Mayoral Message

It has been a horrific start to the New Year as large parts of South-East Australia have been devastated by bushfire and a thick haze of smoke and anxiety continues to hang over our local community.

Many of you would have strong memories of January 2013 when the Cobbler Road fire started under extreme fire conditions and burnt quickly, travelling through 35kms and covering 14,000 hectares causing significant damage to farming country in the Yass Valley. We were all severely affected by this fire and it was the extraordinary empathy and support shown by our community, as well as many communities surrounding us, that ultimately got us through those dark days.

The Yass Valley community support and care for our neighbouring communities during this current bushfire crisis has been nothing short of remarkable. We would like to thank everyone for their generosity and kindness, and in the coming weeks, we will all be looking at ways to continue to assist our fellow Australians on the long road to recovery.

Many locals are donating money to bushfire appeals and others are providing practical support by way of accommodation, food and rest stops to fire evacuees. Others, like Adrienne Stewart and her band of local volunteers, have been coordinating a relief centre in Yass where people are being supported with non-perishable food, water, bathroom supplies and other useful items. No cash donations can be accepted at this relief centre, however, we urge anyone who would like to donate funds to bushfire response and relief efforts to do so through official channels such as:

The NSW Rural Fire Service is the lead agency that Yass Valley Council and other agencies support in times of bushfire events. The NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian called a seven-day State of Emergency on Thursday, 2 January to begin on Friday, 3 January. The declaration triggered a broad range of measures and allowed the Rural Fire Service Commissioner to exercise extraordinary powers, including being able to direct all government agencies. Under the leadership of the RFS, Council, Police, SES and other State Government agencies came together at the Yass Fire Control Centre over the weekend.

Yass Valley Council has been standing ready and willing to offer technical, logistical and practical support to our RFS. We have staff available at short notice and we have been working hard behind the scenes with all agencies to ensure a coordinated response and appropriate level of support is offered across the whole of the Southern region.

We would like to wholeheartedly thank the RFS and all the dedicated and hardworking volunteers who have worked tirelessly to protect lives and properties. I attended a meeting at the Fire Control Centre on Saturday and met RFS volunteers who had travelled to Yass from Sydney, ready to be dispatched wherever their help was needed. This is a story we are seeing right across the country.

To our own dedicated Yass Valley RFS and SES volunteers who have been posted across the region to provide much needed relief to crews on the fire grounds, we cannot thank you enough.

These are difficult times. We have faced extreme weather conditions this summer and, unfortunately, it seems likely this trend will continue for some time yet. We need to look after our neighbours and continue to support each other though this tough time.

6 January 2020

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