SAVEM is activated up to and including Sunday March 1, but today may be SAVEM’s last day on the Deep Creek fireground, due to heavy rain and storms forecast for the weekend. This will cause animals to seek shelter in largely inaccessible places. Trees may become more unsafe, as heavy rain can cause further compromise to their root system and stability. Dry slippery terrain turns to wet slippery terrain. We hope the rain will be light and steady, but there may be heavy falls and sudden downpours.
Today, SAVEM’s focus is on areas we have identified as places of refuge, concealing injured animals who have survived for this long – it is astonishing how they do. We will connect with residents we’ve met over the last three+ weeks and do all we can to meet their wellbeing needs. SA Health, Red Cross and Yankalilla Council all have Recovery processes in place. SAVEM volunteers are One Health practitioners – while our primary mission is animal welfare, we recognise and understand all animals have humans attached – including people who cherish their local “resident” wildlife. Meeting the needs of humans and animals concurrently requires agile professionalism practised by SAVEM volunteers adept and experienced at dealing with challenging situations.
Professor Lucy Easthope, the UK’s leading authority on recovering from disaster, writes:
The lesson here is that there is a path – but also that the path can’t be rushed. In our lives, we desperately want to get to the “uptick” and perhaps more harmfully, we want others to get there too. We want to rush them past other uncomfortable and confronting stages, and get them to just being OK again, But that takes labour and hours that simply have to be put in. (Easthope, L. 2025. Come What May, p 37. Hodder, London).
