Lived experience brings fresh insights into disasters

No one knows better than Fiona Jago how devastating a bushfire can be to your livelihood.

Fires ripped through her and her husband’s Kangaroo Island caravan park during the Black Summer bushfires in January 2020, leaving just a few cabins standing.

The fires destroyed much of the key infrastructure, leaving the site without power and Fiona and Mark at their lowest point as they struggled to make sense of the fallout from the disaster and find a way forward.

“When we bought the caravan park, it was our superannuation because we’d dairy farmed for all those years,” she said.

“We didn’t have superannuation…so it was our way of finding retirement, hopefully, so we went in with a 10 year plan where we’d assess after 5 (years) and then we lost 80% of our park and so then it was, ‘right where do we go from here?’”

There were lessons aplenty to learn in the wake of the fires as the Jagos sought grant funding and negotiated the challenges of rebuilding the business on an island during the Covid 19 travel restrictions.

But rebuild they did, bigger and better, eventually selling the much improved Western Kangaroo Island Caravan Park & Wildlife Reserve business to return to the mainland to be closer to family.

Now Fiona speaks frequently and frankly about her personal experiences all over the country as a Lived Experience facilitator for Resilient Ready.

“The most harrowing part of being a business owner in my time was when we were evacuated for the 2020 fire…and not knowing for four days whether we had a business or not, to go back to,” Fiona said.

“You have no control. You don’t know whether you have a livelihood…so you get to use all of your emotions for four days that you don’t need to use again after that cause you’ve rung them all out.”

For Fiona and Mark, their home and business were not separate premises, a factor that played against them as they tried to rebuild.

“It’s a whole different thinking…yes, you’ve lost your house, but your house doesn’t make you your money,” Fiona said.

To be able to survive, you need your business going, which is a priority, which unfortunately falls through the cracks when it comes to recovery funding…the focus (usually) goes on people and houses.

Fiona’s no-nonsense advice for businesses planning ahead for disasters and disruptions is to:

• Know your business – If you don’t know your business, you won’t know what risks you need to mitigate.
• Build key relationships – Shore up your bank, accountancy, and insurance providers and other key services that can help you get back on your feet.
• Look after each other – community connections are everything during a crisis. Help (and be open to receiving help) whenever you can.

“And learn how to be a pest and take advantage of opportunities given at the opportune time,” Fiona said.

Fiona’s personal experiences are supported by Resilient Ready’s micro-learning approach, which shares bite-sized advice and learnings by and for small businesspeople who have their own practical firsthand knowledge.

“Businesspeople think differently to other people. People can do these sessions in the privacy of their own home in their own time, and it literally takes 5-10 minutes,” Fiona said.

Are you ready to welcome Fiona into your local community to share her lived experience on building business community resilience 5 minutes at a time? Book a workshop with us.

Do you have five minutes to learn something new? Why not explore our micro-learning tools and pick up some fresh skills and perhaps dust off a few others. You don’t know what you don’t know, so let us help remind you of what you need to know!

Resilient Ready is a social enterprise delivering innovative solutions to enable every organisation to thrive before, during and after disasters. To keep updated on news and current projects, sign up to our newsletter.