Be community ready Step 1 of 6 16% Introduction Now you have assessed your personal situation it is a good time to connect with your local community to prepare for extreme events. Collectively neighbourhoods have significant advantages in managing the potential impacts of extreme event which will reduce recovery time and cost. Part 3 of the Ready Check tool gives you a guide on how to connect and build local resilience. Connecting with Neighbours How well do you know the residents in your local area? Start a local Facebook group or initiate a street meeting to introduce the idea of collective resilience to your neighbours. Decide on the geographic boundary of your group, just your street, your block or your suburb, it all depends whether you can effectively connect within the boundary you set. Are you part of an existing networks e.g. local Facebook group, association or club? If so you can use that existing network as the foundation of resilience group. Milestone 1 – connections established and method of communication confirmed. Get to Know your Neighbourhood and Neighbours Your network members need to know the strong and weak points about their situation to prepare for an extreme weather event. Embark on an exercise to determine: What does our neighbourhood already have that makes it safe e.g. more that one road access, houses built after 1982, a CFU in the street, well maintained vegetation on properties, good transport options (most own a car) etc. What does our neighbourhood already have that makes it vulnerable e.g. elderly residents, single parent families, non-English speaking family, people dependent on carers, number of houses close bushland, single access road, aged brick and tile homes, properties in flood zone etc. Milestone 2 – strengths and vulnerabilities of our area have been mapped. Responding to an Extreme event - Potential Resources and Support In advance consider what can be done to reduce the vulnerabilities in Step2 and how to take advantage of the strengths identified. What resources can be utilized to build neighbourhood resilience, people with specific skills, people with useful equipment e.g ability to transport others out of the area, raising awareness events, motivating residents to build their own personal and property resilience. Discuss whether the skills and resources identified are available for use in preparation, response and recovery. If so how can they be judiciously used to minimize impacts for those identified as most at risk. Use the What If wheel to test your plan and create contingencies where needed. Get to know your local RFS, SES and Council agents and their plans for extreme events in your area. Milestone 3 – available skills and resources including where and when they might be needed have been identified to enable the ‘self-managed’ response to an extreme event. Recovering from an Extreme Event How will neighbours communicate if unable to access usual links and are temporarily displaced from the locality. Red Cross can advise on how to communicate with people impacted by an event in short term until usual links are re-established. Assess the immediate recovery tasks at hand and whether your group has the knowledge and skills to manage independently. The Local Emergency Management Committee may request input from local representatives to plan the recovery process. Your group could participate in this as community representatives. Assess who and which resources are still available to provide assistance to local area and use communication channel to deploy as needed. Co-ordinate with your local emergency management agencies such as RFS and SES. Milestone 4 - A Recovery Plan has been formulated and resources, contingences and participation opportunities identified and recorded Maximising the Future Benefits with the Wisdom of HindsightEvent After an extreme event there may be a long tail in the recovery process. It is useful for the neighbours to come together and review the successful and not successful resilience factors. Is there room for improvement and with the wisdom of hindsight would you have done things differently? Where improvements can be made revise your Resilience and Recovery Plan to: Reduce the likelihood of failures Recognise and address any gaps in the planning Prioritise weaknesses to be fixed Remember to celebrate what went right on the day and learn from what did not. Remember to celebrate what went right on the day and learn from what did not. Milestone 5 – the Neighbourhood is Prepared for a Disaster and will Review Lessons Learned from Past Events to Inform Future Amendments to the Plan.PhoneThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
