Climate Change & the effect on our community
The canary in the coalmine…
If you think that the frequency of disasters is increasing, sadly you’d be right. Looking back in history, more and more of these big events seem to be occurring in our area. From the bushfires in 1962 and 1968, to Ash Wednesday (1983), then Ferny Creek bushfire (1997), then Black Saturday (2009), Gembrook (2017) and Black Summer 2019-2020 to the storms in 2016, 2020, 2021 (x3) and 2024, the time between events is getting shorter. It is no wonder then that the number one concern of respondents of our community survey stated climate change as their biggest concern.
When it comes to the impacts of climate change, we see our community as Australia’s metaphorical canary in the coalmine. Our community is experiencing the early impacts of a climate change and serves as an early indicator of what other communities are likely to experience in the future.
Future projected weather conditions will see us having more extreme rainfall events even though the overall amount of rainfall will decline. It’s Melbourne though, so projections are really variable. Things are more certain for bushfires however. We’re already seeing fire seasons starting earlier and last longer, extending the time during which fire conditions are most dangerous. Higher maximum temperatures and more frequent heatwaves will exacerbate the dryness of vegetation, creating more fuel for bushfires.
These conditions are already making life challenging with roads and other infrastructure, embankments, homes and the mental and physical wellbeing of our community are taking a pounding. Our new councilors will have a job on their hands to prepare now for our future needs. Here are some of the key areas of concern.
Roads
Our roads and roadside embankments and been battered by the storms and extreme rainfall events, with sediment, chemicals and gravel causing irrevocable damage to our environment, local streams, floral and fauna. Landslips are not just endangering lives but causing traffic delays in our ridge towns. It’s a situation that we can’t be contending with during the bushfire season. Potholes are another sore point for residents. While our main roads are the responsibility of VicRoads, the burden of paying for those roads under council responsibility falls to rate payers, of which there are few compared to other shires. Given our high tourism area, the wear and tear on our roads caused by climate change shouldn’t fall entirely on residents’ shoulders.
Innovation and solutions need to be considered that have our future weather conditions in mind..
Telecommunications
What happens when you put all your eggs in one basket but there’s no one person taking responsibility? A disaster, that’s what happens. Natural elements may be contributing to our disasters, but the size of the impacts is definitely based on our decisions. Putting all your eggs in one basket without clear responsibility leads to increased risk, confusion, and a lack of accountability, making failure more likely. Having our NBN, phone and power lines all sharing the one power poles prolonged the misery felt by residents during the June, July and October 2021 storms as well as February 2024 storms. Limited backup power on our mobile towers exacerbated the problems.
We need our council to continue their pressure on telco providers and NBN Co to improve the resilience of our network. We need councils to continue their advocacy on reducing mobile black spots, pushing for improved backup power solutions and making NBN Co more accountable following infrastructure failures. Yes, having power underground would be fantastic, but with generators, while costly, inconvenient and noisy, we can largely control this impact. Telecommunications is a little trickier.
MotHs applauds the recommendation in the recent ‘Boots on the Ground’ Senate inquiry in Australia’s Disaster Resilience to designate telecommunications as critical infrastructure during disaster situations. Telcos are already rebuking the request for collaboration between companies to provide backup power for shared infrastructure, a move that would ensure communication remains operational across various networks. We need our council to be at the forefront of this debate.
Volunteers
Volunteers play critical roles in our community. It’s most noticeable during and after disasters, but as MotHs demonstrates, volunteers work in our community 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The role of social media in disaster response and coordination, particularly in spontaneously mobilising volunteers during crises is finally being recognised too. Since Belinda Young founded MotHs in 2015, time and time again we’ve mobilised volunteers and resources and facilitated access to real-time information in the lead up and following disasters. Our area has a higher than state average involvement in volunteer work, which we ought to be proud of. However, there are growing concerns regarding the decline in volunteerism and the challenges in maintaining a sufficient volunteer workforce.
Financial and time constraints, and concerns about safety, skillsets, and liability are some of the barriers we know of contributing to this decline. The result is that our current volunteers are tired. Really, really tired.
We need to formal recognition for volunteers who contribute to our community. We’d love to see incentives, awards or tax deductions for expenses related to volunteer training.
The lack of a centralised data system to coordinate these efforts effectively has been left to community groups like MotHs. We do the best we can but acknowledge that in such dynamic situations, inefficiencies are inevitable. The Yarra Ranges has a centralised group of the admins of major groups in the area, started by Belinda Young which is our way to reduce inefficiencies. We’d love to work with council, state and federal government on ways to integrate spontaneous volunteers into formal disaster response frameworks.
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The increasing frequency of disasters in our region serves as a stark reminder of the urgent need for climate action and preparedness. These issues are not unique to our area but the impacts we are experiencing should be lessons that other communities learn from. As our community continues to face the early impacts of climate change, from worsening bushfire seasons to more intense storms, it is clear that the road ahead will be challenging. Our infrastructure, telecommunications, and volunteer systems are all under strain, and addressing these issues will require forward-thinking solutions from our new councilors. Collaboration is critical to ensuring the resilience of our beautiful community.
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