Back in business: BlazeAid resumes work on Hills properties after COVID-19 restrictions
BlazeAid is back in fire-hit Adelaide Hills towns after COVID-19 restrictions forced volunteers to down tools in March. Now they need some help.
Adelaide Hills
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BlazeAid volunteers forced to put down their tools because of COVID-19 restrictions have returned to the Adelaide Hills after a 10-week break.
The volunteer-based organisation, which helps communities in the wake of disasters, has resumed work across 200 properties, following the easing of restrictions by the State Government.
BlazeAid was forced to shut its Lobethal-base camp on March 23 for the safety of volunteers, leaving a major backlog of work on properties affected by the December 20 Cudlee Creek fire.
A skeleton crew has now returned to work from its new base camp at Springhead Church, Mount Torrens. Volunteer co-ordinator Sue Jackson said more help was needed before winter hit the region.
“Things are becoming urgent now,” she said. “There are still people without homes and property owners who can’t run cattle because they don’t have fencing.
“The weather is also a big hindrance as we don’t operate when it’s wet, which is making everything a bit uncertain in terms of providing a time frame for when we can help. So we’d love it if there are qualified people out there that could help. That’s people who have built fences before or have a background in rural construction.
“It’s not that we don’t want all the help that we can get, it’s just that COVID is putting restrictions on us, which is making it hard to run big teams so we’re really on the hunt for specific skills sets.”
Volunteer Barb Keynes has been tracking the progress of BlazeAid since it first set up camp in the region on January 10. She said volunteers had been instrumental in clearing 333km of fencing in the first 11 weeks and had also rebuilt more than 102km of fencing across 157 properties.
Since last week, a crew of 12 volunteers has also completed fencing on an additional property in Mount Torrens. However, more is to be done in Cudlee Creek, Harrogate, Birdwood and Brukunga.
“We started with 357 properties on our books and we completed 157 of those, so we have still got a lot of properties outstanding,” Ms Keynes said. “Some of them are quite small and some of them we haven’t heard from since we closed in March, so we don’t know if they have finished all their fencing themselves, so it’s something we’re still working out since we returned.”
She urged property owners to get in touch.
