Calls to make bushfire warnings easier to access for Victorians who don’t speak English at home

Amina Khatun, 25, is the go-to translator for her Rohingya community in the Latrobe Valley. On a daily basis, her exasperated friends and family will call in at home, sometimes unannounced, pass her a phone and ask her to bridge the gap between English and Rohingya. Usually it is correspondence from lawyers, utility retailers and government agencies that need to be translated.

But it is during emergencies, like the COVID-19 pandemic and bushfires, that her community has come to rely on her most.

“Certainly last year when the bushfires happened, most of them here, they didn’t understand how to keep themselves safe from the smoke and what to do in that situation,” Ms Khatun said. She said recorded video and audio translations of emergency information by a community leader or interpreter worked best for her community because theirs was primarily a spoken language.

“My community don’t read and write, so they are illiterate; our language is only verbal, so I think for my community we just need a recorded message into Rohingya language.

Get the message right

The LOTE Agency in Melbourne has been conducting research with multicultural communities for the past 10 years. Its most recent study, commissioned by the Victorian Government, identified key failings in the way bushfire information was delivered to people who did not speak or understand English well.

“Whether it’s a pandemic, a bushfire, a flood or any kind of natural disaster or critical health message that needs to come out from the government, it needs to go out in a number of considered ways,” general manager David Bartlett said.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution for multicultural communities.”

Mr Bartlett said improving emergency communications for multicultural Victorians was not as simple as translating information in multiple languages, because some languages were more spoken than written. “Every single community has nuances in how they trust and consume information with English-speaking comms,” he said. “It’s very easy to put things on multiple websites on paid media, but at a multicultural level there also needs to be actual grassroots engagement with communities.”

Mr Bartlett said the State Government’s failure communicating with culturally and linguistically diverse communities was highlighted during the pandemic when a poster about using face masks failed to differentiate between two different languages — Farsi and Arabic — which share a similar alphabet.

“It did shine a spotlight on the gaps between the Government and how they message multicultural communities.”

He said timely emergency advice during bushfires was even more important. “You might have minutes to act before you can get out of your home, and what we saw during the pandemic is that it took days or even weeks to get information to communities, and unfortunately that’s just not acceptable during a bushfire season.

“I just call on the Andrews Government to invest more heavily to provide 1.5 million Victorians with access to the information they need to go into a bushfire season feeling safe at home, and knowing that they can get information in their language, when they need it, to keep their family safe.”

Confusion for new Victorians

Victorians have come to rely on the Vic Emergency phone app in times of distress, but it is only in English.

“This is a perfect opportunity to develop that app and make it available to all Victorians regardless of language or location,” Mr Bartlett said.

Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria chair Eddie Micallef said the state’s new and emerging communities were most at risk of missing vital bushfire information this summer unless improvements were made.

“Some of the Africans, Sudanese, Somalians and some of the Asian communities certainly need special attention and increased support,” he said. “The authorities have been aware of these challenges for quite a long time; it’s getting a response to these challenges that has been a bit slow.”

Until that happens, multicultural community leaders like Ms Khatun continue to voluntarily fill the gap. Emergency Management Victoria (EMV) conceded the Vic Emergency app was currently only offered in English.

But in a statement EMV Commissioner Andrew Crisp said anyone who called the Vic Emergency telephone hotline in need of translation support was put through to the Commonwealth Translating and Interpreting Service. “We also utilise a wide range of media channels, including local community radio and social media, to promote targeted, in-language warnings, emergency information and advertising,” he said.Get the message right.