About the film

With our changing climate increasingly creating more intense extreme events and disasters, there is more need than ever to be able to manage those disasters. While many people are aware of uniformed emergency responders and their heroic acts during disasters, an important group of people at the front lines of disaster management work behind the scenes to keep communities safe: those in public health.

Dealing with Disasters turns the lens onto the efforts of Queensland’s public health workers, and those they collaborated with, to manage a large-scale and intense set of disasters: the Summer of Sorrow. In 2010-2011, eighty per cent of the enormous state of Queensland was beset by severe flooding and cyclones. Over close to a year, public health workers, in collaboration with emergency management, local government, and the NGO sector, worked tirelessly to prevent loss of life, outbreaks of disease, and other harms. From prevention planning, to responding to the aftermath of the disasters, public health worked within the emergency management system to tackle challenge after challenge, and to help the community to care for themselves and stay healthy and safe throughout the turmoil.

Dealing with Disasters brings a spotlight to these ‘silent achievers’, and shows us that with adequate support, they can help us to manage disasters. It seeks to contribute to conversations about public health’s role in managing climate-related disasters across the world, and to raise hope that we can deal with the disasters in our future. Sometimes these complex issues can’t quite be communicated through data or research papers, so we hope that by telling this story through film, we can deal with these issues in action, for a better understanding of them by all.

For further information about the film, or any of the issues that it raises, have a look at The Centre for Environment and Population Health’s research, or get in contact with us.

in the media