Research contributes to CFS community engagement

Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC research conducted for the South Australian Country Fire Service is contributing towards new and improved program materials on group coordination and emotional preparedness for Community Fire Safe Groups in South Australia.

The neighbourhood fire safety groups are a key preparedness intervention that increase bushfire awareness and safety and enhance social connections. They are initially fostered by trained Community Engagement Officers who share bushfire knowledge and expertise in a series of workshops, after which groups become self-reliant in maintaining their connections and knowledge, with help along the way from their local Community Engagement Officer. 

At the Community Engagement Officers’ monthly team meeting in April this year, CRC researcher Dr Danielle Every from CQUniversity shared findings from the CRC and CFS post-fire research into the community experiences of the 2015 Sampson Flat bushfire. During the session, Dr Every and the Community Engagement team talked about two key issues raised in that report: how can community coordinators keep their community fire safe group together over the long term, and how to foster better emotional preparedness in community fire safe groups. 

Peta O’Donohue, the CFS Project Manager for Partners in Bushfire Safety, and the end-user representative for this research, said the research showed that emotional preparedness emerged as a significant gap in the communities’ pre-fire activities.

“As a group, we wanted to talk about how to include this in our community engagement, and what it should look like if we do include it,” Ms O’Donohue said.

Emotional (also called psychological) preparedness is defined as ‘a state of awareness, anticipation, and readiness - an internal, primed, capacity to anticipate and manage one’s psychological response in an emergency situation.’

Factoring in emotion preparedness for bushfire planning is not just a tick the box exercise, believes Tracey Grime, who coordinates the Community Engagement Officer team.

“Emotional preparedness is not just a tick and flick exercise, it is about creating an opportunity, a space, for people to consider that this [a bushfire] is one of the scariest things they’ll ever experience,” she said.

But there are particular challenges to facilitating emotional, as compared with physical, preparedness. How do fire agencies prepare people emotionally, given this is a less tangible and measurable outcome?

At the workshop, seasoned engagement officers shared with newer members how they already include emotional preparedness in their role. The most popular, and the method which gained the best response from the community, was to talk about a personal experience where using emotional awareness and management techniques helped in the midst of a crisis.

The community engagement team is now collating emotional preparedness training materials for its officers to roll out in future community groups. 

You can find further details of the Sampson Flat bushfire research here.