Preparing my family for bush fire season

Last weekend I sat down with my wife Joanna and made plans for the bush fire season.

There are many things we make plans for in life, the majority of these are plans we intend to carry out. This plan I never want to have to put into action.

To make life easy, the NSW RFS did most of the work for us. We worked through their Bush Fire Survival Plan: www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/plan-andprepare/bush-fire-survival-plan

They have four easy steps:
Step 1: Discuss what to do if a bush fire threatens your home
Step 2: Prepare your home and get it ready for bush fire season
Step 3: Know the bush fire alert levels
Step 4: Keep all the bush fire information numbers, websites and the smartphone app

Joanna and I discussed the first two steps in patricular, determining what we would do in the event of a fire and what we still needed to do to prepare our home.

I am relieved to know that in the event of a fire, Joanna and I know whether we will stay or leave and the steps we will take to protect our family in the event of a bush fire.

Admittedly, it is easy to keep putting off developing a bush fire plan. I did for some time. It’s one of the tasks that sat in the ‘important’ basket but never seemed to make it to our ‘urgent’ list. I felt like it would be a bigger undertaking than it actually was. It took us just one hour.

This is set to be a devastating bush fire season, and I didn’t want to be caught, having had plenty of warning, without a bush fire plan.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: our families, homes and community are too important not to have a bush fire plan.

Please take the time to prepare for summer by making your own plans this weekend.