Mm-hmm

... has seen the news about El Niño and the elevated risk of things like fires, floods, hot weather, is that disasters can affect every single part of our lives.

And a lot of the information that you're gonna see in the coming weeks and months is really, really, really important.

It's about how to survive things like fires and floods.

Um, so when you see that information coming out from places like, uh, the fire brigade, the SES, the Country Fire Service, Red Cross, these are really important things to follow.

But it's also really important to remember the disasters, because they affect every part of our lives, it, tho- those pieces of information about how to do things like evacuate, it's really only one piece of the puzzle.

And so we're trying to really encourage people to think that what else that they can do to minimize some of those disruptions after a disaster.

Yeah.

Was there a particular disaster or a person that has changed the way you thought about recovery?

Yeah, there are a couple that really stood out, but there have been lots, lots and lots and lots of like sort of micro incidents or like one-off accidental or serendipitous things that have happened that have really made me change my worldview on the approaches we should take or around understanding the impacts.

And the first one that came to mind was, was about a guy who was a man who had been affected by a fire and it was actually by the 2009 fires and a bunch of the community mental health workers and service providers had sort of mentioned that they were finding it difficult to engage with him because he kept making appointments and then not turning up to appointments and things like that.

And I happened to be driving past where his property was on the way home.

And they asked if I could drop some stuff off to him that he had asked for.

And I said, that wasn't a problem.

And I went and I dropped him off and I ended up having a chat to him for a while and we're sitting at the front of his place.

Do you think that once they have gone through that trauma of the disaster actually occurring or the hazard occurring, that they are a bit, on the fence about getting support?