Its always difficult to think of recovery as events unfold. Our thoughts are with everyone in NSW affected by the 2013 bushfires.

But we have learned that clever and innovative thinking is of the essence as bushfires unfold.

Green Cross Australia's Victorian Build it Back Green Website (which won a prominent global award for Best Environment Website out of NYC) has delivered very strong impact. It offers tools for resilient and green residential rebuilding. To this day, people still use the site and when bushfires occur, traffic builds.

 

Build it Back Green was designed to offer resources to 2,000 Black Saturday affected families who lost their homes and the broader group of 7,000 households whose homes were impacted to some extent.  The site went live in December 2010, launched with GBCA support at Green Cities 2011. To date more than 80,000 people have used the site.

Green Cross Australia partnered with ATA in developing the core resource, an interactive Green Building Guide that features over 600 products and services and offers great design and bushfire compliance advice in a Victorian context.

ATA continues to update the guide with new suppliers and technologies and we continue to offer new case studies of wonderful rebuilds.

Green Cross Australia strongly encourages the public to use and share this valuable resource to support a world-class, eco-resilient rebuild from 2013 Sydney bushfires. The focus of the Build it Back Green program is about durability and hazard resilience, coupled with sustainability including low environmental impacts and low bills after recovery.

 

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Advice from Flowerdale

See Green Cross Australia's interview with Pete and Reece from Flowerdale CFA, who led the response for dozens of locals during Black Saturday.

 

CSIRO bushfire resilience advice

See Green Cross Australia's interview with CSIRO's bushfire expert, Justin Leonard about preparing your home and how to survive a bushfire.