Emergency management

Community Information Guides - Bushfire (formerly known as Township Protection Plans) are a key source of information for the community and an important tool to emphasise the shared responsibility between the community, fire services and local government.

Guides have been developed for a number of communities statewide that are deemed to be at risk of bushfire or grassfire.

An alphabetic list of all Victorian community information guides can be accessed on the CFA website

Neighbourhood Safer Places Plan (NSP)

The Loddon Shire Neighbourhood Safer Places Plan contains guidelines which have been developed by the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) to assist the Council in:

• identifying
• designating
• establishing
• maintaining and
• decommissioning places as 'neighbourhood safer places' or 'places of last resort' (NSP or PLRs) within its municipal district.

NSP or PLRs are not community fire refuges or emergency relief centres; they are places of last resort during the passage of a bushfire, and are intended to be used by people whose primary bushfire plans have failed.

NSP and PLRs are places of relative safety - they do not guarantee the survival of people who assemble there. Furthermore, there may be serious risks to safety encountered in travelling, and seeking access to NSP or PLRs during bushfire events. Depending on the direction of a particular fire, it may not be a safer place to assemble than other places within the municipal district.

Where the criteria contained in the Loddon NSPP cannot be met, NSP or PLRs will not be designated.

Further information and the location of your nearest NSP can be found on the CFA website.

Sometimes the best way to ‘help out’ is to make a donation or pledge to a registered charity.

We often want to help in an emergency by donating things like food, furniture, clothes and white goods.

But this can lead to an oversupply and brings on challenges to coordinate, collect, store and distribute food and goods to people in need.

Everyone’s help is vital in an emergency but often the best help you can give is through cash donations that way the money can be used to buy specific goods or services that are most in need and there’s no risk of oversupply.

Donations

If you are making a donation make sure you’re dealing with a legitimate fundraiser. You can do this by:

• donating to well-known relief organisations with a strong record in providing aid – be wary of giving money to an unfamiliar charity
• donating at your local bank
• only handing money over to someone wearing proper identification
• asking for a receipt
• make sure collection tins/containers are sealed and clearly labelled with the fundraisers logo

Fundraising

Sometimes, just making a donation doesn’t feel like enough. If you want to do more, you can help raise funds through your workplace or a community group or sports club. For example you could organise a morning tea at work and ask for a gold coin donation to go towards a nominated charity.

Make sure you make it clear what you are raising funds for and let the participants know how they helped.

Caring for a baby or toddler in an emergency can come with specific challenges.

This series of fact sheets below are specific to emergencies such as bushfires and floods. They will help you to feed and care for your baby safety through an emergency. There are 6 Fact sheets covering the following topics:

• Breastfeeding

• Expressed Breastmilk (EBM)

• Hand Expressing

• Cup feeding

• Blackouts (power outages and frozen breastmilk

• Formula feeding

The collection of resources for parents and anyone who supports families in emergencies or disasters is continually growing. Here you can download these fact sheets, evacuation kit lists, project reports, social media templates and more.

https://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/emergency-resources-babies-and-toddlers