Seymour Alternative Farming Expo | 22 Feb 2012
Huge interest in the new FireReady app was a highlight of last weekend’s CFA display at the Seymour Alternative Farming expo, with large screen demonstrations of the app attracting crowds of onlookers.
“I was staggered by the response we got to the live demos,” said Alex Caughey, a Hume community education coordinator who has been involved with the event for 10 years.
“A lot of people had the app already but weren’t aware of how to modify the settings to receive information about their local area. Many others had no idea an app existed and downloaded it then and there on their smartphones.
“We also demonstrated a new VicTraffic app which can also be personalised to provide information on road closures or incidents close to your current location,” Mr Caughey said.
CFA Hume region has had a presence at the event, which attracts around 45,000 visitors, since 2002 and this was one of the most successful years yet in terms of the number of people wanting to talk to CFA about fire safety or volunteering.
“Township Protection Plans proved to be an important conversation starter for us. People became interested as soon as they saw the name of their town,” said Alex.
“We displayed 48 different TPPs including a handful from districts 2, 13 and 14 and noted down whenever we had a chat that lasted five minutes or more.
“All in all, we had at least 130 people come up over the three days who were really keen to get into a proper conversation about their TPPs and they could use them to develop household bushfire plans,” Alex said.
