‘You need your own bushfire plan’, says Mitcham councillor who wants to scrap community refuge
COUNCIL-RUN bushfire refuge centres might be scrapped by an Adelaide council — only two months after it agreed to open them.
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COUNCIL-RUN bushfire refuge centres might be scrapped by Mitcham Council — only two months after it agreed to open them.
Councillor Jane Bange will this month ask her colleagues to rethink plans to open community centres to the public on catastrophic fire danger days, despite her being in favour of the idea at a meeting in November.
The Country Fire Service is expected to declare the Adelaide Hills region — which includes much of Mitcham — at risk of catastrophic fire tomorrow because of hot weather and strong winds.
Cr Bange emailed elected members last month to say she no longer supported the policy.
She this week told the HillsValley Weekly she made “a wrong call”.
“The next day (Cr) Lindy Taeuber sent an email through with some really relevant points and one was about timing,” Cr Bange said.
“It would only be during the day time, so that was one consideration that people go somewhere and then they have to go somewhere else at 8pm or something.
“But it’s also the CFS directive to have your own individual fire plans.”
Community refuges were previously offered by the Blackwood Belair and District Community Association and staffed by volunteers.
“(The) council shouldn’t be taking over a role a community group did and I don’t know how appropriate that was at the time,” Cr Bange, a Greens candidate at the 2016 federal election, said.
The council agreed in November to open community centres on the plains, with provisions for residents to bring their domestic pets.
It would cost approximately $3000 per day to run and the funding was agreed to be included in the next budget review.
Cr Karen Hockley, who originally pushed for the council-run refuges, said the option of somewhere to go on dangerous days was important for hills residents.
“I’m really dismayed that other hills elected members, particularly, are not willing to consider the people who don’t have capacity to leave without help from the council,” Cr Hockley said.
“Creating an additional option for people who don’t necessarily have friends or family on the plains they can stay with or who might have children … means giving them the option to make a plan.”
She said the refuges were not intended to be a “last-resort measure”.
Mitcham Council would vote on Cr Bange’s move at its meeting on Tuesday, January 23.