Smart strategies for local communities

This article first appeared in the Summer 2014-2015 edition of Fire Australia magazine. By Nathan Maddock.

Profiling one rural fire brigade’s use of national research findings on bushfire community safety.

Nestled in a valley in the lower Hunter region of New South Wales is the town of Wollombi, bordered on all sides by extensive eucalypt forest. National parks and state forests completely surround the town and there are only three roads in and out. The risk of a bushfire is high, with major fires occurring in 1994, 2001, 2002 and 2004.

But with this high fire risk comes a unique approach to combating it, driven through local volunteer fire brigades. It doesn’t just involve big red trucks, orange air cranes in the sky or scores of yellow-clad volunteers dousing roaring flames. Their mode of attack has been to use evidence-based research to increase the knowledge of local residents to their level of fire risk and how to combat it.

“I could see the real value of us educating the locals,” said Glenn O’Rourke, Deputy Captain and Community Safety Officer at the Wollombi Rural Fire Brigade.

“We would have a fire, with smoke across the valley. People would ask ‘where is the fire, what’s happening?’ They would have a real sense of concern about the threat of bushfire and what they should do. They would want to engage with us [the brigade], but I could see many of our brigade members not knowing how to respond, or not understanding that we had a role to play beyond just fighting the fire. I thought— we’ve got a lot of knowledge we should share.’

This was back in 2005 and the brigade’s first foray into community safety came in the form of a visit to a small remote community located within the Yengo National Park, about 45 minutes from town.

“They were very concerned about their bushfire risk, so we said we would come out and have a chat.” Mr O’Rourke said.

“We literally hopped in the truck, had the BBQ on the back and off we went. On the way we were talking to each other, wondering what we were going to say.

“When we got out there we stood around and chatted, answering questions. They were thanking us and saying how great it was. We jumped back in the truck and headed home and said to ourselves, ‘wow how fantastic was that?’ We gave them a lot of information, increased their confidence levels and made a risky area safer for the community and the brigade.

“That was really the start. We then started to target areas of highest risk and where we knew locals would be interested.”

Research conducted by the Bushfire CRC, and now the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, after major bushfires since 2009’s Black Saturday fires has shown a significant percentage of residents interviewed did not believe that they were at risk from a bushfire, and therefore neither planned nor prepared for the possibility that a bushfire would actually occur. Written plans, which are strongly advocated by fire agencies, were a rarity, with only 5.4% of the 1669 people surveyed across Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales indicating they had a written survival plan. Few interviewees had participated in organised community bushfire safety activities.

Mr O’Rourke has followed the research closely. He has used the findings to inform the brigade’s community engagement strategy.

“The research for me is really powerful. It really reinforces and gives you confidence that these are the critical things we need to focus on,” he said.

“From experience I had a sense of what was important to better prepare our community for fire. But then I looked at the CRC research and found it strongly and objectively confirmed our approach was right, reinforcing our strategy to stick to the fundamentals.”

Mr O’Rourke analysed the findings of Bushfire CRC research conducted after the January 2013 fires around Yass, Shoalhaven and Coonabarabran in NSW. He broke down the findings into seven key engagement areas:

• survival planning
• preparation
• local information
• naming of fires
• warnings and alerts
• fire danger ratings
• survival decision making.

The brigade has four main community engagement principles that cover these seven key engagement areas:

1. Understanding the level of risk
2. Understanding how to effectively prepare
3. How to make a really good survival decision
4. Document a practical plan that reflects this decision.

Mr O’Rourke believes the Wollombi community has responded positively to a friendly—but, most importantly, a highly professional—approach to bushfire safety; an approach that is backed with the latest information and independent research.

“It is about two key things: accessibility and, absolutely, about credibility,” he observed.

“The doors are open to come in and we [the brigade] have strong, credible evidence from a research base to say ‘here is the level of fire risk’. It reinforces the professionalism of the brigade.

“These relationships are built during a time when there is no fire. They [the community] see us as professional, trusted and that we know what we’re talking about.

“When a fire occurs, we become repositioned as leaders. There is a level of trust and respect when it is really needed.”

The Wollombi brigade has a number of forums it uses to increase community safety and conducts its own evaluation to measure success.

There is a simple evaluation strategy and, before a workshop or forum, each participant is asked to rate their level of understanding of, for example, risk of fire. After the workshop, the same question is asked.

“We haven’t scared people, but have shifted their knowledge and given them confidence,” Mr O’Rourke explained.

But what happens next, after the workshop, when the community member is back in their home or out on their property? Mr O’Rourke had wondered this same thing.

“I had always thought ‘we have generated all this energy in the workshop, but have we actually translated that into changed behaviour?’”

To measure this, in January 2013 when there were three fires in the area, Mr O’Rourke surveyed people who had participated in a local bushfire safety workshop or attended a bushfire safety information forum. 162 people responded, a response rate of 36%.

“We were able to determine that not only have we had people leave a workshop saying, ‘yes, you have changed my level of understanding’, but also ‘I have taken that knowledge and changed my behaviour’,” Mr O’Rourke said.

88% of those surveyed were aware of the fires, with 51% declaring that they had a written Bushfire Survival Plan. This written plan figure is remarkably more than the 5.4% of the 1,669 people surveyed between 2009 and 2014.

Wollombi Rural Fire Brigade’s evaluation also showed an increase in the preparation for a bushfire, with 91% indicating they were very well prepared, well prepared or prepared, with 79% taking steps to implement their survival plan.

“For me, this was the evidence that we were changing people’s behaviour,” assessed Mr O’Rourke. “It was the proof that it works.”

And this local approach, backed by national research, is proving to make a difference.