Emergency Broadcasting

Online training resources are now available

You and your station has access to online learning that will give you the tools to start important conversations around your station's role in an emergency.

The course will provide you with the knowledge, understanding and competency to be better equipped and ready for the next emergency broadcast, should you choose to take on the role of an emergency broadcaster. 

The course is designed for both station managers, and for individual volunteers and broadcasters.

You'll learn about:

• How to put together your emergency broadcast plan by identifying the government and agency resources you should look out for, and the risks within your area.
• What sort of ‘emergency broadcast’ station you think you should be, could be or want to be.
• How messages are constructed, what sort of information they should contain, and when to broadcast them.
• The mental challenges and coping strategies for broadcasters and stations involved in emergency broadcasting.
• And more!

Along the way you'll hear from experts and from community broadcasters with firsthand experience - they can tell us what it is really like, what went well and maybe what they would do differently next time.

Click here to find out more about CBAA Learning.

CMTO's Emergency Preparedness Training

If you're read to take emergency broadcasting to the next level, why don't you try the Community Media Training Organisation's (CMTO's) new Emergency Preparedness Training. This training is a one day, six hour pathways course delivered in person at your station.

Visit the CMTO website to find out more.

Emergency Broadcasting Resources Overview

Keep reading below for online fact sheets and guides.

Increasingly community broadcasters are taking on the responsibility of providing warnings and other information to their communities in times of emergency. It is absolutely vital that community broadcasters provide accurate information to listeners from official sources.

Primary responsibility for the protection of life, property and the environment rests with the states and territories. State and territory emergency management agencies have full autonomy in relation to:

• whether and when to issue an emergency warning
• which delivery mechanisms to use to disseminate the emergency warning
• the content of the warning.

Individual states and territories choose which warning technologies to adopt and when to activate them in accordance with the specific circumstances of an incident. All states and territories have disaster emergency plans that include a communications component for the dissemination of rapid onset emergency warnings to the community. Nationally agreed emergency warning principles also underpin warning arrangements.