Australians are dependent on volunteers to spring into action when a natural disaster strikes, whether it be floods or bushfires or any other catastrophe.
Compared to other countries Australia has one of the highest per capita rates of volunteer firefighters.
When you consider the majority of those are in rural populations that figure only rises.
But as climate change increases the impact of natural disasters, the volunteer workforce is being put under more pressure at the same time as volunteer numbers are declining.
So how can it be made more sustainable?
What role do volunteers play in emergencies?
Volunteering Australia estimates more than 400,000 people volunteer directly in emergency response and relief, with around half of those volunteers in fire services organisations and around 25,000 volunteers in state and territory emergency services.
A further 200,000 volunteers help out through emergency and relief charities, such as the Red Cross.
During disasters informal volunteers play a major role, spontaneously springing into action to help their communities, as was seen last year in Lismore when people went out in their tinnies to rescue people.
Has the burden on volunteers increased?
It is difficult to get a solid answer with so many different agencies across the country.
But the NSW SES said it had its busiest year on record last year, with more than 2 million hours contributed by its 10,000 volunteers as well as interstate and international support.
The NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) said the 2019-20 fire season required the largest nationally coordinated interstate and international deployment of fire and emergency personnel ever managed within Australia.
Cam Walker, a volunteer with Victoria's Country Fire Authority (CFA), spent time sandbagging and building levees in northern Victoria during last year's floods.
He said he was exhausted before the summer fire season had even started.
"I feel that there's a steady drip of pressure on volunteers to do more. And yet, it's often hard, particularly in rural areas, to sustain numbers in volunteer brigades, both SES and volunteer fire brigades," Mr Walker said.
While there is often a spike in volunteer sign-ups immediately after a natural disaster, the long-term trend is a dwindling emergency volunteer workforce.
Volunteering Australia estimates there has been an overall decrease of more than 23,000 since 2015–16.
Could city people be part of the answer?
With ageing rural communities and Australia's population concentrated in major cities, CFA volunteer Cam Walker believes the answer may lie in the suburbs.
"We're suggesting that the government thinks differently and rather than draw on volunteers from existing brigades that we set up a volunteer remote area firefighting team that explicitly draws on new volunteers from urban areas and large regional centres," he said.
"There's lots of people that live in the city that love the bush. They love national parks, they ride mountain bikes, they ski, they bushwalk, they're bird watchers, they love to 4WD.
"I'm sure many of them would love to be involved in these sorts of teams."
Mr Walker has taken his idea to the Victorian government in the hope it would get some traction.
"We've been advocating for these teams since Black Summer. We've spoken to people within the CFA, within local brigades, within government up to ministerial level, and we have received some warm responses," he said.
"We haven't been successful in that as yet, but we continue to advocate for it."
Tasmania has already rolled out a similar model of volunteer remote area firefighters, a result of the devastating 2016 bushfires.
Are volunteers enough?
Volunteering Australia chief executive Mark Pearce said volunteering was a critical part of communities, but there was a growing reliance on them to fill gaps in emergency and essential services.
In its 10-year strategy released this month, the report warns against exploiting volunteers to fill workforce gaps.
"Volunteers are there by necessity, not necessarily through planning, and that's the fundamental problem," Mr Pearce said.
"There hasn't been the planning applied to what is essentially a workforce conundrum."
Mr Pearce said the burden on volunteers was an existing problem that was increasing.
"It's very easy to forget that volunteers derive great benefit from volunteering and what we don't want to see is that that benefit is eroded or completely taken away because of an over-expectation because of the demand," Mr Pearce said.
"Then volunteering becomes not a positive thing in addition to people's lives but a burden upon their lives."
What about a national disaster response team?
It is an idea federal Minister for Emergency Management Murray Watt has floated in the past.
Last year he told the ABC a semi-professional workforce could be a good idea to take pressure off the Australian Defence Force (ADF) in times of disaster.
"We are getting to a point that we do need to reconsider how we resource these things, and from a federal perspective we've obviously deployed hundreds of Defence Force personnel to assist New South Wales and Victoria," Mr Watt said last year.
"But one of the things we need to keep an eye on is that we don't stretch the ADF too far given they do have a core job — which is defending the nation."
The Home Affairs department has been commissioned to do work around emergency management workforce planning including volunteer numbers and what will be required into the future.
In a statement Mr Watt said he was open to conversations with state and territory governments and other organisations about how best to meet the need of the emergency service workforce.
"We have also taken immediate measures to help boost Australia's volunteer workforce responding to natural disasters," the statement said.
"In last year's Budget we provided funding to support the growth of Disaster Relief Australia, a veteran-led volunteer organisation that assists communities impacted by natural disasters in their recovery.
"Australia will always need a volunteer emergency service workforce, both to serve rural and remote communities, and to supplement a paid workforce.
States and Territories need to find the balance that best serves their communities and we will continue to support those conversations wherever appropriate."
