Who is it we really need to engage?

This truck was out at a community engagement function.

As with many organisations there is often discussion regarding the importance and role of Community engagement. Some members are passionate about the benefits while others cannot see beyond the spray of water from the hose. Many others talk about community engagement being 'core business' but for some that is where it stops - at the talk. It is good we are having these conversations, at least the level of consciousness around community engagement is increasing - the big challenge is to raise the level of consciousness into yet higher levels of activity!

 We have over 70 000 members with the clear majority of these being volunteers who all joined the NSW RFS for different reasons.

Ensuring the importance of the Bush Fire
 Survival Plan is understood

 For every person that simply states they 'joined to put the wet stuff on the hot stuff' there is another person complaining that our communities 'expect a fire truck to arrive in every drive way' during a fire. It is sometimes believed that the minimal expectation may be at least one fire truck per street!

So how do we take the next step forward? How do we keep raising that level of consciousness? How do we let our community members know that a fire truck may not always arrive in their street? How do we increase the understanding within the NSW RFS that community engagement compliments active fire fighting activities?

How do we get our often complex messages out in a way that the community can understand?


Let's detour a minute to that complex messaging and disect that a bit further. The message to the community is;


'The safest option is to leave early well before the fire impacts. However if you chose to stay and defend you must ensure you have a well prepared home, in a defendable space and be physically and emotionally capable. But you should never stay and defend on catastrophic days. On extreme weather days only consider staying if you are prepared to the highest level such as your home is specially designed, constructed or modified and situated to withstand a fire.'


This is only part of our message. I have not mentioned other critical facets such as the Fire Danger Ratings, Warning and Alerts or Neighbourhood Safer Places.


Put yourself in the shoes of a community member with no fire knowledge or background and there arises another myriad of questions such as;
• what is leave early - the day before, the morning of or when the fire is 50 kms away
• how do I know when the fire will impact
• what is a defendable space
• why do I need to be emotionally prepared
• how do I know my home is prepared to the highest level
By the way, the answers to these questions, and others, can be found in the recently launched NSW RFS Bush Fire Survival Plan

So back to those steps, to moving forward, to raising yet more the active support for community engagement within the NSW RFS and how do we engage our communities?

Surprisingly the answer is not simple - it rarely is when we are talking about behavioural change.

We need to engage our colleagues internally so they can REALLY understand the benefits to move them beyond talk and into real support or action. We need to increase their level of understanding - that effective engagement leads to engaged communties and can free them up to focus on the actual fire fighting during an incident.

Genuine and effective community engagement has benefits for both the members of the RFS and the communities in which we serve.

Our brigades share knowledge on fire safety
 with their communities

We need to understand that recognising the diversity of NSW is key to developing our capability to engage our communities. An ageing population, increasing cultural diversity, higher education rates and significant change in family structures; coupled with the ongoing, rapid rate of technological change and the impact weather conditions have on communities openness to fire safety messages, all present challenges and opportunities for those of us involved in community engagement in the NSW RFS.

Of equal importance is the need to recognise and utilise the diversity of our members who deliver community engagement.

In my next post I will take a look at internal engagement before we talk more about external engagement. Many of you are doing some brilliant work with engaging internally and sharing the skills and importance of community engagement. I am hoping our Road Show and Tell in a month will help share this work across the state.

You're input and ideas are very very welcome.


Engagement can be strengthened by the sound of many conversations.



Cheers from Tanyia