The Victorian Electoral Commission’s Mairead Doyle was Group Manager Operations with the Australian Red Cross at the time of the Black Saturday fires in 2009. During the recent visit of ANZIIF’s Indonesian sister organisation APARI, she shared her experience of providing emergency response and operational resilience to her people on the ground.

Have you ever been personally impacted by a disaster, small or large? Or is close to somebody who has? Did you grow up in an area where disaster preparedness was just part of life? 

Mairead is my name. I am a settler on this land; a migrant to this place. 

BLACK SATURDAY  

Today I’m going share my experience of the aftermath of Black Saturday, the name given to the day in 2009, when 400 bushfires ravaged 78 communities in in Victoria, Australia. 

It’s not going to be graphic, but I’ve my own experience of post-traumatic stress and I know the littlest thing can trigger a memory, so if anything, anything at all brings you back to something you’ve experienced, please take a break from this post. 

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