Emergency Planning Advice Service

[Emergency Planning Advice Service (EPAS)]

[Gentle music]

[On screen text] 
EPAS
Emergency Planning Advice Service 

[Lively music]

[Voice over and on screen text] 
The Emergency Planning Advice Service, EPAS, is designed to support people who have a disability, are older, or have a chronic or acute medical condition, to develop a fire and emergency plan that meets their needs and circumstances.

[Greg Callaghan - CFA] 
For a lot of people, it's just too overwhelming because of their particular circumstances there, they may have a disability, they may be elderly. It can be quite overwhelming to actually develop a workable plan. So what we've been able to do with EPAS is to sit down with people, understand their particular circumstances, make it a lot easier for them to work through, all right, and develop a plan that's gonna work for them.

[Voice over and on screen text] 
EPAS works to address the disproportionate risk for people who are older or have a disability.

[Michelle Villeneuve - University of Sydney] 
The Emergency Planning Advice Service that was developed by CFA and, and rolled out in partnership with Red Cross, is a pretty exciting program. We absolutely need it because people with disability are at disproportionate risk when it comes to safety in emergencies. You know, our research internationally will show that people with disability are two to four times more likely to die in a disaster than the general population. And I always say, now we have to just pause and think about that for a minute. Like big gulp, really. Really think about that level of risk.

[Lively music]

[Tamara Bush - CFA] 
So EPAS takes place in the person's home. It's a home-based service. We visit the resident twice. There's usually a roughly a two week gap but that depends on the resident's needs as well. They might have appointments and so forth. It may be a bit longer.

[Kristen Knight - Red Cross] 
I think that there's a lot of tools out there to help people in their emergency preparedness, but it could be quite overwhelming to know where to start. I think EPAS gives people a really non-confrontational way to approach emergency preparedness and to start to put all of the thoughts they've probably had down on paper, and then to identify some gaps they may not have seen before.

[Voice over and on screen text] 
EPAS uses the Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness approach.
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[Tamara] 
Person-centred approach in CFA, is a little bit different to how CFA would traditionally engage with the community. It's more discussing with the person their needs, their support mechanisms, the way they engage with the community, and helping them to put that into a plan.

[Lea Young - Red Cross]
Person-centered approach is terrific because it's so individual. It's specific to that person's needs and it's giving them the empowerment. And I think that's one of the strengths of EPAS is that you don't do it for them, they do it for themselves. So the person-centered approach gives all the power and all the decision-making to the person, and that's brilliant.

[Greg]
You only learn about somebody when you sit down and have a talk to them and understand their particular situation.

[lively music]

[On screen text] 
EPAS
Emergency Planning Advice Service

[Lively music] 

[Voice over and on screen text]
CFA acknowledges the University of Sydney Impact Centre for Disability Research and Policy, and the research program led by Deputy Director and Associate Professor Michelle Villeneuve, that led to the co-produced Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness (P-CEP) approach.

[On screen text] 
For more information about P-CEP go to www.collaborating4inclusion.org

For more information about EPAS contact communityprograms@cfac.vic.gov.au

[Stories from Chewton – Emergency planning with people at higher risk using a person-centred approach]

[Voice over]
This video features bushfire experiences that may be confronting for some viewers.

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[Fire crackling] 
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[Voice over] 
After losing her house in the Canberra Bushfires in 2003, Pat moved to Castlemaine, and then settled on a bush block in Chewton in Central Victoria.

[Train horn honks]
[Light piano music]

[Pat - Chewton Resident] 
People need to start thinking about the realities of living somewhere like Castlemaine and Chewton. There's a very strong community and they are always willing to pick up and take control. We are a very high-risk bushfire area. So you can't just assume that I should be right, because it won't be. Living in the bush doesn't frighten me. But living in the bush, even on a bush block like this, which is not deep bush or anything, makes you realise that you can't determine what a bushfire's going to do. All you can do is say, "Well, okay, how will I react?" And my experience of Canberra has left me with a very clear plan: prepare well, leave early, and don't look back.

[Antoinette - Australian Red Cross Facilitator] 
EPAS is important because it's going to save lives. I think it's getting people ready for an emergency of all kinds, not just fire. I think because it's a person-centered programme where they have to be proactive themselves about what they're going to need, first of all, they have to get their heads around the idea that an event like this may happen, and that they need to be prepared for it.

A lot of the work that the Red Cross does is dealing with trauma, and if we can get people to acknowledge that there could be an event, then help them to be prepared for it, then they will be less stressed because they are more prepared.

[Pat] 
Red Cross is well known and well trusted within pretty much all the community. And so the presence of Red Cross adds a certain amount of authority and credibility, you know, and Red Cross is about caring. So it brings that sense that, we're not just here to, you know, put fires out. We're here to care about you. And that's really important in getting people to accept and become part of the whole process. The questions and the information seemed very relevant to my experience after Canberra. They're asking you to think about really relevant issues that you may not have thought about. Well, there was the odd cup of coffee. 

[Pat chuckling]

But no, just simple talk. Some really useful sort of tips about how to plan ahead, what sort of things to take into account. But I think the essential thing about any plan is to prepare well and leave early. But as well as that, don't look back. You made a decision to accept the risk of living in the bush in a high bushfire area. So you don't look back.

