68-year-old grandmother of six Margaret Donohoo will be gearing up to play her part as an Anglicare team leader in NSW's co-ordinated bushfire response, Exercise Hotspot, this week.
The NSW Department of Community Services exercise will test the disaster recovery response to a bushfire that could break out in the Blue Mountains threatening hundreds of homes from Grose Valley to Faulconbridge forcing residents to flee for their lives.
Margaret, and her husband Alan, will be part of an Anglicare team participating in the DoCS exercise to set up and operate an evacuation centre in response to the hypothetical event.
For Margaret, the hypothetical situation is all too familiar. The member of St David's Anglican Church Blaxland has seen two bush fires threaten her community in 6 years.
"We were called to assist with disaster recovery in 1998 and 2002," explains Margaret. "An evacuation centre was formed in Katoomba when the fire blocked the railways in 2002 and we were part of the team that helped evacuees cope with the situation."
According to Jenni Davies, manager of Anglicare's Emergency Services, such pre-emptive exercises will help greatly when an emergency hits.
"These exercises help us provide an effective response and reinforce everyone's roles and responsibilities during a crisis. Basically it helps us get help to the people who need it and helps us know what we're doing in the event of a disaster."
The training is important but not physically demanding. It's about ordinary people doing ordinary things in extraordinary circumstances.
For Margaret, who has been volunteering with Anglicare for more than 25 years in one capacity or another, it's just another way she can serve God by serving others.
"As a Christian I see the importance of being part of a community that seeks to meet specific needs that may arise in our area. We are called to be a light to the world and we are not achieving that if we live for ourselves," says Margaret.
The mission of the program, explains Jenni Davies, is to provide a holistic ministry of care, physical, emotional, social and spiritual, to people and communities affected by the impact of major emergencies.
"It times of disaster, local Churches can reach out to their affected community to demonstrate Christ's love through practical support, hope and encouragement to those affected, their relatives and disaster workers," says Ms Davies.
Click here to find out more about Anglicare’s local disaster recovery teams.
