Thrown into the deep end, Lisa Scobie, Forrest Beach Takeaway Owner, did not expect to be running Forrest Beach Disaster Management Group during a disaster.
Lisa contacted Forrest Beach Area Warden Gary Berkley to find out that he was not in the area and unavailable to assist Forrest Beach, so she stepped in to help the local community at a time when she was needed most.
On Sunday 2 February Lisa had taken initiative to door knock Wattle Street, to ensure people's safety for the next 24 hours, and on Monday she contacted Helen Stanton from Forrest Beach Surf Life Saving and she said that’s when things really started happening.
Lisa didn’t know she would be called upon to become the area warden, but she stepped up to the task.
The Forrest Beach Takeaway was set up as the Forrest Beach Disaster Hub and Lisa knew that, with communications were down, the shop would be a good way to centralise things.
With thanks to Jason from Blue Spark Electrical, the takeaway shop was able to regain communications thanks to his Starlink internet modem, and with a generator in place, they had power too.
After the first evening, Lisa said things just fell into place and the whole week ran itself.
“We had identified some key people. Helen Stanton was in charge of our comms. We had our medical people doing necessary checks and referrals and people that we already knew were unwell, and they worked in conjunction with Jo," she explained.
"We had the Surf Life Savers doing the welfare checks in conjunction with the firies. And we went and had a look at the school to make sure we had a helicopter landing zone,” said Lisa.
Lisa and the Disaster Management Group set up a barbecue outside of the takeaway shop, for people in need of hot food. After a few days of this, the strip of shops at Forrest Beach was named the Recovery Hub and the name stuck.
Power was restored for the majority of Forrest Beach on the Friday evening, with some getting power on Saturday afternoon, and after this things slowly got back to normal, Lisa also had her takeaway shop open for normal business on Sunday.
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