Capitalising on the success of the 2014 Living with Bushfire community conference, event organisers have announced the event will continue in 2015. Federation University Australia’s Gippsland Campus in Churchill will again host the event, with conference dates set for Friday 2 and Saturday 3 October.
Head of Campus, Dr Harris Ballis, said organisers were buoyed by the hugely positive response to the 2014 event, with many seeing it as an important opportunity to hear the latest research and thinking about fire risk, fire behaviour and household protection.
“With specialists, researchers, firefighters and community members together in one venue we were able to have broad community discussion and constructive conversations about how we can live with bushfire into the future,” Dr Ballis said.
“We hope to build on this success with an even better event this year, which will incorporate many of the ideas and suggestions made by conference participants.”
CFA’s representative on the interagency steering committee is local Vegetation Management Officer John Crane. Earlier, John and the conference steering committee delivered on a commitment to conference participants to donate excess funds from the 2014 event to the Gippsland Emergency Relief Fund.
“Being an inaugural event in 2014, each contributing organisation pooled their funds to ensure the event could be staged,” Dr Ballis said.
“However, with sound management and generous support from the large number of participants, we found there was $2,000 in surplus funds following the event. We are extremely pleased to donate this amount to the Gippsland Emergency Relief Fund, who will use the funds to provide immediate cash donations to Gippsland people adversely affected by bushfires.”
The conference is a joint initiative of Federation University Australia, the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, Country Fire Authority (CFA), Latrobe City Council and Parks Victoria.
Ticket prices will remain unchanged for this years’ event at $20 per day. For more information on the event, to register your interest in attending or holding a stall, or to suggest ideas, go to the conference web page at federation.edu.au/fireconference
Author: CFA News