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Get fire ready: Volunteer-led, inclusive community engagement at scale for bushfire preparedness
CFA’s inaugural Get Fire Ready (GFR) initiative responded to increasing bushfire risk alongside changing community demographics across Victoria, following the AFAC Spring Seasonal Outlook forecasting a challenging fire season. GFR focused on three core areas: property preparation, fire planning, and improved knowledge and use of the VicEmergency App.
GFR aligns with the conference topic of “Communities, culture and engagement” demonstrating how volunteer-led, locally delivered engagement can strengthen trust and preparedness within communities.
More than 500 brigades and almost 4,000 CFA volunteers participated, delivering 547 events across Victoria and directly engaging around 40,000 people in practical, place-based conversations about bushfire risk and preparedness, utilising resources such as tailored local maps triggering conversations with residents.
The majority of events (60%) were held in higher fire-risk areas with a mix of station-based open days, community events and targeted fire safety sessions.
A structured evaluation approach included face-to-face interviews with 1,000 attendees to assess preparedness for the fire season, with 70% of those surveyed reporting feeling better informed and 90% identifying actions they would take to prepare their property. Follow-up research was undertaken with a sample of attendees to determine if they’d undertaken these actions.
The VicEmergency App gained 70,000 new users with a 300% increase in visits to information about setting watch zones. The initiative generated almost 500 volunteer expressions-of-interest and improved connections with community members.
The 2025–26 bushfire season has seen significant fires and homes destroyed but only one life lost. Many areas impacted were communities which undertook GFR events.
While fire outcomes are influenced by multiple factors, GFR contributed to strengthening community preparedness through engagement which leveraged local knowledge and volunteer leadership.
This presentation will share lessons from Get Fire Ready as a scalable, volunteer-led model for inclusive and localised community engagement that can be adapted across emergency service organisations nationally.
GFR aligns with the conference topic of “Communities, culture and engagement” demonstrating how volunteer-led, locally delivered engagement can strengthen trust and preparedness within communities.
More than 500 brigades and almost 4,000 CFA volunteers participated, delivering 547 events across Victoria and directly engaging around 40,000 people in practical, place-based conversations about bushfire risk and preparedness, utilising resources such as tailored local maps triggering conversations with residents.
The majority of events (60%) were held in higher fire-risk areas with a mix of station-based open days, community events and targeted fire safety sessions.
A structured evaluation approach included face-to-face interviews with 1,000 attendees to assess preparedness for the fire season, with 70% of those surveyed reporting feeling better informed and 90% identifying actions they would take to prepare their property. Follow-up research was undertaken with a sample of attendees to determine if they’d undertaken these actions.
The VicEmergency App gained 70,000 new users with a 300% increase in visits to information about setting watch zones. The initiative generated almost 500 volunteer expressions-of-interest and improved connections with community members.
The 2025–26 bushfire season has seen significant fires and homes destroyed but only one life lost. Many areas impacted were communities which undertook GFR events.
While fire outcomes are influenced by multiple factors, GFR contributed to strengthening community preparedness through engagement which leveraged local knowledge and volunteer leadership.
This presentation will share lessons from Get Fire Ready as a scalable, volunteer-led model for inclusive and localised community engagement that can be adapted across emergency service organisations nationally.
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