Australian Journal of Emergency Management | AJEM

While much media attention has rightly focused on the role that fire and emergency services workers, both volunteers and employees, are tasked with to protect communities from the bushfires ripping across the nation, it is community members themselves who are stepping up all across the country to help each other.

These actions are as diverse as neighbours helping neighbours to defend property, to communities establishing relief and recovery centres to provide a focal point for local residents who have, in some cases, lost everything to the destructive bushfires, to working side by side with residents to restore order out of the chaos.

Amanda Leck
Executive Director
Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience