Deployed to assist with flood recovery and clean-up, Disaster Relief Australia (DRA) will be leaving Campaspe at the end of this week but has urged community members not to worry as it will be back to provide a helping hand in February.
DRA is a veteran-led disaster relief non-profit organisation that unites the skills and experience of Australian Defence Force veterans with emergency services specialists to rapidly deploy volunteer disaster relief teams in the wake of natural disasters.
A spokesperson for DRA said they had been in Campaspe for a total of seven weeks and would be leaving at the end of this week.
In the seven weeks that DRA has been in the Campaspe region, it has completed approximately 18,000 hours of work.
“We don’t want people to think they’ve been forgotten because they haven’t, we will be back,” the spokesperson said.
“While the SES are first responders, DRA are deemed somewhat like second responders so just the way that has worked in with council’s requirements means that we will head off for a bit and then come back to help out when we redeploy in February.”
The capabilities of DRA include removal of debris from houses and properties, removal of mud, rubbish, carpet, dry wall, flooring, wall panels and furniture, incident management, mould clearing and pressure washing.
DRA has disaster relief teams based in Melbourne, Townsville, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Adelaide.
Majority of DRA’s members are volunteers who have a military background.
To find out more about Disaster Relief Australia, visit https://disasterreliefaus.org/ or if you want to sign up as a volunteer, visit https://disasterreliefaus.org/volunteer/