This story is contributed by Warwick Lorenz, Managing Director of Australian Pump Industries. The company developed the Aussie Fire Chief, the groundbreaking design that changed the way people think about performance and value for money in a lightweight portable fire pump.
Australian Pump was a start-up 28 years ago, operating from a shed in my backyard. We didn’t have much apart from ambition and a desire to introduce what we hoped would be better products for fire, flood and drought. That’s a tall order, but we thought if we couldn’t do that, why would we bother to start the business in the first place?
Since then, beginning with the Aussie Fire Chief, what we claim is the world’s best lightweight portable fire pump, we’ve developed an extensive product range, inspired by market input. We now produce a full line of pumps that are suitable for all of the three calamities that seem to go in a rotation and that we can no longer ignore.
Floods have generated massive problems around the globe from the Americas to Western Europe, even London, as well as South East Asia, recently Pakistan and even the South Sudan. Catastrophic floods, taking place right here in Australia, should be a great lesson for us and for the relevant government departments in all states.
If this is the new reality, and we accept it is, then surely it’s time we start to do something about prepping Australia for it in a serious way.
2022: the year of floods
Yes, it’s true, some cities in Australia have flooded three times in the last year! Homeowners are starting to get a little bit fed up that governments have done nothing about flood mitigation. The obvious need for capturing that water and storing it seems to be lost somewhere along the line.
Moreover, that intense record rainfall has brought on a huge fuel load in forests, coastal scrub and on the lands of our hardworking and by now disappointed farmers. Imagine being ready for a record crop and then finding you get wiped out by torrential rainstorms and flooded paddocks.
That huge increase in fuel leads to the next round of the cycle, catastrophic bushfires.
Protecting the Urban Interface
Fire authorities are very conscious of the Urban Interface. It is suggested there are up to one million homes in jeopardy, potentially sitting ducks for the next major fire event.
The Urban Interface is that area of cities, country towns and even hamlets in regional Australia, where people like to live amongst the trees. Who wouldn’t? it’s pleasant, the birds are singing, the air is cleaner, and it’s more peaceful than suburban Australia.
The downside is the proximity to national parks and bushland. Many of the houses are built along roads perched on the top of ridges or gullies. Those spots are considered high-danger areas as fires burn upwards, not down. The danger is exacerbated this year by the winter rains. The burn-offs that would normally happen during the winter to a large extend didn’t occur due to the constant rain. The result is massive loads of growth, which is already starting to dry off as we get to the end of November. Blustering winds and high temperatures mean ‘scorchers’ leading to real fire danger.
Aussie’s flood solution in South Sudan
We’re proud to say that we were able to build and ship 6in Aussie self-priming heavy-duty trash pumps, powered by 80hp Deutz diesel engines, in both skid and trailer configuration as part of the relief programme to the Sudan.
Air freighting a 6in pump that weighs more than half a tonne is no inexpensive exercise. We did it because we could see these people were in serious trouble. By now, there are at least 20 of those big 6in pumps doing their best to divert water from Juba, South Sudan’s capital.
In the meantime, we did the best we could supplying pumps and hose kits to get the job done. What we didn’t know at the time was this was going to be a rehearsal for the floods along the Lachlan, Murray, Murrumbidgee, Murray and Goulburn rivers.
By having built big pumps for the mining industry that are simple, efficient and extremely reliable, we were able to help people in distress, not only in the Sudan but right here in Australia.
Flood response?
People in flood-affected areas have been scathing in their comments about Emergency Services and the government’s slow reaction to the floods. Whilst you have to sympathise, government bureaucrats talk about their ‘one in one hundred’ year floods as if the past is any indication of the future. We should all realise that the climate-change issue is real and that we can expect this cycle of floods, fires and droughts in a regular rotation, but not necessarily in that order.
In Hamburg, significant flood mitigation works protect the city. It’s doubtful that our local government bodies have the ability to engineer and build the kind of levees and dam systems that appear to be required for the future. What they can do is put in a battery of two or three of these big 6in pumps like the Aussie units being used in the South Sudan as a temporary fix.
One of those pumps will move 360,000 litres of water per hour; three of them will move one million litres per hour. Imagine a battery of two or three of these machines working 24 hours a day: that equals 26 million litres of water per 24-hour shift!
The question is: will government encourage councils to be self-sufficient? Will we all wait for federal and state governments to agree on an action plan? It could take decades.
Drought completes the circle
Who can forget the last six-year drought. Farmers lost their crops, their livestock, sometimes their farms. Governments offered a pitiful $15 an hour for destitute farmer to dig mallee roots to ‘put food on the table’. Politicians looked sad, standing in dry dams with their hands on their hips. No wonder there were suicides.
Nobody talked about a massive programme to build dams to prevent this happening again. How ironic it is that if those dams had been built some time in the last 30 years, we may have been able to contain the flood, divert the rivers to storage and protect the towns flooding today.
Summary
Here at Castle Hill, Sydney, Australian Pump operates from a 2.5-acre site with a team of 50 very motivated people producing pumps that are designed to fight fires, prevent floods and harvest storm water. That’s what we do!
We’re proud of our export activities with fire and flood pumps being shipped off to destinations as far as the United States, Indonesia and even Greece, France and Spain. The fact that we have to be ready to fight global warming is a reality. Conferences and meetings don’t seem to work. We need infrastructure programmes to combat the effects, not more demonstrations about the cause. Where are the levees and dams? That would be tangible action to deal with drought and flood.
For more information, go to www.aussiepumps.com.au
About the Author
Warwick Lorenz is Managing Director of Australian Pump Industries. He is a seasoned campaigner in pump manufacturing going back to the early ’70s when he was a young man. He was given the task of running Pacific Pump, a member of the old Tutt Byrant machinery conglomerate.
