Emergency Planning for Early Childhood services in the Blue Mountains

The Need

Early childhood educators provide an essential service to the community as many parents rely heavily on these services to take care of their children so they can participate in paid work. In an emergency scenario such as a bushfire, flood, heatwave or extreme storm service providers are acutely aware of the huge responsibility they have for the children in their care.

Such a scenario occurred on October 17, 2013 when falling powerlines started a bushfire on Linksview Rd in Springwood at approximately 1.30pm. Given the time of day, several hundred children were still at school and in early childhood education centres in Springwood and surrounding areas, while their parents were at home and work.

Within minutes, the fire had rocketed though the townships of Springwood, Winmalee and Yellow Rock, eventually destroying 185 homes and significantly damaging 132.

One early childcare centre in Winmalee had the fire come to within inches of its playground area before a passing firetruck was able to evacuate the children while many other schools in the area went into lock down for several hours.

That year many homes were lost and extensive damage was also suffered in the Mounts region (Mount Victoria, Mount Irvine, Mount Wilson) and Blackheath as well as in townships located between Lithgow and Bilpin as a result of the State Mine Fire.

Since 2013, much work has been done in the area of emergency planning in Blue Mountains to prepare for scenarios such as this. This project, which is a collaboration between Blue Mountains City Council and Resilient Villages and is a continuation of this important work.

The Project

The key aims of this project are to support early childhood education services to build on their existing bushfire emergency plans, to network with other services to share ideas about different approaches and ideas, and to access available resources and supports. This to ensure that these services are well prepared to make appropriate decisions with confidence in the event of a bushfire emergency.

This project will be delivered to the community in there parts:

The first part occurred in November 2023 in the form of a workshop which was held in Springwood. This workshop provided an opportunity for early childhood service management teams to discuss their plans and gain a better understanding of what will occur during an emergency and what can be implemented to reduce the risk to those in their care.

The second part of the project took place in December 2023 and involved bushfire consultant, Tony Hawkins conducting ‘on-site assessment ’ sessions with services. Currently there are 37 early childhood education and care services and 17 Out of School Care Hours (OOSH) services in the Blue Mountains. Each service is unique in its location, the type and age of the building, position of exits, access points, and proximity to bushland.
The on-site building assessment sessions with Tony allowed groups of workers to walk around a site and get an understanding of how and what to assess with their own building. There are numerous guides on this subject available however, there are none that specifically refer to the early childhood service context. These services have particular factors that need to be considered such as:
- Play equipment and ground coverings (for example Softfall surfaces used in many play areas will smoulder rather than burn in an ember attack and let off toxic gas, many shade sails are combustible, play equipment made of plastic)
- The number of children/babies in the centre at any one time (Centres range from 25-100 capacity)
- Many centres in the Blue Mountains are housed in converted buildings and are not designed or well maintained for bush fires or are in a high-risk bushfire prone area with poor road access.

The final part of this project involves Resilient Villages Get Ready Co-ordinator Renee Vincent sitting down with individual services to run through their emergency management plans and engage in scenario planning. If you would like information about this process or to contact Renee please email her at GetReady@mcrn.org.au. This process will continue throughout 2024.

Key Information

13 Month project (November 2023 - December 2024)

Stakeholders

Blue Mountains City Council Resilient Villages

Lizzards Preschool, Hawkesbury Heights Lawson Community Preschool,

Pinnaroo OOSH, Winmalee Blaxland Preschool

Blackheath Kookaburra Kindergarten Katoomba Leura Preschool

Blackheath BOOSH Blue Gum Montessori Preschool, Blackheath

Katoomba Children's Cottage Inc Kookaburra Cottage Childcare, Lawson

Funders