CFA members joined other community leaders from the cities of Wyndham and Melton for the first Emergency Ready Communities Forum on Saturday 5 September in Caroline Springs.
There was diverse representation from the community and from brigades in the Mt Cottrell Catchment. The day was a great opportunity for community members to engage with emergency services. Networking provided opportunities to discuss how communities could work together more effectively when preparing for and recovering from emergencies.
Participants were able to hear from inspirational and influential leaders and emergency management professionals. Anne Leadbeater presented on the resilience of communities and her experiences in the recovery efforts after Black Saturday. Craig Lapsley discussed EMV strategy in engaging communities effectively and Rachael Robertson talked about her exhilarating experiences in leading an expedition at Davis Station, Antarctica. Sunil Prabhakar from Sri Durga Temple and Andrea Wilson from SES discussed their learnings from participating in the Emergency Ready Communities Leadership Program.
The final event for the day had the community leaders participating in the Community Disaster Resilience Scorecard workshop, presented by Dr Malinda Steenkamp from the Torrens Resilience Institute. This tool enabled community leaders to identify risks within their own communities and to rate each risk on a scorecard – the process was intended to give participants a further understanding of risk and preparedness in their own communities.
A special screening of CFA’s Culture of Fire film was scheduled in the morning. Unfortunately, technology hiccups prevented the full screening of the film. Culture of Fire can be found on Brigades Online on the Engaging Diverse Communities page. Thank you to Daryl Smith from South Morang Brigade for providing an introduction to the film screening and for sharing his own experiences as an Aboriginal CFA volunteer and for speaking about the resilience of the Koori community. Daryl's key message was highlighting the importance of Koori engagement in volunteering with emergency services, as outlined in CFA’s Koori Inclusion Action Plan.
Author: Kirsten Dudink