Australia fires: BlazeAid steps up for biggest repair mission

BlazeAid has begun what will be its biggest rebuild since the disaster-aid organisation was founded, as up to 200 UK firefighters are flown in to assist.

Post men: BlazeAid volunteers rebuild fences at Adelong as part of a project that will dwarf the Black Saturday repair works. 

CHARITABLE group BlazeAid expects to rebuild more farmers’ fences in the next months than it has in the disaster-aid organisation’s 10 years of existence.

“We had 400 properties after the Black Saturday fires, today we are heading for 50 base camps with an average of 200 to 300 properties each,” BlazeAid founder Kevin Butler said.

“The damage and destruction seems hundreds of times more than Black Saturday.”

Mr Butler, who started a base camp for volunteers near Adelong, NSW, last week, said volunteers weren’t just rebuilding fences, but getting basic food and toiletry supplies to those that need them and even helping keep livestock off roads.

“Cattle are just wandering the roads everywhere,” he said. “It’s a pretty dangerous place.”

The Adelong base camp will this week welcome the first of 200 UK firefighters-turned-BlazeAid volunteers.

Armed with their own swag or tent, they will stay for a month helping rebuild fences on some of the more tougher terrain.

Mr Butler said the Corryong rebuild was also going to be “massive” as the area had been “devastated”.

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Melissa Jones, who is leading the BlazeAid communication team, said the organisation was receiving 15-20 emails a minute – with even more messages via Facebook – from people that either needed help or wanted to help.

“It’s the power of social media,” she said. “People are interested and care.”

But even with a passionate volunteer workforce, it’s a difficult job cleaning up the “guts of east coast Australia”.

“15,000 kilometres of boundary fencing and 50,000 kilometres of internal fencing (needs fixing) in one shire alone,” Ms Jones said.

“If you think how long it takes to walk a kilometre let alone put wire through posts.”

Donations can be made to BlazeAid at blazeaid.com.au/donations.