When a bushfire ignited in Ningi, Queensland, Ventia's nbn cable repair teams were on scene as soon as it was safe to assess damage and re-connect the community. 

This one of many weather event emergencies that Ventia's Essential Services team has planned for and responded to over the past two decades. 

Each year, before the fire season takes hold, our Network operations Assurance - nbn team comes together to methodically plan for the potential major weather events that lie ahead. Mapping out key locations, required equipment and field workforce capabilities is crucial to ensure the team is well prepared to respond when disaster strikes. 

When a bushfire started on Bribie Island Road in Ningi, north of Brisbane in 2017, it caused significant damage to an NBN conduit located in the area. Ventia's repair teams were on scene as soon as it was safe to assess the damage and get the necessary repairs underway.

As bushfires burn across Australia, they often damage vital communications networks across Australia. When this occurs, it's up to Ventia's teams on the ground to respond and restore communication services as soon as it is safe to do so.

The Ningi bushfire was reported around midday and was not declared completely extinguished until around 6:00am the following day, when fire crews withdrew. 

While there was little property damage, there was extensive damage to 144 NBN fibre cables, which our team set out to rapidly repair. Receiving the job at 1:30am from nbn, coordinating these works with our field resources and working throughout day and through the following night, the team hauled, spliced and ultimately restored the cables to reconnect the community's essential communication services and get them back online as soon as possible. 

The pre-season plan is the key source of information used by our Network Operations Centre (NOC), which is based in Melbourne. Ventia's NOC has responsibility for communicating with and managing our field workforce, triaging our faults and identifying & dispatching technicians to the highest priority telecommunication sites that require restoration works, following a bushfire or other natural disaster. 

The NOC team monitors live maps of all active fires and affecting hazards and once the danger has passed, they work with clients and emergency response coordinators, allocating our technicians in the field to sites so they can get the communications networks back up and running safely.

At all times, the safety of our people and partners is paramount. Unfortunately, there are sometimes when a site is too dangerous to enter immediately. In these instances, we dispatch crews and equipment to staging sites near the impacted zone so that they are ready and waiting to tend to a damaged site as soon as they have permission to enter safely.

Many of Ventia's techs and contractors have been responding to significant events and emergencies for a long time - this experience can also prove vital in providing intelligence to authorities during bushfire events, especially if fire affects sites that support communications for the rural fire service or other emergency services. 

By alerting key contacts, key infrastructure can be prioritised and protected, for example, by water bombers, so that our teams can access and save the critical infrastructure, enabling communications that support emergency services to continue without interruption.

The Ningi community had their NBN communication network repaired and restored within 24-hours of Ventia's initial callout to the 2017 bushfire.