ABSTRACT
Bushfires, floods, cyclones, severe storms, earthquakes, and landslides are products of the vagaries of the natural environment and human choices whose impacts Australian communities continue to suffer from. The human factors comprise overstocking, vegetation loss, dams, groundwater depletion, and irrigation schemes. 1 For example, “high fuel loads, a change from fire prevention to firefighting measures, and not building adequate buffer zones to protect built assets” have been listed by the Australian government as amongst the human management factors which have contributed to the harshness of bushfires. 2 Table I4.1 shows that the annual economic losses from disasters in Australia between 1980 and 2010 were US$926.5 million. From 2010 to 2013, natural disasters alone caused insurance losses of more than US$6.9 billion. 3
Eburn and Dovers have noted that, notwithstanding the more than 50 “formal, complex” post-disaster Royal Commissions and other quasi-judicial inquiries in 75 years “to identify how [tragedies] occurred and what can be done to prevent future occurrences,” Australian communities continue to suffer from the impact of emergencies and extreme events. For example, they observed that “since 1939, there have been over thirty inquiries into wildfi res and wildfi re management and at least another 14 into fl oods, storms, other natural hazards, and emergency management arrangements,” all of which were worthy but produced very little “useful learning.” One of their key recommendations is that “the community needs to move beyond developing policy by royal commission and instead engage in the realities of life in the Australian context.” 4
Similarly, based on the fi ndings from its case studies of four towns still recovering from fl ooding, cyclones, and bushfi res in Australia, the Regional Australia Institute revealed that “there is inadequate planning for many of the short-and long-term disaster effects.” 5
In Chapter 20 , Lisa Gibbs and her colleagues also observe that while there is a dearth of research that has addressed the health impacts of post-disaster relocation after natural disasters, far less attention has been paid to the impact of the decision to stay or relocate on personal wellbeing. They therefore present a case study in this chapter, comparing the experiences of those who stayed and those who moved out of a bushfi re-affected community and the impact on personal wellbeing. They conducted interviews with 35 participants and found from their inductive, thematic analysis of the data that the decision to stay in the community was often infl uenced by a strong commitment to place and people. They further revealed that those who chose to leave did so because their sense of community had been damaged by changes to the physical and social environment. The fi ndings informed the theoretical modeling for analyses
of survey data from 1,010 participants from bushfi re-affected communities (897 stayed in community, 113 relocated). Lisa Gibbs and her colleagues used a structural equation model (SEM) approach to examine associations in the survey data between disaster impact, life stressors, psychological sense of community, and the role that leaving the community may play in moderating these relationships. The study showed that individuals who left the community reported greater disaster exposure and less sense of community in their new location, both of which exerted negative infl uences on personal wellbeing. This effect was counterbalanced, however, by a moderation effect in which leaving the community lessened the impact of fi nancial and relationship life stressors on personal wellbeing. These fi ndings, according to Lisa Gibbs and her colleagues, have implications in terms of targeted service provision for those who stay and those who leave their communities.
