Environmental incidents
Environmental incidents include both natural and non-natural hazards.
Natural hazards can include events such as cyclones, flooding, heatwaves and bushfires, earthquakes and tsunamis. Natural hazards can also include biological incidents and can be either natural or non-natural. Natural biological incidents generally relate to disease outbreaks associated with animals and plants.
Non-natural hazards can include chemical, biological and radiological incidents.
- Chemical incidents can include vehicle and industrial spill accidents and industrial fires.
- Non-natural biological incidents can include disease outbreaks, either accidental or deliberate, affecting human health.
- Radiological incidents involve the release of radioactive material.
Environmental incidents are managed as two different phases, response and recovery.
The response phase for environmental incidents involves minimising impacts to the environment from the initial incident but is also about managing actions to mitigate the overall incident impacts.
The recovery phase is about returning the site to either the original environmental condition or an agreed level and normally starts before the conclusion of the response phase.