After the Fires

The impacts of the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires on the wellbeing of the emergency services personnel who responded.

The Black Summer bushfires were unprecedented in their duration and intensity, causing widespread destruction of both homes and wildlife. Of the 82,000 emergency services personnel who were involved in the fire response, 78% of them were volunteers. Dr Wavne Rikkers will present the results from After the Fires, a study which investigated the short- and long-term impacts of exposure to the 2019-20 bushfires on the mental health and wellbeing of volunteers and employees in 19 fire and rescue agencies. She will discuss the implications of the study findings and why they are so critical to our ongoing safety in a drying and warming climate.

Dr Wavne Rikkers is a Senior Research Officer in the School of Population Health at Curtin University, and she has a wide range of research experience in emergency workers’ mental health. She was a co-investigator on After the Fires, and she also worked on Answering the Call, the national survey of the mental health and wellbeing of police and emergency services, on behalf of Beyond Blue. Her doctorate focussed on the barriers to mental health help-seeking among Australian emergency services workers, and she has worked on a number of other projects investigating the mental health of first responders and their families. Wavne also has considerable experience in child and adolescent mental health research, gained at the Telethon Kids Institute.

Date: Tuesday 7 November 2023

Time: 1:00 pm - 1:45 pm (AWST)

Venue: Online or in person at Michael Chaney Case Study Room, Ground floor, UWA Business School, Hackett Entrance 4, 8716 Hackett Drive, Crawley WA 6009

Free event

Public Transport

Buses to UWA regularly pass through the following areas:

suburbs on Transperth's Circle Route (998, 999) which travels from Fremantle along Stirling Highway and to suburbs north of UWA
Subiaco, Perth, Northbridge, Morley, Bedford, Inglewood, Mt Lawley and western suburbs

Parking

Please note that parking at UWA Business School is limited during the semester, so please allow yourself time to find a parking space. The UWA Business School has some visitor car bays. Additional parking is at Matilda Bay Sailing Club (accessible via Hackett Drive entrance 4 roundabout).