Award Winners

In September, the SA Community FloodSafe program was awarded the State Award for the category Local Government (collective of councils). The Awards were presented at the Adelaide Oval Function Centre in North Adelaide, and representatives of all the entries were present. Twenty-two FloodSafe volunteers, together with SES and Bureau of Meteorology staff were present to see the presentation. Winning the State Award means that FloodSafe will represent South Australia at the Attorney General's National Safer Communities Awards at Old Parliament House Canberra in December. Two representatives from SA will be invited to attend.

FloodSafe was supported by a Commonwealth Working Together grant and commenced in November 2008. By June 2009 FloodSafe had carried out 80 community activities and presented FloodSafe information to almost 30,000 residents through school visits, community meetings and events, displays, addresses to community groups and service clubs etc.

One of many successes in the program has been retention of SES volunteers who might otherwise have left the service once they reached an age where they no longer wished to carry out the most active response activities. A number of people have joined SES to be part of FloodSafe, yet they might not have joined for a purely response role.

Mr David Place, Chief Executive of the SA Fire and Emergency Services Commission described FloodSafe as being an entry representing the City Councils of Mitcham, Marion, Unley, Holdfast Bay, West Torrens and Adelaide, the Bureau of Meteorology, Department for Water Land and Biodiversity Conservation, and managed by State Emergency Service through its enthusiastic and well-trained FloodSafe volunteer.

The follow comments were made by the Safer Communities Award judges on why the SA FloodSafe community education program was selected as the winning entry.

• FloodSafe integrated a range of best practice ideas from across the country.
• It combined door-knocking, school visits, community meetings, local clubs, displays and community and public events - taking community education fact-to-face with the at-risk communities.
• The program could be applied to all-hazards and to any jurisdiction.
• It added value by increasing retention within SES, and bringing in additional volunteers.
• It improved links between SES, peer agencies and local government.
• Is an excellent example of moving beyond emergency response and reaction, to anticipation and mitigation.