New draft community plan presented to Koonwarra residents
26/Oct/2007
Around 16% of Koonwarra's population attended a public meeting on Wednesday night to a presentation of a draft Community Fire Plan
This meeting followed on from their first meeting raising the importance of creating a Community Fire Plan in January this year.
A management committee was formed at the meeting to drive the process further and the CFA will conduct workshops and mentoring sessions to help the community consolidate their individual fire plans into a Community Fire Plan.
Copy of Draft Community Fire Plan Summary (PDF document, 208KB).
Leigh Crocker from The Closed System Pty Ltd, the body who has drafted the Community Fire Plan, said not many communities had mobilised and co-ordinated residents and businesses to put together their individual fire plans and co-ordinate them into a community plan – in the event of a major bushfire, many communities were unprotected.
“An essential new element of the plan is to integrate community web portals such as www.koonwarra.vic.au for online communication with the community, and use it to keep people aware of danger in the area,” said Mr Crocker.
With drastic bushfires across Victoria last summer, the Koonwarra Brigade of the Country Fire Authority welcomed the draft plan.
Brigade Captain Ross Considine said, “We need to keep in mind that Koonwarra has changed both in the numbers and type of people so there are now more assets to protect. Being able to use the Koonwarra website for communication purposes would be a great bonus.
“In my personal view, I believe 70 percent of the properties in Koonwarra could be protected from bushfire risk and successfully defended by the residents themselves, if the residents put in place their own fire plan – at the same time, any number of those properties could be lost if they don’t,” said Mr Considine.
Pending community agreement and ownership of the Community Fire Plan, Koonwarra will pave the way for other communities around Australia to become involved in a similar scheme.
“We hope that resources are generated to apply The Closed System planning process to many other communities to enable them to also develop Community Fire Plans and build their resilience and community cohesiveness,” said Mr Crocker.
When completed, auCD will make the fire plan model available to assist other communities.
