Scarlett Hack was just 10 years old when she started experiencing a shortness of breath and heart palpitations.

Her symptoms were dismissed as anxiety, which she suffered with at the time, but her parents persisted and took her to several doctors before she was given an echocardiogram.

She was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic heart condition where the muscle thickens.

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"The heart disease was spontaneous in me. My entire family doesn't have any record of it, only me," she told 9news.com.au. 

"After the doctor's appointment, my parents were told by the doctor, 'You should learn CPR as this has no cure'."

Hack's symptoms only worsened over the next three years until she was diagnosed with a second heart disease called arrhythmia burden disease – the time the heart spends in abnormal rhythm.

She fainted often, which caused her heart to stop each time, and eventually had an internal defibrillator installed.

During a doctor's appointment, her heart started racing and she went into cardiac arrest.

"I was screaming to my dad, 'Don't let me die, don't let me die'," she said.

"It was very traumatising."

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Hack was in cardiac arrest for 40 minutes and then put on life support.

Her parents had two choices: let her go or wait for a heart donor.

"I only had two weeks to get it. If not, I'd be declared brain dead," she said.

"On the eighth day, my parents got the call at 2am, and they had a heart for me, and then I went into surgery at 7am."

Now aged 18, Hack is studying nursing so she can care for other children who may be in the same position she was in.

New data by the Heart Research Institute found 144,000 Australians are living with a deadly heart disease, which claims nine lives and causes 170 hospitalisations each day.

Of those who survive heart failure, 65 per cent return to the emergency department within a year. 

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Heart Research Institute chief executive Andrew Coats said many people were unaware their heart was failing to pump blood and oxygen around the body as it should.

"Heart disease can affect any one of us," he said.

"For too many Australians, it strikes without warning, taking the lives of loved ones far too soon."

Part of the issue is awareness.

Hack urged anyone with symptoms of heart disease to get themselves checked. 

"There's no harm in you getting checked out by a doctor," she said.

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Nelson Rd is closed in both directions and diversions are in place.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had stops in Hick’s Bay and Te Araroa.

The community gathered in Tauranga one week after the tragic landslip.

A politician's provocative campaign has reignited the debate to name heatwaves like meteorologists do cyclones, as the number of heat-related deaths continues to climb.

The Bureau of Meteorology picks out names for cyclones from a predetermined list for communication purposes – to raise public awareness and reduce confusion when there are several cyclones at once.

Spain was the first in the world to use the same method for heatwaves in 2022, which sparked calls to follow suit in Australia, where heatwaves lead to more deaths and hospital admissions annually than any other hazard.

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Independent MP Monique Ryan has taken the push a step further, calling for heatwaves to be named after companies that produce coal and gas.

"Extreme heat is a health crisis and a communications failure … Every heatwave is a potential mass casualty event; by naming them, we can save Australian lives," she said.

UNSW researcher Samuel Cornell said while an approach to name heatwaves after climate polluters may detract from the public messaging, there was a case to name heatwaves.

"They are our greatest environmental threat in the sense of the number of lives that they take each year," he said.

"They're quite a silent killer. They're not a very visible natural hazard, unlike things like floods or cyclones.

"If you give something a name, it helps to stick in people's minds, it helps the media to report on it."

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Australians are used to blistering temperatures, so what's the fuss all about?

A heatwave is more technical than just a spate of hot days.

The Bureau of Meteorology declares a heatwave when the maximum and minimum temperatures are unusually hot compared to the local climate over three days, and the mercury fails to adequately cool overnight.

These typically come with fire bans, as heatwaves create the perfect environment for bushfires. 

In the 10 years to 2022, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found extreme heat accounted for 293 deaths and 7104 hospitalisations. 

Cornell said some people can be unaware that there is a heatwave going on, like the elderly, who have worse thermal regulation and may not feel rising temperatures and take adequate precautions.

But the Bureau of Meteorology said it had no plans to start naming heatwaves. 

"This is due to the complex nature of heatwaves," a spokesperson said, pointing to the differing levels of severity, simultaneous heatwaves and changing conditions.

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Others also believe naming heatwaves could be unnecessary. 

A UK study in 2025 found naming heatwaves had little effect on the perceived risk and did not encourage people to take safety precautions, while the World Meteorological Organisation found it misdirected public and media attention away from the people in danger.

But Cornell said the matter was still worth exploring as the climate crisis fuels more and more heatwaves.

The Earth experienced its third-hottest year on record and its warmest decade on record in 2025, according to the Copernicus annual global climate report.

CSIRO research engineer Dr Annette Stellema said rising temperatures around the world were leading to new heat records.

Just in the past week, a South Australian town and the state of Victoria recorded their hottest days on record. 

"Australia's climate has warmed by an average of 1.51 degrees since national records began in 1910, which has led to an increase in the frequency of extreme heat events," Stellema said.

"It's expected that in the coming decades, Australia will experience ongoing changes to its weather and climate, with a continued increase in air temperatures, with more heat extremes."

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It took police more than 48 hours to announce it was investigating a man allegedly hurling a homemade bomb into an Invasion Day rally in Perth as a "potential terrorist act".

The 31-year-old was charged with unlawful act or omission with intent to harm (endangering life, health or safety of any person) and making or possession of explosives under suspicious circumstances after throwing the device into a crowd of 2500 people on Forrest Place on Monday.

Indigenous leaders, rally organisers and politicians were among the growing voices who called for the incident to be treated as terrorism before police confirmed the Joint Counter Terrorism Team was investigating the incident last night.

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Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe questioned why police have not shared information about the accused's motivation or ideology.

"On its face, this appears to be a targeted, racist terror attack against First Peoples on our Day of Mourning. That possibility must be taken extremely seriously, not avoided or downplayed," she said.

The Greens' First Nations justice co-spokesperson Jess Beckerling criticised the "soft language and low-level charge" by police.

WA Police said they could not comment as the matter was before the court. 

But Australian Strategic Policy Institute national security program director John Coyne explained that police needed to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the motivation was to commit terror and for the device to detonate in order to make a declaration.

"Some people will say it's self-evident," he said.

"The police and the prosecutors will need to be able to go into a courtroom and prove beyond reasonable doubt that their motivation was to create terror and fear based on an ideology.

"That takes a while to gather that sort of information."

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Coyne said there was an air of caution to declare an incident terrorism and pointed to the bombs found inside a caravan in Dural, Sydney, in January last year.

The incident was declared terrorism, but police later found the caravan never intended to detonate and was created to sow fear. 

"We want to make sure that the decision is made with as much information as possible. We don't want to potentially derail future prosecutions. We don't want to have undue worry in the community," Coyne said.

Police alleged the "rudimentary" bomb thrown in Perth contained ball bearings and screws, which were wrapped around a liquid in a glass container.

Officers arrested the man, who allegedly indicated the device may contain explosives.

It failed to detonate, but the crowd was evacuated. No one was injured.

The 31-year-old has been remanded in custody and will face the Perth Magistrates Court on February 17.

The accused's identity has been suppressed by the court due to concerns for his safety.

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Rev Patricia Allan says Royal Commission ‘focused attention’ on the need to make changes.

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NXUS said it’s important to have an ‘external eye’ in disaster responses.