At the recent Community Engagement forums we have been spending a fair bit of time talking about our products and the tendency to use 'fire fighters jargon'. When you talk about a subject regularly it is easy to forget how difficult it can be for someone with little or no fire experience to understand words that you use all the time. We have had some really good discussions around some of these words and phrases such as:
- bush fire prone land
- ember attack
- APZ
- fuel and fuel load
- asset
- treatments
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| Have YOU read this document? |
How can we communicate with you more effectively about new tools and products? I would love to hear any suggestions on how we can improve communications, especially about new products and community engagement events such as the regional forums and road shows.
For any of us working with the community on bush fire safety, the Bush Fire Survival Plan should be our main resource tool. It is the document we need to know back to front and upside down. The messages in this document are absolutely core to what we do.
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How is YOUR knowledge? Do you know how many plans are actually in the Bush Fire Survival Plan? Do you know the importance of triggers when developing a plan? Do you know what PREPARE. ACT. SURVIVE. means?
There has been a lot of change to our products such as the Bush Fire Survival Plan, Neighbourhood Safer Places, Fire Danger Ratings and even the Emergency Survival kit we now recommend. It is a hard task to stay up to date and to use jargon free language when our products can be very complex - but it is a challenge we need to embrace and encourage each other to actively try to master.
What ways can we improve our product knowledge?
- read the Bush Fire Survival Plan - even one page a week
- pick a page in the Bush Fire Survival Plan and discuss it with your family - how do they interpret it, or your brigade - encourage the discussion
- speak to your Fire Control Centre to see what information they have
- have a look at our new fact sheets
- join our community engagement Facebook page RFS NSW Community Engagement facebook page and become part of the conversation and knowledge sharing
- ask questions about the Bush Fire Risk Management plan for your area
- surf our website http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/
For me being involved in discussions is a really good way to learn and remember important information. It is also a good way to challenge my own interpretation and understanding of a topic. Even if you are confident that you are up to date with your understanding of our products, I encourage you to engage others in conversations about our bush fire safety messages so that together we can all improve our knowledge.
The power of the conversation should never be underestimated!
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Cheers from
Tanyia
7 comments:
I have learnt more about the RFS Community Engagement activities by following you on Facebook than I ever have. I had no idea there were regional forums and lots of additional tools such as the key ring prompt cards. I am now aware of the some of the docs on Prepare Act Survive etc but again had not seen them until the last community engagement event when we were handing them out. (a little late to be familiar with them). We really don't spend anytime on the Community Engagement material etc at the brigade level as a training session. Maybe we should be. But I am only a pleb even though have completed CSA.Keep telling us more.
Thanks for this comment - the team REALLY appreciates it. Your not a pleb though, your an important part of our network! Thanks heaps
Hi Comm Eng Team,
just a quick note to say i enjoyed reading your latest blog. There is one grammatical error, after the second green question you ask about ways to "communications", i think it should be 'communicate'.
thanks heaps for the new resources continually being developed.
Thanks so much for the feedback - appreciated. Have fixed the grammatical error as well :0) At least we know someone else has read it through!!
Hi Tanyia
I was fortunate enough to attend part of the AFAC Conference in Sydney last week and was heartened by the number of speakers who emphasised the high value of the work we do before the fires to increase resilience within the community. Engaging with people is a key part of increasing community resilience. When I am considering engagement I tend to go back to my CSA training and try to localise it, personalise it & make it memorable.
Perhaps we need to recognise Brigades & their members as a key community of interest and target them in our engagement activities.
To Anonymous: You are not 'a pleb'!!! We are all out there doing the hard slog in community engagement.
The fact you are getting info via Facebook is great to hear. Also good that you now know about the Bush Fire Survival Plan. So what's next?
Tanyia: great format for the Blog. Easy on the eye, and an enjoyable read.
Questions you pose do give pause for thought.
If we as com engagers aren't aware of the Bush Fire Survival Plan, its details and its purpose, how do we expect residents we give them to to read it, let alone complete the Plan.
My interest (concern) with Open Day coming up, is that there may be a tendency to distribute the BFSP as if it was a lolly - and assume the act of giving it out is enough to change behaviour, or to make people aware of say, Alerts, or the 1800 number.
The BFSP can be a great guiding document for a multitude of purposes.
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