Cedar Woods has announced the Victorian recipients of its Community Grants program for 2023, with funding allocated directly benefitting local communities where Cedar Woods’ developments are located.
We’re pleased to announce that Wollert Fire Brigade has been selected as one of this year’s recipients, and we recently sat down with the Brigade’s Community Safety Coordinator Stuart McCombe to learn a bit more about Wollert Fire Brigade and how they plan to use their funding.
Tell us a little bit about Wollert Fire Brigade?
We are a skilled and dedicated CFA fire brigade that has proudly serviced Wollert and the neighbouring communities 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year since 1942.
We are 100% staffed by volunteers and currently attend around 200 emergency calls per year, including structure, bush, vehicle, and grass fires, and we assist Fire Rescue Victoria and other emergency service organisations when needed.
We regularly attend and host community education and engagement activities to help reduce the risk of fire and other emergencies and help foster a sense of community within our rapidly growing population.
Why did you decide to apply to the Community Grants program?
With our rapidly growing community we need to ensure our vehicles, equipment and fire station infrastructure are up to the task, but we need to mostly self-fund these activities as the CFA funding is spread over the 1,200+ brigades in Victoria.
When we were notified by Cedar Woods that applications were open for 2023 the decision to apply was easy, as we knew exactly what upgrades we needed and as this funding also gives us the opportunity to help promote fire safety and volunteerism with the CFA.
How will you be using your funding and how will this help to support the Wollert Fire Brigade?
This grant will help us to fund our upcoming fire station infrastructure improvements, including the installation of a fire hose drying tower which will help us to better maintain our fire hoses as a critical piece of our emergency fire response equipment.
We will also use this funding to connect our large rainwater storage tanks to a pump that will allow us to fill our fire trucks onsite rather than travelling to developed areas to access their mains water hydrants.
Given that our fire station is in an area that doesn’t have mains water supply, the completion of this project will mean that we will now have access to a secure water source for emergencies, with the bonus of rainwater being a more sustainable primary source than mains water.
As one of the oldest community volunteer groups in the Wollert – we recently celebrated out 81st birthday! – it’s been amazing to see how quickly our community has changed over the last 15 years and watch what used to be farm paddocks rapidly transforming into urban streets.
It is wonderful to see developers like Cedar Woods support us and other community organisations through the Community Grants program, and we would like to thank them for their generosity.