14/04/2021
“We come together as a group of strangers with the common goal to help where we can. No matter how big or small the work we do is, the community are always thankful for what we could do”.
Chris Koedam, RE:ACT Group Trainer, recently spent another week over in Western Australia assisting with the recovery following the Wooroloo bushfire in February this year.
Chris hit the ground running in the Incident Management Team with Disaster Relief Australia as the Operations Officer for Wave 5 of Op Woods. The task at hand was to coordinate the mission objectives, crews and equipment to assist those in the community asking for assistance after being affected by the fires.
Assistance could be in the form of cutting up trees with the chainsaw crews, sifting through the burnt remains of a family home to find any personal possessions, clearing of fence lines, earthmoving expertise, or simply providing an hear to listen, a shoulder to cry on and a hug of comfort from someone you’ve only just met.
This is the second week that Chris has spent away from home, family, work and his dog Kip, to assist those affected by the Wooroloo fire. For Chris it is important to see the recovery stage of the disaster cycle, “all too often we focus on the emergency or disaster as it unfolds and forget about the recovery of the community and the hard work that continues months after the emergency has pasted. It touches your heart to see a community devastated by a disaster and yet they cannot thank you enough and want to give back to you however they can even if they have lost everything.”
“The community are a truly behind us, whether it be by making morning tea, organising for your chainsaws to the cleaned and sharpened, cooking hot dinners, or by dropping in to say thanks. We are there to help the community and do not expect anything in return, but the Aussie spirit cannot be dampened that easily”.
Disaster Relief Australia (DRA) is a not-for-profit helping to unite the skills and experiences of Australian Defence Force veterans, emergency responders and civilians to rapidly deploy disaster relief teams domestically and around the globe.
DRA couldn’t support those affected by disasters without the support of the Australian community and awesome partners like the Minderoo Foundation.
To donate visit www.disasterreliefaus.org
