Expo aims to support local flood recovery

EVERYONE is welcome at the Heathcote Flood Recovery Expo on Saturday, 25 February at Barrack Reserve, Heathcote.

Clinical psychologist and natural disaster and emergency recovery consultant David Younger will be the guest speaker.

He’ll be joined by representatives from emergency services, water utilities and authorities, State Government departments, the City of Greater Bendigo and local health providers for the event.

Heathcote Community House executive officer Vicki Forde said she became aware of the psychological effect of flooding on community members when they sought help with practical problems.

“Just hearing all the horrific stories and seeing what impact the flood had on people’s mental health without them even realising it and knowing how stoic people are, we realised that if we didn’t have something to help them now then we would have a lot more need of it down the track,” she said.

Ms Forde said a wide range of people might need help coming to terms with October’s flooding.

“The whole community was impacted,” she said. “We’re hearing from loads of different people who didn’t have water on their property damaging anything, but they were blocked in and they couldn’t get out.

“There’s a fear of that happening again.

“We’ve had rain since and flash flooding recently, people have been triggered by those sorts of things and you see it on social media and you hear it in their conversations.

“We already work pretty closely with the City of Greater Bendigo on a number of things, but particularly in the emergency preparedness area.

“In the conversations we had with the council we said we wanted to do some kind of trauma talk.”

A grant from the Federation for Rural Regional Renewal, along with State Government funding and practical support from the City is making the expo possible.

Ms Forde said a free lunch would be served from midday and David Younger would speak from 12.45 to 1.30pm.

“All those other departments and services, their representatives will be available before and after lunch,” she said.

“There’ll be other agencies who won’t be represented but we’ll have information from them.”

Ms Forde said there were many practical lessons from the flooding that would help the community be better prepared in the future.

“We weren’t as educated or prepared as we are with bushfire so there were a lot of learnings,” she said.

“I think a lot of people didn’t think it was going to happen because we get promised these weather events and they don’t happen.”

Bookings are not required for the expo but are encouraged to help with catering, please call 0431 328 421 to book.