Guide, Australia

How to watch over family with the Situation screen

How we wrote this: researched from the public sources listed at the end of the page. General information, not medical or legal advice. Last checked 2 November 2026.

The Situation screen is our free, always on page of public warnings, for a phone, a desk monitor or the TV. It is handy in bushfire and storm season when family are spread across a state.

What it shows

A map and a feed of public warnings.
A plain status line about your pins, which stays quiet on a quiet day.
A clock and the readiness checklist.

If a feed is down, the screen says so, and old data is never shown as live. It does not replace your state emergency service, the Australian Warning System levels (Advice, Watch and Act, Emergency Warning) or ABC Emergency broadcasts. If you are told to act, act on that.

Set it up in five steps

Pin home. Type your suburb or postcode. The place is looked up once, on request, and the pin stays in your browser only.
Add family. Free access (an email, no password) adds pins for your parents, the kids' school or a sibling interstate, plus an alert radius, browser notifications and the daily brief.
Put it on a screen. Ops mode rotates through the latest serious events; ambient mode dims the screen for an evening on the TV.
Work the plan. The household planner takes you through your hazards one at a time. Print the free 72-Hour Family Plan for meeting places and contacts.
Stock each house. Supply Drops uses the same pins to plan a kit for each house. The Power outage kit suits most homes, and the gift guide for ageing parents covers sending one to Mum and Dad.