BRIGADE NEWS
Safer Together work continues to flourish STORY BY FIONA MACKEN Despite all the challenges that the past 18 months have thrown at the Safer Together’s Community Based Bushfire Management (CBBM) project, the statewide project team continues to work feverishly with 22 diverse communities around Victoria, driven by the desire to see community values and priorities put front and centre in preparedness work undertaken by CFA and DELWP. CBBM is a community development project which aims to promote relationships between agencies, community members and local government and get everyone working well together to determine how locals and agencies can reduce bushfire risk. Twenty one of the 22 communities in the project are place-based communities in virtually all regions of Victoria. This year, the project’s first non-place-based community launched, with the addition of commercial equine studs in CFA’s North East Region. The past two years of CBBM and the Safer Together program more generally have produced many examples of tangible bushfire risk reduction activities, both through community engagement projects and collaborative multi-agency fuel management work by CFA, DELWP, local government, Parks Victoria and others. Communities have benefited greatly from the opportunity to work with land and fire management personnel to discuss how they would like to see action taken in their locality around planning and preparedness. The preparedness and resilience benefits built as a result of CBBM are not limited to fires, as many local residents believe that CBBM helped them during COVID-19 lockdowns and recent flooding. Although CBBM is funded to reduce bushfire risk,
the fundamental core of the projects – relationships – builds community resilience whatever the emergency. CBBM also has significant benefits in other areas of emergency management such as response and recovery. Research has found that communities previously impacted by fire will have improved community responses when faced with another fire if they worked with a place-based facilitator, such as that offered by CBBM. CBBM and the wider Safer Together program are attempting to change how we all view fire safety and our individual responsibility. Basing agency decisions on the values and priorities of community or, perhaps going as far as to give decision-making power to community (for example, in relation to planned burning) is a mindset shift for CFA, DELWP and other stakeholders. Changes in longstanding models of power will bring challenges, as CBBM does, but the engagement the community has in the process is exceptional and strikes at the heart of the community’s desire to be involved in determining the outcomes of decisions that affect them, rather than being informed of the outcomes after the fact. CBBM has received a further four years funding from the Victorian Government. This is a fantastic outcome for the communities currently involved in the project because it means the work already undertaken can continue and be extended in ways that suit the local community. The CBBM team would like to thank all community and CFA members who have invested their time in this project – your commitment to this project is truly appreciated.
Making CBBM work well
Several evaluations of CBBM have been carried out since it began in 2016. The most recent one in 2021 focused on lessons learned since 2019. Valuable lessons for CBBM projects included: • Community development approaches need an investment of time over a number of years, supported by appropriate skills, experience, resources and commitment from relevant stakeholders • Building and maintaining strong, authentic relationships is not only an important aspect of the CBBM approach, but also an outcome of CBBM work with agencies and communities • Flexible, adaptive and place-based approaches are essential to the success of CBBM
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• I t’s important to value community members’ diverse contributions and investment of time •C ommunity and agency involvement are both essential for CBBM, reflecting the community-centred and multiagency partnership approach of CBBM •T he role of the CBBM facilitator and their approach is critical for the success of CBBM •A range of external factors influence the practice of CBBM within communities—including time and financial resources available, and a community’s experiences of bushfire.
