Planning for disasters is very much at the forefront of community discussions in the wake of the recent floods.
While the Tweed has had a prolonged wet period, it doesn’t mean the community should become complacent about bushfires.
Council has received $1.275 million in funding from the Federal Government for bushfire resilience. As part of this, the Tweed Bushfire Resilience Project has been established and aims to reduce the risk to people and property within bushfire-prone areas by increasing access to practical information.
The Tweed currently has approximately 4470 ha of bushfire-prone land which affects more than 16,000 properties.
Of those properties, 5,383 land parcels are within rural areas where approximately 20,000 Tweed residents live.
Council’s Bushfire Resilience Project Officer Jonathan Lynch said with a combination of a growing population and North Coast climate projections for warmer temperatures resulting in longer bushfire seasons, there is an increasing risk of bushfire and more people being exposed to bushfire events.
“With these known risks, it is important we implement planning and management frameworks which will build resilience and reduce bushfire risk to people, property and responding services,” Mr Lynch said.
“This project also aims to better understand our bushfire risk through the creation of comprehensive bushfire risk mapping which would be made available to all bushfire-prone property owners and residents.
“This will provide landowners a platform of information to then make decisions on what to do in a bushfire event and also think about how they might better manage their properties and buildings to mitigate bushfire risk.”
The government funding will cover a number of project actions including:
developing the Tweed Bushfire Project Plan through stakeholder consultation
creating a bushfire risk map based on CSIRO methodology
developing a series of fact sheets to inform and assist landowners in making decisions about bushfire readiness
producing a website enabling individual bushfire risk reports to be generated for all bushfire-prone properties.
“In preparation for the approaching bushfire season which starts in September, the first step for all residents living in bushfire prone areas – both rural and urban – is to prepare their own individual bushfire survival plan,” Mr Lynch said.
“It only takes 10 minutes to complete but having a plan in place could save your life.”
Complete your bushfire survival plan at myfireplan.com.au.
