About Us

Eri­ka Lind -
Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment, Land, Water and Plan­ning (DEL­WP)

Eri­ka grew up in a fam­i­ly with a long his­to­ry of vol­un­teer fire­fight­ing. She began her ser­vice at the age of 11 with her local CFA fire brigade com­pet­ing in Rur­al Cham­pi­onships. In 2004 she became a senior mem­ber of the brigade and has con­tin­ued build­ing her skillsets in both bush­fire and struc­tur­al fire­fight­ing. Vol­un­teer Fire Brigades Vic­to­ria is anoth­er ele­ment of the organ­i­sa­tion she is involved with and com­plet­ed their Dar­ley Lead­er­ship Pro­gram in 2010.

After com­plet­ing a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mel­bourne in 2010 Eri­ka gained a posi­tion with the Depart­ment of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Envi­ron­ment (DSE) as a Grad­u­ate Recruit in Land and Fire man­age­ment. This posi­tion involved work­ing around rur­al and region­al Vic­to­ria in a vari­ety of fire man­age­ment roles.

Now Eri­ka works in the Fire and Land Divi­sion of the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment, Land, Water and Plan­ning (DEL­WP) as a Dis­trict Burn Plan­ner based in East Gipp­s­land. This work involves plan­ning for and then assist­ing with the deliv­ery of the District’s Planned Burn­ing Pro­gram in Victoria’s spec­tac­u­lar high coun­try. The role also extends into engage­ment with the local com­mu­ni­ties and oth­er agen­cies on broad­er fire and emer­gency man­age­ment challengers.

DEL­WP is the con­trol agency for fires on pub­lic land and has a great lega­cy of for­est fire fight­ing in Vic­to­ria. Erika’s pri­ma­ry sup­pres­sion role is as a front­line for­est fire­fight­er. This work has tak­en her across Vic­to­ria and on inter­state deploy­ments. In addi­tion to this the oppor­tu­ni­ty arose to par­tic­i­pate in a Rotary Inter­na­tion­al Voca­tion­al exchange to Turkey where she meet with fire per­son­nel to help build a more inter­na­tion­al per­spec­tive on Fire Man­age­ment and Fire Fighting.

Fire man­age­ment is a com­plex chal­lenge for Aus­tralia and it is this chal­lenge that makes work­ing in this sec­tor so rewarding.

Eri­ka is a Board Mem­ber of WAFA.