New Fire Safety Planning Program
An important part of a brigade’s community engagement plan is deciding which CFA programs and services will be delivered to your community.
Your brigade may choose to hold some Fire Safety Essentials sessions during the fire season. This one-hour session is designed to challenge participants to personalise their fire risk and to survive fire.
Another useful asset you may have used in the past was CFA’s Bushfire Planning Workshop program. This has now been redeveloped and relaunched as Fire Safety Planning.
Fire Safety Planning is a three-hour session designed to help your community to make realistic and adaptable fire plans that consider their own personal circumstances.
The program provides the tools and knowledge that community members need to start their fire plan in the session and then continue their plan at home with all members of their household.
Fire Safety Planning can be delivered across all risk environments such as bush, grass, coastal and urban fringe areas and is delivered by trained CFA members.
This program is designed to be delivered to community well before the fire season to give them the time to put what they learned into action. This will give them more control and ultimately better outcomes in the event of a fire.
Participants begin to create their personal fire plan using a new planning publication called Our Plan. This is used during the session and guides community members through their planning process.
During the initial community testing of this program, CFA received a lot of positive feedback from participants including the following:
- “It gave me all the ingredients and allowed me to tailor it to my own circumstances. I could pluck out what would suit my property.”
- “The session was great for confirming the actions in my plan and gave me ideas about how to improve my plan.”
- “Definitely broadened our knowledge. We are filling in the book you provided for Our Plan.”
- “We feel more confident with the approach of the fire season."
Information about the Fire Safety Planning program (along with all of CFA’s programs and services) can be found on the Community Engagement Content Portal. We’ve also created promotional items that brigades can use on their Facebook page, or use as a flyer or poster (pictured below) to let your community know of any upcoming sessions.
For more information and to book a Fire Safety Planning session for your community, contact your district Community Engagement Coordinator.