Callignee & Traralgon South

The Callignee and Traralgon South Emergency Committee (CEC) is a Community Based Emergency Management (CBEM) group of volunteers from the district. It serves the Callignee, Callignee North, Callignee South, Koornalla, Leroy and Traralgon South communities. These communities are a mix of small farms and residential properties.

We focus on raising community awareness of likely community hazards. To identify those hazards we regularly review a formal community risk analysis. Annually, we publish a brochure encouraging residents to prepare themselves and their properties for future hazardous events. We encourage personal responsibility for actions during an event and we are preparing a framework to guide future recovery from an event. The framework is being developed from Dr Rob Gordon’s work which describes the phases a community goes through as it recovers and the five inter-related functions of recovery:

The social environment – such as informal networks, arts activity, culture and historic influences, health and social services, and general participation in the life of the community.
The agricultural environment – such as animal welfare, primary production and agricultural enterprise.
The built environment – such as housing, parks and facilities, public and commercial buildings, roads, paths, essential services (power, water, communications) and other infrastructure.
The natural environment – such as, land management, air quality, natural heritage and ecological conservation.
The economic environment – such as, work, job creation and distribution of wealth.

A key part of this preparation is consultation with the entire community. From this the community will be better informed about the nature of recovery and how the community’s complex matrix of social systems sets the environment for personal health and will be able to identify what is important to the community prior to an emergency event.

The district has an extensive history of catastrophic fire events. The district was devastated in the fires of 1898, 1939, 1944 and 2009. In 2009 more than 145 houses were destroyed, and 11 people died. Between the large fires there were many lesser fires which also impacted local properties.

Latrobe Community Emergency Management Forum:

The Latrobe Community Emergency Management Forum (LCEMF) is a regular forum for members of Community Based Emergency Management (CBEM) groups in the Latrobe Valley. CBEM groups include not only Community Based Bushfire Management (CBBM) groups but also groups which cover all hazards in their district, from road accident events through floods and landslips to bushfires.

We meet quarterly to share what we are doing and plan to do. Most times we are also addressed by a speaker who is relevant to our work.

If you wish to participate feel free to contact cats.emergency.committee@gmail.com which is the email address for Callignee and Traralgon South Emergency Committee and we will address notifications of upcoming meetings.

How to join the Callignee and Traralgon South Emergency Committee

Membership of the association is free, and you can be assured of having the latest information in the quickest possible time.

This section contains the association rules, a membership form for the two types of memberships – general and specialist. The specialist membership is for people who have skills that are specific to the associations needs. A specialist member can vote for the executive which has the task of organizing the association – returns to consumer affairs, managing the bank account, making sure everyone follows the rules and etc.
A general member can participate in everything else! Offer opinions, work on the projects and so on.

Association Rules