 8pm though, all of that started to change. Very quickly a storm came on in, high winds were causing dangerous branches to start to fall and tents to blow around. We managed to get all the electrical equipment packed away, the band managed to transport all their equipment t the shed up the road before the storm hit. Very quickly a number of decisions needed to be made, here’s what helped us get everything going.
a) We had an emergency assembly area, and we knew where it was.
b) We had a line of authority, people knew who would make the decisions and they were trusted.
c) We had contacted the emergency services prior to the camp, the SES, the police, the ambulance services all had knowledge of our camp and where it was, maps had been sent to them with the information of our camp.
d) We had all the contact details of the emergency services and contacted them when appropriate.
e) We had enough vehicles to perform the evacuation
f) We had leaders who were responsible, and who were ready to help out in any way.
g) We had a tight team of leaders
h) We had First Aid Officers who were ready to take on tasks when they arose
i) We had all the appropriate forms and contact details for all the campers, so when we decided to evacuate everyone to their homes we could perform the task relatively easily (some campers lived over 2 hours from the campsite)
j) We had an emergency plan that included all of the above.
In the end what we needed to do was evacuate to the safe shed area up the road where we set up a bbq and warm food, dry clothing and sleeping bags, a first aid area and where the SES met us and helped us out. We held leaders meeting in which we decided that it would be safer to send everyone home, which is where we phoned everyones parents and arranged transport for all campers to make it home.
After the completed evacuation a handful of leaders stayed back and slept overnight so we could pack everything up, all the tents and all the equipment and all the clothes on Sunday before the storm hit… Which we did.
The impressive thing is that after we left the site (and towed my car out) we were hit by the storm forecasted for the Sunday afternoon.
Wagga Wagga received over 11cm of rain in that storm.
We got out just in time…
