During the January 2026 fires, Taradale Fire Brigade Community Safety Coordinator Jodie Parker used social media in a proactive way to engage and inform the local community.
Jodie posted regular video updates to the brigade’s social media pages in the lead-up, during and in the days following the Catastrophic fire day that impacted the Harcourt region.
Here's Jodie’s first-hand account of how it all unfolded.
“For me, it's thinking about what I need to communicate to our local community. If we use the recent fires in Harcourt as an example, in my time at the brigade we’ve never had a Catastrophic fire day. So, for me, that was just a whole new level.
Prior to the Friday, we did some short, sharp bits of information around people preparing, whether that was preparing to leave or preparing to stay, and different things that they could be thinking about in terms of making a plan before Friday. Then after that, it turned into updates on what was happening with the fire locally, both on the day and in the week after.
For me, the focus is just keeping the messages short and sharp. We're a short attention span society now. So I just try to get to the point and let people know what they need to know. Video seems to be the preferred medium of the day, which in some ways makes it a lot quicker. You can just record a quick video of someone talking and you're done. Whereas if you're creating posts, you're going to create a graphic and maybe some text and that takes a little bit more time.
I'm not sure what day it was. It all became a bit of a blur in the end. But you start to get more views and comments and likes and followers and all that sort of stuff. We were in a little bit of a bubble here for a few days because we were just managing the situation. But it's not until you go back out into the wider community and you walk into the council recovery hub in Castlemaine and people say, ‘Hey, thanks for the updates’.
There has been a little bit of a moment of strangers just being like, ‘Wow, thank you so much for what you did’. I don't even know these people. It’s a bit surreal to be honest. The feedback from people and the overwhelming kindness that I have received in return has been phenomenal.
Previously, I was a bit loathe to be in front of the camera. But the reality of the situation was that I didn’t have time to be writing things or trying to find someone else to do it. In this instance, I just thought what can I do? I'm not on the truck this time. Had I been on the truck, it probably would have looked very different.
My key pieces of advice to brigades are know your community and know how to communicate with them. The way that I communicate may not be what your community needs. And I think just be yourself. You don't have to be polished in the way that you speak. I think people will respond to you just talking naturally, rather than trying to be a presence or something that's somewhat unnatural for you.
Know what your community wants and just be yourself. I feel you can't go wrong if you do those two things.”
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