Making Gippsland Resilient.
Recent increases in the number and severity of bushfires, floods and storms from climate change means we need to be ready for more frequent extreme weather events.
We’re helping Gippsland communities move beyond disaster response by supporting practical, community and household-level resilience actions before the next emergency.
Building your
home's resilience.
If you can improve your home’s resilience, the next natural disaster may not become a personal disaster.
Whether you’re living in an older home, planning a new build, or rebuilding after a loss, assessing your home’s ability to withstand the next major event is invaluable.
In 2025, we partnered with the Resilient Building Council (RBC) to deliver a pilot program to help homeowners understand their risks, assess their homes and suggest achievable improvements.
You can use the RBC’s free online multi-hazard assessment tool to assess your home’s resilience. It provides clear, cost-effective advice on steps (big or small) you can take to strengthen and better protect your home or business.
It also gives you the option to have your Resilience Rating certified, with some banks and insurance companies providing a discount to certified homes.
An overview of the pilot program can be viewed here. It includes a summary for using the tool and useful resources for each Gippsland local government area.
The cost of building resilience into homes is a fraction of the cost of rebuilding after disaster.
RBC's Free Assessment ToolRBC's resilience rating app is now
recognised by major insureres
Building your
community's
resilience
Increasingly, we are helping communities and families to develop a more resilient approach and prepare for future events.
Power for the
next event
In the communities of Budgeree and Yarram, we helped provide power generators for use if grid power is lost.
The need for a generator in Budgeree was identified as a community priority following bushfire in 2019 and storm in 2021 — the community being isolated for up to nine days without telecommunications or electricity.
In 2021 storm events impacted many communities in Yarram and surrounding districts. As a result of power lines down many communities were cut off for days or weeks and had no means of power or communication.
The generators will help community volunteers to deliver basic amenities such as hot food, phone charging stations, water, lights, and shelter during and following emergencies.
Build back better
Following the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009, GERF worked with the Department of Agriculture, Department of Primary Industries and VFF Fencing Coordinators to support rural communities across the three fire complex areas. The extensive loss of fencing in Gippsland’s farming communities created significant challenges for recovery.
GERF’s response was substantial. We purchased and distributed over $450,000 worth of steel fencing materials to affected farmers, including:
- 32,690 steel posts
- 1,209 kilometres of fencing wire
- 1,008 steel end assembly fencing units
These materials were distributed through site depots in Delburn, Churchill-Jeeralang and Bunyip, helping farmers rebuild and build greater resilience into their operations.
Beyond fencing, GERF collaborated with Lions and the Community Recovery Committee to establish a free community tool library for the Traralgon South community. This provided essential access to tools for repairs and reconstruction, particularly valuable for families unable to afford new tools after the fires. The tool library also enabled home resilience improvements and retrofit works to better protect against future natural disaster.
Helping
Gippsland
since 1978.