EPAS is providing people with important information, but also bringing them a sense of reality about the risk they face and how they deal with it. By having EPAS in place, I feel a lot safer because I have a very clear list, a plan, of what I have to do, and that makes me feel a lot safer.

[light uplifting music]

[On screen text]
CFA acknowledges the University of Sydney Impact Centre for Disability Research and Policy and the research program led by Deputy Director and Associate Professor Michelle Villeneuve that led to the co-produced Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness (P-CEP) approach. For more information about P-CEP, go to www.collaborating4inclusion.org

This material was produced with funding provided by the Australian Government in partnership with States and Territories under the National Partnership Agreement for Disaster Risk Reduction.

[Voice over] 
If you have been affected by any of this content, you can reach out to Beyond Blue via their website or by calling 1300 224 636 or contacting Lifeline on 13 11 14.

[Johnsons’ Story - Improving Home Fire Safety, Benalla 2023]

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[On screen text]
Fire Safety People at Higher Risk
The Johnsons' Story

[Lyn Johnson - Benalla Resident] 
Amanda was born with spina bifida, 34 years ago, and we didn't know until she was actually born that she was gonna have a disability. We were told that she'd never walk, she'd never be able to feed herself, go to the toilet, anything. But she has reached a lot of milestones. So that was one, plus and as a baby, she was just like any normal baby because she didn't have to do anything. And as she grew, you know, she was still in the pusher and a pram, was only until she got a bit older and she went into a wheelchair. And um, a lot of people didn't even know, you know, that she had a disability.

She's changed over, probably the last six years. She's bedridden a lot to what she was, because she had respiratory failure going back in 2016. And that was a really tough time for not just Amanda, but for everybody in the family, you know. 

We had to move down to Melbourne for three months while she was in hospital. We stayed with our other daughter and that is the main, her main, yeah is spina bifida, which, you know, affects everyone different. But she never could walk and she never will walk.

[On screen text]
National house fire fatality research has highlighted that people with a disability are at higher risk in a house fire.

[Gentle music continues]

[Maryanne Egan - CFA Community Engagement]
So this year I was, able to go and meet with the Johnson family because, they had asked CFA for help in working on a fire escape plan.

They realised that if anything happened in the house with regards to fire that they needed her to be able to escape. Her bedroom was at the back of the house, and the ramps that she uses in her wheelchair, are at the side of the house or at the front of the house.

[Jamie Beaton - Captain Benalla Brigade] 
I first met the Johnsons through the community safety coordinator Andy Arnold from District 23 where he contacted me and asked me if I'd go around there, with him and put up some smoke detectors.

Was it an immense help to me? It was absolutely sensational. At least I had an understanding of why we were doing this, why we were putting extra smoke detectors in. But actually getting to meet the Johnsons and actually seeing the layout out of the house was absolutely sensational.

[On screen text]
A response notification was added to this address. If there is an emergency call received, crews responding to this address are alerted that someone in the house cannot self-evacuate and where they are located. 

[Jamie]
So if there is any incident that happens to that property, there's a notice that comes up on our pages that's saying there is a lady in that house with a disability and where she's located.

[On screen text] 
Home Fire Escape Plan and Practice

[Lyn]
It's not just go in and get Amanda, grab Amanda because that can never happen. She's got to be hoist up with a hoist. So we've got to have the slings under and then a hoist. So we've been practicing how long it takes to get her up. Twice this week, one took us eight minutes and another one took us six. But we'll keep doing it a couple times a week to see how we go by time.

With Amanda's wheelchair, we normally keep it out in the kitchen. But now, we are keeping it in Amanda's bathroom so that that's already up there if anything happened during the night. We've only got to bring it out of the bathroom, as where before we'd have to come down to the kitchen and we might not be able to get the wheelchair, and then we'd have no hope of getting her up.

[Maryanne] 
Home Fire Escape Plans are a critical element of our work. At night-time, if the fire happens at night-time when it's dark, how they're going to get out of the house, the need to have two routes of escape from any room and that can often present a difficulty if there's only one door and a window.

[On screen text]
Improving Home Fire Safety

[gentle music] 

[Wayne Johnson - Benalla Resident] 
The process with the CFA has been absolutely fantastic. Since they first entered our house, they showed us a lot of things that we didn't know about. The plans, the equipment we need for the house to help us be a lot safer. And we just can't, can't fault it, it's just been a 100%.

Because she is in a hospital type of bed and to exit her out the house we have to put her into a wheelchair we want to take out her windows. She's got big bay windows. We're gonna take the windows out and knock the walls out and put a exit there with a sliding door with a window and a ramp to run down beside the house.

[Lyn]
We never had a fire plan. We didn't even think that we needed one. Now we've got that in place. We've learned a lot, yeah, since we got the CFA on board.

Things that we just took for granted, because everyone thinks the fire will never happen to them, and we'll just keep trying to improve it. We will get guided by the CFA and that's what we'll do.

[On screen text] 

A special thanks to: 
Lyn and Wayne Johnson who shared their story

CFA District 23 Community Engagement Coordinator Andy Arnold who coordinated the home fire safety engagement with the Johnsons' family 

Mark William Fire Safety Coordinator North Team FRV

Benalla Fire Brigade and Captain Jamie Beaton

Mary Anne Egan, Community Engagement facilitator