CFA Connect Blogosphere

I would like to recognise the outstanding efforts of both our staff and our volunteers in Loddon Mallee, Grampians & Barwon South West for their efforts over the past 10 days during the Victorian Floods.

There have been some outstanding examples of local leadership and local initiative in communities during the floods.

• Local communities have been greatly affected by the floods.  CFA members, both staff and volunteers, have been amongst those impacted.  At this stage our advice is that the major task of clean up is still in front of us.  Consequently, it is too early to put significant resources into the areas affected.
• According to our intelligence in the field, waters are starting to recede, albeit slowly in the majority of flood affected areas.
• In the last 48 hours CFA have put significant effort into developing a structure that will enable us to respond very quickly to requests from assistance from municipalities.  The structure includes establishing Base Camps and command & control arrangements for CFA and DSE resources in supporting clean up.
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• Teams will assist with both response and recovery efforts
• The actual number of resources and type of clean up resources has not yet been quantified.  At this stage CFA is estimating that there will be a significant future demand, but this has not been confirmed by municipalities.
• We are aware that there are many CFA people ready and willing to assist with the local level clean up operation and soon as requests come through local government we will be in a position to call upon this assistance.  We anticipate these requests to increase over the next 48 hours.
• It is anticipated that support from CFA will be required for up to two weeks.

We will continue to keep you informed as further information comes to hand.

Thank you to all for you continued efforts and support.