We recently experienced some very extreme summer weather here in Tasmania. Our state’s weather is usually very mild and maybe a little unpredictable (many Tasmanians will say that we can have four seasons in one day!) and we do not get temperatures over 40°C very often.
Friday the 4th of January was one of those rare days where we experienced very hot conditions combined with strong winds. These are high to extreme fire danger conditions and many fires broke out over the state. The worst of these was a bushfire that started at Forcett in the south east of the state which quickly spread, threatening and destroying many buildings but fortunately no lives seem to have been lost.
One primary school, at Dunalley, was destroyed and now has to be rebuilt for the children of the town and surrounding areas. There have been many people getting organised to help the school and the power of social networking has been demonstrated at it’s best. A website was quickly set up asking for help, there were Twitter conversations calling for donations, a Google Doc came into life and Fullers Bookstore started collecting books for the school library. This all happened in an amazingly short time frame!
Through all of these groups has been the one big desire – Have the school ready for the start of Term 1 in February. It looks a lot like this desire will happen with a temporary school to begin with while the much needed planning happens to rebuild it permanently. What a great outcome to see happening.
There are lots of ways you can still help. The best thing possible for the school at this stage is probably not physical goods as where can they store, sort and collate them? They are, however, calling for donations of vouchers from all sorts of stores to be able to restore destroyed items as time goes on. Temporary class rooms will not be much fun for an extended period of time so they are hoping to go on lots of excursions and buses for these cost money – a donation can help with that. They run a Breakfast Club – a donation can help with food for that. Their website lists many other ideas of things that are not necessarily needed straight away but will help as the rebuilding continues over an extended period of time. I imagine that even letters, drawings, artists trading cards or handmade postcards from another class would be a treat to receive.
There is a class who is beginning their entry into the world of blogging and their teacher would love to connect with a similar class (one that may have experience a severe bushfire event). Do you know of one? Can you help by retweeting the message or by writing a blog post or do you know of a class?
Head over the to website or the Google Doc and look through the pages as they are being updated regularly with needs and wishes. What wish or need could you help with?
