Gembrook Emergency and Resilience

Project Summary

The Gembrook Emergency and Resilience (GEaR) initiative is an informal group of local community group representatives and residents, working to build community resilience and emergency preparedness in the Gembrook district of the Eastern Dandenong Ranges, in Victoria.

Background and Situation Context

The GEaR initiative covers the Gembrook Township, surrounding farmland/rural living areas, plus two significant State Parks in the Eastern Dandenong Ranges. The Landscape is a combination of rural township, surrounded by open cropping/pasture land and heavily forested country in roughly equal proportions. Topography is a mixture of ridges and valleys, on the watershed between the Yarra Valley to the North and West Gippsland to the South.

June 2012 the Gembrook Township Committee (GTC) formed a sub-committee to organise a meeting with the Fire Service Commissioner and personnel from that office. The GTC itself formed in 2001 and has a resilience brief - to build community capacity through community group collaboration, information sharing, community projects and representation to all levels of government regarding local issues. GTC tried to grapple with multiple local issues and decided to reach out to

1. Poor mobile phone coverage for large percentage of local population and no support from Telstra to improve, despite engagement and escalation.
2. No support from Cardinia Shire Council to strengthen the local community centre for emergency management and recovery preparedness.
3. Advice that our local football ground (used for refuge during 1983 Ash Wednesday fires) had been appropriated for use by emergency management agency and was not available as a Neighbourhood Safer Place (NSP), despite most in community intending to go there.

The July meeting was successful and an immediate result was inclusion of Eastern Dandenong Ranges into State Government, Dandenong Ranges Bushfire Landscape Project (previously not in scope).

August 2012 following the July forum, GTC then organised an Eastern Dandenong Ranges ‘Community Advisory Group’ meeting for the Eastern Dandenong Ranges communities of Clematis, Emerald, Avonsleigh, Macclesfield, Cockatoo and Gembrook. Fire Service Commissioner, local community associations/committees, local CFA Brigades, plus Emergency Management (EM) agencies and Monash University Disaster Resilience Initiative (MUDRI) representatives were invited and attended.

In 2013 two significant setbacks to community-led, EM planning occurred with

1. The GTC organised an application for funding from the State Government Resilient Community Program, in collaboration with the preschool, primary school and with the support of the Gembrook Country Fire Authority (CFA). It was a classic community resilience initiative to benefit the town’s children and parents and engage them with bushfire awareness, preparation and planning, but the application was not successful. We realised that despite our understanding that the application was eminently sensible to the community, we were not in synch with the State and they were not in tune with our understanding of what would be an effective project ‘on the ground’.
2. Parallel to this, Cardinia Shire Council closed a significant rural road in an area adjacent to a State Park, creating a dead-end cul-de-sac and directly impacting many residents’ fire plans regarding community access/egress from a bushfire prone area. Council ignored sustained community requests to reverse the decision, including requests from most residents of the road, simultaneously dismissing emergency management concerns and undermining community resilience.

After the initial successes of the forums, these setbacks made us realise we needed a compelling emergency and resilience narrative that could better align agencies and government departments with what is important, practical and realistic to our community. Talk is cheap - real action was proving much harder.

The desired vision was to create a shared narrative of the emergency risk profile for Gembrook District, and initiate and support community capacity and resilience building. Gembrook district residents, visitors, businesses, local government, state and federal government agencies and departments could all benefit from this project.

Activities

Core activities of the project included

• Completing applications for funding support resilience initiatives.
• Making submissions on behalf of community regarding concerns over local road management and negative safety implications.
• Continued advocacy regarding community centre preparation for emergencies.
• Phoenix bushfire modelling was completed for Gembrook district to better understand fire threat.
• Commenced discussions regarding traffic management modelling for district ‘evacuation/escape’ routes.
• Decided to develop formal fire risk assessment for Gembrook district.
• Attending other local forums around bushfire planning.

Resources include

• Dandenong Ranges Bushfire Landscape Project co-ordinator (EMV initiative), who has multiple contacts across agencies.
• From March 2014, Cardinia Shire Council provided staff resources to provide administrative support for the project and facilitate a forum to assess community risk.

Project progress and achievements

Results

• Eastern Dandenong Ranges communities added to scope of Dandenong Ranges and Yarra Valley Landscape Bushfire project.
• Phoenix bushfire simulations for Gembrook (not released to public).
• All Hazards Risk Assessment (available from Cardinia Shire Council).
• Bushfire assets/hazards map based assessment.
• Over time, meeting minutes accumulate knowledge around emergency management and resilience.

POSITIVE impacts/changes/benefits for the target beneficiaries

• Eastern Dandenong Ranges communities added to scope of Dandenong Ranges Bushfire Landscape project. Better access to shared knowledge and resources across similar communities.
• Since 2012, not clear – outputs still not widely distributed through/or available to community. Future of and status of initiative is uncertain at time of writing.

NEGATIVE impacts/changes for the target beneficiaries

• Becoming clear that massive effort by large number of community volunteers will be needed to establish community led, rather than agency dictated emergency and resilience planning. This takes them away from other current volunteer demands in a small rural community that are needed equally as much.
• Clear that agencies still not collaborating closely with the community
• Duplication of effort/multiple contacts/multiple meetings are required from community volunteers to achieve consistency, consensus and a clear narrative for a local community.
• When local issues are raised by engaged people with the potential for a quick win, but these are not part of agencies’ agenda the project is looking at years of effort to achieve anything ‘on the ground’.
• Clear that volunteers with full-time day jobs and only a few hours spare per week cannot make much impact in this space.

Next Steps

• Determine future of the initiative and if sufficient volunteer energy remains to continue to try and engage. Need to attract more membership ‘doers’ and gain authority to enact/drive change.
• Publish Gembrook’s emergency/resilience ‘community story’ to drive more informed community discussion and align behaviour/support/initiatives from agencies more closely to community reality.

Reflection

Factors that were unique/good practice

Quick win regarding broadening the scope of a State Government project to include our communities. Decisive decision taken by Fire Services Commissioner on the spot to address the initial oversight, in response to community reaching out.

Critical Success Factors

Decisive decision making by people empowered to make things happen. That initial success has since worn off. Adequate community resources – people, time and money.

Challenges Faced and Solutions

Community already had list of projects and with limited volunteer time available. The community has tried to start ‘doing’ these as soon as possible. Challenge is that community narrative regarding what needs to be done re emergency planning is not formally in place and understood by agencies/government layers, so apart from token acts of support the community projects have stalled.

Areas for improvement

More community members to be engaged and actively giving time to GEaR initiatives (without reducing existing volunteer activities needed elsewhere in town, somehow).  More ‘quick wins identified and implemented – to build momentum.

Sustainability and potential for replication in other settings

Future of the initiative is under consideration by participants at time of writing.

Additional Project Details