Once you have your Get Ready for bushfire plan in place this year, MidCoast Council is asking you to register online.
“We’d like to get a picture of how many MidCoast households have a Get Ready for bushfire plan in place, and which parts of the region are well prepared for bushfire this year,” said Mayor David West.
If you prepared a Get Ready plan last year, it’s time to pull it out, dust it off and check it’s up to date. And then, visit MidCoast’s Get Ready page at haveyoursay.midcoast.nsw.gov.au/getready and register your plan – it takes 30 seconds.
It’s easy to Get Ready – the same link has a downloadable Get Ready for bushfire plan for your household. And if you sign up for Council’s News Wrap newsletter, you’ll receive weekly step-by-step guides to make sure your home is well prepared this year.
There’s five steps to ensuring you Get Ready, and this week the focus is on Step Two – plan now for what you will do if a bushfire threatens your home.
“Last week, we looked at Step 1, which is making sure you know the bushfire risk for your home. Identifying the surrounding risks based on where you live is important – and it only takes ten minutes. If you didn’t manage to get started last week, it’s easy to undertake both Step 1 and 2 this week – to make sure you’re prepared for bushfires this summer,” said Mayor West.
Take the next step by sitting down with everyone who lives at your place, to make the plan – so everyone knows what you will do and when you will do it – before a bushfire starts. It will take no more than 30 minutes.
“There are some decisions to make this week – what will your prompts be to leave early if a bushfire threatens, what you will take with you, and where you will go.
“Planning a safe route, and an alternative route or a safer place to shelter if things don’t go to plan, could save your life this year,” Mayor West said.
Deciding to stay and defend is an option only if your home is well prepared and you are well prepared and mentally able to cope with the demanding situation. If there’s a catastrophic fire warning, it is not safe for anyone to stay and defend.
If you feel able to prepare a plan that includes an option to stay and defend, visit rfs.nsw.gov.au and complete all steps in the detailed bushfire survival plan there.
“The final job this week is to get an emergency kit together for your place. You’ll find handy links with what to include in a home emergency kit on the link above.
“Put your written bushfire survival plan in your emergency kit, and make sure everyone at your place knows where the kit is kept.”
You now have a bushfire survival plan for your home. There are three more simple steps to prepare for bushfires – so remember to check in next week as we get our homes ready.
You can subscribe to the News Wrap email newsletter at the link above to follow the step-by-step guide to Get Ready this year.
If you are still recovering from last year’s bushfires, please visit the link above or call 7955 7777. If reminders of the bushfires are causing issues for you, please call the Mental Healthline on 1800 011 511.
