By Renee Wood
The Community Based Bushfire Management project has been recognised at the 2022 Resilient Australia Awards.
The project has received the EMV Resilient Australia Award in the government category.
Some 30 high risk bushfire areas in the state are involved in Community Based Bushfire Management, including Healesville.
The project engages with communities and organisations to allow groups to form to lead and develop their own local projects and platforms in an approach to understand local strengths and reduce bushfire risks.
A group was set up in Healesville in 2017 with DEWLP facilitators working alongside local residents to create opportunities to better inform and assist.
The Healesville group has done this through various projects including, a trivia night focussing on emergencies, presentations from culture burning practitioners and building a Healesville Community Emergency Hub.
DEWLP facilitator Elly Hanrahan said it’s a great project that steps away from ‘one size fits all’ communication strategy, but allows the local groups to drive how the community wants to engage with agencies.
“the community based bushfire management program really embeds itself in the community, asks community how they would like to address their risk, what kind of things does the community think it can do to help prepare other community members and build resilience,” Ms Hanrahan said.
“Every community and how it’s engaged with is different because it’s tailor made to that particular community and directly reflective of how the community wants to engage with agencies.”
There’s further sub groups within the wider group which work on specific areas, such as improving telecommunications and emergency responses.
CFA crews, HICCI, SES, Landcare and Healesville Environment Watch are all a part of the group.
Anyone in the community is welcome to join the group which meets bi monthly at the Darron honey centre. Contact Healesvillebushfire@gmail.com or Elly Hanrahan 0408 694 748.
