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This project responds to the unprecedented fire and flood events experienced in NSW in recent years, and the increasing burden on communities to respond in times of disaster. We are working with three impacted sites across NSW – the Northern Rivers, the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury –over an 18-month period, to better understand the community-led response to fire and flood events. The project began in mid-2022 and will be completed at the end of 2023.
The project is supported by Plan C (Northern Rivers), Resilient Blue Mountains (Blue Mountains), StreetConnect (Hawksebury) and the NSW State Emergency Service.
The project commenced in mid-2022 and is due to be completed at the end of 2023.
This project seeks to better understand the community-led response to floods and fires and to identify the supports, enablers, barriers and challenges experienced by community organisers and community groups during all phases of disaster response. Seventy community organisers across three sites in NSW were interviewed for the study, and 60 participants took part in six participant gatherings that were run across the three sites. Comparison across the three sites allowed for an in-depth understanding of the commonalities and diversity in the experiences communities face when responding to disasters.
This is a qualitative study. Data collection occurred through semi-structured qualitative interviews and was analysed using thematic analysis.
The research identified that the community-led response to disasters plays a specialised and indispensable role, particularly in the context of increased intensity and frequency of disasters due to climate change. Communities have unique strengths to respond to disaster, including local connections and knowledge and the ability to respond swiftly and be agile. Community organisers bring specialised skills and a nuanced understanding of their community and its unique needs that cannot be replicated by formal agencies. The findings also suggest that the interface between the community and emergency management agencies and government provided a common and very significant challenge to the community-led response. Our participants felt that cultural change within the emergency management sector is needed to overcome this challenge and enable emergency management agencies to better recognise, collaborate with and support the community-led response.
Project participants helped to shape the research findings into a podcast series of vignettes demonstrating the kinds of community organising that happen during disasters, the challenges encountered and the ways they are addressed. These will be publicly distributed as a resource for other communities. Northern Rivers participants also expressed the need for a platform to support connection across the community-led response groups to share lessons and work in partnership, and we are working with key community organisers on this. In addition, the research team are developing relationships with stakeholders in the formal emergency management sector to share the research findings. A submission to the Senate Select Committee on Australia’s Disaster Resilience was made in May 2023 and can be downloaded below.
The notable finding from this research is the specialised and indispensable role played by the community-led response to disasters. This challenges the assumptions that the community-led response is chaotic, ad hoc, and peripheral to the formal response, and underscores the importance of an effective interface between the community and formal emergency management sectors.
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and recognise the continuing connection to land, waters and community of First Nations people. We pay our respects to them and their cultures; and to Elders past, present and emerging. Read More
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