Bushwalk Australia

Noticed there has been a bit of an outcry this morning about the speed of donation distribution by red Cross, salvos, Vinnie's and others.

Of the 115m donated to red Cross so far this is what has been spent according to ABC interview.

The Red Cross said on social media it had already paid out $6.9 million in emergency grants to people who had lost their homes.

The organisation said it had delivered $5 million in initial disaster support, $1 million to families who had lost a relative, $18 million over three years to support community recovery and that $61 million had been allocated to "further immediate and long term support".

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-23/ ... n/11892062

It's always hard to sort out the alarmist headlines/reporting and gain a true picture especially when the outrage is being led by politicians.

Though it seems out of the 115 million only 12.9 million has been distributed/used so far.

With entire towns and houses being lost realistically people will be without a home or their business premises for at least a couple of years. Factor in time for insurance appraisal, building redesign to new bushfire standards, the council approval then finding trades people to do the work during a time when demand will be skyrocketed.

So should some of this donation money be used to build temporary towns and housing? As in proper demountable buildings etc. If you look at building sites and how quickly they put in demountables, temporary towns could go up in a couple of weeks.

Currently people are living in tents and with friends. Its not sustainable.

One of the issues is avoiding scammers - it’s important that the money goes to people who have been affected and not just everyone wanting to jump on the bandwagon.

Imagine if it was inadvertently given out to those who didn’t really suffer from the fires?

The general public would be quick to point the finger at the charities and call for bloods!

I have volunteered with a well known humanitarian charity for the last 6 - 7 years providing mapping and assistance with infield data collection during and after emergencies so these are my thoughts from that experience.

Recovery from such events takes a long time, so some of the pleas to hand over all the funds now are very shortsighted. Who will be there for the individuals and the communities after the smoke dies down and the cameras leave. The other issue is ensuring that those asking for the funds are genuine, and I can assure you there are scammers operating now to try and collect funds from many of the charities. Different donations also have different criteria for handing out the funds. Some require that you have lost your home, others that the home is damaged, others that a life has been lost. But there will be many people who may not have lost anything that will also require assistance long term. In my case I work with other agencies to get access to Rapid Impact assessment data that has already been collected to help speed up claims, likewise fire boundaries (for all fires from July 2019 in this current grant round). Some charities wont have access to this sort of information. Try doing some of this across the country when no two states collect the same information in the same format.

Grants are available from many sources - Government, councils, charities, individuals. All have a purpose and all the people behind them have their own criteria and checks before handing over funds.

On the issue of 'administration costs'.... In my own case I use cloud based software that we need to ramp up every time there is an emergency event. That costs money as its per user and we need more people (always trained volunteers) to support the operation. As events wind down we drop users. These are the sorts of administration costs that should come from the active event. This type of software allows us to utilise volunteers in 'non event states' to support people where the event is happening. For instance, people in WA could be doing phone Outreach to people in QLD post cyclones. Staff in Tasmania can be processing forms from WA, VIC etc. This frees up local volunteers to be on the ground in the disaster zone. They also have interstate arrangements in place for people to relieve staff on long campaigns, exactly the same as the fire/parks/forestry agencies. All of these folks are volunteers that have been trained to do their jobs or staff. Likewise fuel, cars, lodgings etc to get extra people to assist at Evacuation centres. Tablet devices to collect information and assist with grant registration, phones etc are all required to ensure peoples safety.

Having said that - could things be better. Yes, and each new big event brings about changes at all levels of government and in the Not for Profit and charity sector.

This event has caught some by surprise but the larger charities are generally much better prepared and have systems and governance in place to deal with the extra funds. They have also learnt from the past.

What would I like to see done better (purely in my area of need)?

• Every fire map to use the same symbols regardless of state!
• A single site with all the fire boundaries so things don't stop at state borders!
• More support for firies and equipment
• More acknowledgement that things are changing rapidly and we might need different solutions
• More volunteers trained and ready to go before events
• More people being better prepared and understanding that maybe no-one will come to support you in extreme events
• Much less ignorant social media posts and more real journalism where facts are checked

Believe it or not, I am actually hopeful that this will occur!

RISK ASSESSMENT OF AUSTRALIAN CHARITIES RAISING MONEY FOR BUSHFIRE RECOVERY

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/ ... ssment.pdf