Majors Peter & Jean Ridley

Wednesday 16th January 2013

We arrived in Coona about 2 pm to find fire fighting activity in full swing with what is an impressive number of personnel on site.

The fire here is a major incident and has had a huge impact on the local and national community; we believe TSA has lost a golden opportunity here by not activating sooner. We could have been at the forefront of this action and impacted the lives of all those who have been affected by this incident.

On arrival we met up with Majors Ian & Kerry Spall RFS Chaplains who are working with RFS firefighters and those who have had property damaged or total loss of homes by the fire. They will be here until Friday then returning to Sydney. They requested that we have chaplains on site to care for the groups of RFS, NSWFB, St Johns Ambulance and other front line agencies as there would be no other Chaplains on site after they leave.

The NSW Disaster Chaplains are on site at the Evacuation centre and their brief is to look after victims but not service personel. We have offered our assistance with victims going home to find whatever awaits them. This starts tomorrow.

There are two ways we see at present where we can help out.

1.a. A number of government and NGO will be at the recovery centre to be opened Thursday or Friday offering assistance to victims.

1.b. We need to know what resources TSA will be giving and when. There needs to be consideration given to the 35 families that have lost everything and also the many other folks who have lost stock and pasture, their income for this year.

Immediate action needed.

2. Rural chaplains to visit with victims on site where possible, to offer support, encouragement and help where possible/needed.

3. We will speak to the RFS and NSWFB about bringing in their own chaplains in to look after their personnel.

Once a team has arrived on site to look after our response at the Recovery Centre And Rural Chaplains are on site, (we are hoping this will happen by Friday at the latest Kind regards

Peter & Jean

Peter Ridley (Major) The Salvation Army Rural chaplain North NSW 0423