SAS honored by Victoria Police

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA  (Jun. 29, 2009)  –  Employees of SAS Australia were recognized for their help during February’s “Black Saturday” bushfires at a private function at Victoria Police headquarters in Melbourne last week. 

SAS accepted a commemorative plaque from Superintendent Richard Grant APM of Victoria Police’s Corporate Strategy & Performance Department. The plaque read: “In appreciation and to acknowledge the assistance of SAS in helping to develop the Victoria Police Unaccounted Persons System in response to the Black Saturday bushfires – February 2009.” 

Already a supplier of business intelligence and analytical software and services to Victoria Police, SAS was the logical partner to step forward and assist. 

The worst fires modern Australia has ever suffered claimed 173 lives and raged for four days across almost 2,600 square kilometers, much of it sparsely populated.

Thanking SAS, Superintendent Grant said, "Without the SAS experts from the company's Melbourne office, who volunteered their time around the clock for three weeks, determining the final unaccounted person’s position would have taken much longer than it did and could not have been as certain." 

Christian Anders, SAS’ Victoria State Manager, thanked the superintendent for his generous words, adding, “SAS is very proud of employees who so quickly formed the team at a critical time and worked tirelessly to help Victoria Police meet its Unaccounted Persons tracking objectives. 

“All are highly qualified people and among Australia’s foremost experts in their particular parts of the business intelligence and analytical software fields. And, as they demonstrated to us in February, they are all good citizens for Victoria, too.” 

Superintendent Grant elaborated on the task in February saying, “Until you know exactly who ‘belongs’ in an affected area at the time of such an incident, you can’t say who is believed to be missing and who is not. People who are away at the time of the incident or who had recently moved out of the district must be presumed missing until you learn otherwise. Quickly working out the true situation is far from straightforward and until you have done so, you don’t know where to keep looking for possible victims, where to deploy your resources.” 

Anders added, “Globally, SAS has provided advanced software and the expertise of its people to help cope with disasters ranging from fires such as we saw here in February, to tornados in the United States and tsunamis in South Asia. This was the first time our solution had been deployed here in Australia, however, and its success is also testament to the efficacy of our worldwide support infrastructure.”

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