Australian born children grow up with images of fires and bushfires, and the heartbreak that sometimes can come with it.
(This article was printed in today's Herald Sun)
Australian kids are taught from a young age how to behave around fire — everyone can remember how to “stop, drop and roll”.
Aussie kids learn to swim growing up around water, and be careful around fire.
For many people who come to Australia after birth, however, this is not the case.
I was born in India and arrived in Australia as an 18 year old. My father was a policeman, but I knew very little about the fire services or what a firefighter actually did.
When I came to Australia and then decided on a firefighting career, I quickly found out it’s not all about bushfires and house fires. The fire services attend and manage road accidents, emergency medical situations, spills, floods and we work with every other emergency service to ensure Victorians are protected when disaster or accident strikes.
I’m now a firefighter for the Country Fire Authority (CFA).
I’m also a member of the Sikh community, and this Saturday I’ll be representing CFA at the Vaisakhi festival at Federation Square.
As a member of the Sikh community, I know there’s still a long way to go in educating culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities, especially older generations, about fire safety in Australia.
While in no way attributable to CALD communities, too often Victoria’s firefighters are called out to incidents where people haven’t understood the risks of fire within the home, whether it’s knowing to check their smoke alarms, or knowing not to use open flame cooktop indoors.
The basic act of cooking is the cause of most preventable fires CFA attends in homes, with cooking activities the largest cause of any other fires last year. In fact, cooking fires caused millions of dollars of damage to homes in preventable fires in 2017 alone.
For many migrants from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities, learning about being safe around fire can be a especially challenging when they move to a new country.
CFA firefighters, both career and volunteer, spend vast amounts of time meeting and educating the entire Victorian community through fire safety campaigns like “Working Smoke Alarms Save Lives”.
But what many people don’t know is that some of the most exciting and creative work we do is with CALD communities.
Reaching CALD communities, whether they are from the Sikh, Vietnamese, Sudanese or any other community, is critical to CFA’s mission to protect life and property.
As well attending community events like the Vaisakhi Festival, where we connect with people on a personal level so they are familiar with our bright yellow turnout gear in an emergency, and teach them something about fire safety, we also hold various CALD educational programs.
We hold the Adult Migrant English Program on fire safety at Chisholm TAFE for 1,500 students and we hold a Home Fire Safety course for multicultural parents at schools.
Our Youth Program can see new migrant teenagers get to know all the emergency services, try out firefighting, or even wear Australian Defence Force riot gear.
No matter which way we are connecting, the number one thing is that the community and CFA work together. And with more than 20 per cent of Victorians speaking a language other than English at home, CFA is constantly adapting how it operates to ensure we are protecting all communities.
If you’re attending Vaisakhi Festival at Federation Square this Saturday, come along and say hi, ask me about how to make your home more fire safe, and let’s have a chat about how we work with the community.
Mandeep (Manny) Singh is a Firefighter with the CFA, stationed at Eltham Fire Station.