Abstract
On February 7, 2009, the day that would become known as Black Saturday, over 700 bushfires ravaged the State of Victoria, Australia. Devastating many communities and shocking the entire nation, the fires took 173 lives, injured many more, and caused widespread destruction. In their wake, the national and Victorian governments established a central agency, the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority (VBRRA), to lead and coordinate a massive recovery and reconstruction process that placed local communities at its core. This chapter provides a case study of how the VBRRA collaborated with community partners by examining the recovery planning efforts in Victoria’s Marysville Triangle region. In particular, it explores how representatives of local communities, local businesses, and all levels of government jointly developed a framework for rebuilding in and around Marysville; settled on recovery priorities; and identified catalyst initiatives for regenerating community life and the local economy. The chapter concludes with a set of lessons drawn from this experience—but broadly applicable to other post-disaster scenarios—about government-community partnerships for the recovery planning process.
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Notes
- 1.
A significant fire is defined as a fire in which one of the following occurs: human deaths, substantial property loss, or large areas of public land are burnt (Parliament of Victoria 2009).
- 2.
Marysville Triangle refers to the cluster of villages in the region around Marysville to the north–east of the Melbourne metropolitan area. It includes the villages of Narbethong, Granton, Buxton, Taggerty and Marysville.
- 3.
Fire spotting: the sparks and embers carried by wind and convective activity that start fires outside the main fire front. Spotting and the development of spot fires most commonly occur in front of and around the lead edge of fires, but can also occur along the perimeter (Parliament of Victoria (2009a) Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission: Interim Report).
- 4.
Over 1,300 fires incidents were reported to fire authorities on or immediately before Black Saturday (Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority 2009).
- 5.
The Victorian Bushfire Appeal Fund ultimately received over US$400 million in donations from the public, along with contributions from private corporations and businesses, to support the recovery of people and communities affected by the fires (Victorian Government, 2014).
- 6.
The Authority was responsible for leading and coordinating an extensive number of tasks. These included: the development of a state-wide plan for recovery, the clean-up of affected areas, donations management, the provision of temporary housing, planning and co-ordinating the rebuilding of community infrastructure, providing assistance to rebuild private homes and businesses, mobilising the delivery of welfare and material aid, and facilitating psycho-social support, environmental rehabilitation, and economic development.
- 7.
The Recovery and Reconstruction Framework was adapted from one developed by the New Zealand Government, which acknowledges the multi-faceted nature of recovery by identifying four environments (social, economic, natural, and built) and the community as the unifying focus across all four. This model is similar in many respects to ones previously used by the Victorian and Commonwealth governments (Victorian Government 2011).
- 8.
It should be noted that by September 2009, just prior to the completion of the Rebuilding Together Plan, some US$867 million had already been invested in the reconstruction and recovery effort from government and other sources (Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority 2009).
- 9.
VBRRA’s Terms of Reference explicitly placed a strong emphasis on working closely with, and consulting, local communities throughout the rebuilding and recovery process. Specifically, they stated that the Authority was required to “work with communities to develop co-ordinated plans to deal with the effects of the disaster on local economies, communities, infrastructure, and the environment. These plans should cover the immediate recovery requirements and longer term development” (Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority 2009). The Authority also adopted guiding principles to support its Recovery and Reconstruction Framework that emphasized the importance of community-led approaches: “Community involvement is key and will be pursued through all activities with management at the local level empowered to deliver results” (Victorian Government 2011).
- 10.
Above all, this meant providing support for the bereaved as well as assisting people with finding shelter, cleaning up their properties and accessing material aid. Subsequently, the Authority also facilitated access for individuals to grants to rebuild their homes and support to re-establish their businesses through the Bushfire Appeal Fund, advisory services, economic leadership training, and small business assistance.
- 11.
This figure is for the towns of Marysville, Buxton, Narbethong, Taggerty and Granton (<Author-Query xmlns:aid5="http://ns.adobe.com/AdobeInDesign/5.0/”></Author-Query>Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006).
- 12.
A design charette is a collaborative design process, frequently used in the fields of architecture, urban design and planning, in which key stakeholders participate with a group of designers to develop solutions to planning and design problems.
- 13.
As described by Ahlers, Howitt, and Leonard, at its most fundamental level advance recovery means having in place “a basic framework about how to organize, build support for, finance, and carry out recovery operations—so that action can begin quickly and public confidence can be secured (Ahlers et al. 2011)” once a disaster has occurred and the recovery process begins. Ahlers et al. have proposed that more attention should be given to a number of different advance recovery strategies, including developing comprehensive frameworks for examining social risks and measures to prevent or mitigate large scale risks before a disaster strikes; as well as the engagement of communities and governments in general planning and preparedness for recovery, rather than assuming that recovery is something that is invented after the event. Their work also identifies elements that are important to mobilizing swift and effective recovery in communities, such as high quality community-based leadership; demonstrated government capability and resources; pre-existing relationships with outside organizations; the ready availability of discretionary funds; and the availability of credit (Leonard and Howitt 2010, Ahlers et al. 2011).
- 14.
Ahlers et al. (2010) identify the pre-disaster factors in local communities that demonstrate social resilience and have been found to accelerate post disaster recovery, including self-reliance, existing community leaders that are highly adaptive and have capacity to organize and mobilize, and working relationships with outside agencies.
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O’Neill, K. (2015). Communities at the Heart of Recovery: Reflections on the Government-Community Partnership for Recovery After the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires in Victoria, Australia. In: Brassard, C., Howitt, A., Giles, D. (eds) Natural Disaster Management in the Asia-Pacific. Disaster Risk Reduction. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55157-7_8
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