Australians evacuate as rain and floods hit Victoria

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/09/06/australia.flooding/index.html?hpt=T2#fbid=pRu9S5QleJQ&wom=false

These days, the Oceania has suffered one after another. At first it was a devastating earthquake which shocked New Zealand, and now the Victoria state of Australia is under water.

Today we will focus on a news from CNN which covered an emergency occurrence just happened in Australia yesterday. It reported a heavy rain and flooding, and a mass evacuation which had already began since it happened, and was still proceeding during the disaster.

The reporter used the governmental spokeswoman as the main resource, this spokeswoman spoke on behalf of State Emergency Service. So this resource could be considered reliable. Especially when it was involved in major damage, official statistics would always be a good choice to depend on.

After introduced the flooding situation briefly, the reporter represented the condition of casualties immediately. Generally, death toll and casualties could always be the most attractive factor of a disaster report, people cared about these issues. So indicating relevant conditions of casualties quickly and precisely is very important to a disaster report. And the author of this story performed well here. It was luckily that no deaths were declared, even significant injuries were seldom reported. But to be objective, it also revealed a serious loss on physical treasures.

The article examined the whole situation the local government had found and the measurements they had done throughout the unexpected disaster. It also provided a list of regions which were affected, this was like an announcement to show the specific damage situation, could give people more understanding about this disaster. In the end of the article, the author didn’t forget to write down the forecast of weather from the Australian government’s Bureau of Meteorology.

But the story still has some setbacks, like no particular background introduction, no specific information and lack of prospect. Maybe it was because this story was only a temporary brief, more detailed information would come soon, I think.