By Linda Albertson
Fire authorities have warned the severe and catastrophic bushfire events seen up and down the eastern states in the last three months are expected to continue.
As the entire country grapples with the possibility of even worse to come, Bega Valley Shire Council, New South Wales, has released an evaluation of the recovery support service implemented in the wake of its own devastating fires that swept through the seaside community of Tathra in March 2018.
The report, evaluating the Tathra and District Bushfire Recovery Support Service (TDRSS), is timely.
Prepared by independent consultants Risk Frontiers, it assesses the effectiveness of the TDRSS, established after the Tathra bushfire destroyed 69 homes, 35 caravans and cabins, and damaging another 50 homes.
Four months later, in August 2018, the Shire faced another bushfire – the Yankees Gap fire burnt for 44 days destroying another four homes, causing extensive damage to fencing and farm infrastructure as well as additional trauma to communities.
Significantly, the report recommends the service model developed by the TDRSS be utilised for future similar disaster events.
Mayor, Kristy McBain, said, “I sincerely hope this recovery service model together with learnings from the evaluation will give other communities some guidance and hope after a bushfire or other disaster.”
The TDRSS was set up as a temporary service with a strong client-centred approach described in the report as practical and personal.
Clients were allocated their own Recovery Support Worker, matched for their individual needs, who could connect them to the most appropriate services.
Some inspiring community-led initiatives, supported by Council’s Recovery and Resilience Grants program, helped people manage their own recovery needs – an aim of the TDRSS.
The Garden Recovery Forum helped those needing to rebuild gardens post-fire, was hosted by local specialists in land management, landscaping, horticulture and permaculture and included open garden visits.
This event complemented Council’s ongoing Green Shoots campaign, partnering with local Landcare groups to run public replanting activities of natural areas such as the sand dunes and Tathra headland.
Therapeutic art and craft workshops helped participants express their feelings. Artefacts collected from the ruins of their homes and the nearby burned forests were turned into artworks displayed in the ‘Feisty Firebirds and Fire Artefacts Exhibition’ at the Tathra Hotel.
The report said the community acknowledged the TDRSS was instrumental in assisting the recovery process winning ‘the trust of the communities through the wide range of tasks they undertook for clients and in the personal relationships they developed’.
Embedding the TDRSS into the Tathra community was undoubtedly a major factor in its success but also limited its ability to then service the Yankees Gap community 50km away.
The service will continue until the end of 2020 as the Tathra Bushfire Recovery Support Project.
The report can be viewed at begavalley.nsw.gov.au/tathra.
The TDRSS and the report were funded by the Office of Emergency Management, on application from the Bega Valley Shire Council. The project’s extension into 2020 was funded by South Eastern NSW Primary Health Network.
