Community resilience The following presentation was made at the Rodney Neighbourhood Support AGM. Neighbourhood Support fosters relationships between Civil Defence or Emergency Management agencies. This provides the opportunity for information to flow more quickly during an emergency or disaster. This also encourages ongoing collaboration throughout the year in the preparedness and prevention space.
Mahurangi East Community Response Group Presentation by Chip Babbott and Troje Botica at the AGM held on 5th August 2021. Thank you for giving me a chance to speak at your recent AGM about community resilience groups. Troy and I are part of a local community resilience group in Snells Beach. Auckland Emergency Management (formerly Auckland Civil Defence) works with local communities to form and support local Community Resilience Groups (CRGs). The group’s roles include the following:
FENZ and St Johns ambulance services so they can do their jobs more effectively. Like Neighbourhood Support, CRGs are intended to be community builders bringing neighbours together to support themselves and one-another in a time of crisis. The messages CRGs want to get out to our community are as follows: 1. Typical emergency services are sized to
deal with the day-to-day issues but in the event of a region wide disaster they will be overwhelmed and probably unavailable.
We’ve got local fire personnel, but police, ambulance, electricity, water, roading resources... they are not local and probably will not be available during a crisis. In a disaster we will probably be on our own for an unknown period of time. We as individuals and a community need to be prepared to help each other.
• Outreach promoting awareness and 2. Personal and family preparedness. education about disaster preparedness It is important to think through some scenarios with your family and then as a family, Community and region make a plan. • Maintaining lines of communication between our community and Auckland • What would you do in an earthquake or if a tsunami is predicted? Emergency Management during a crisis • Supporting communities by opening and • Without electricity what would you staffing community evacuation/welfare do about fresh water, food, or critical medications? centres if required • And providing support for local Police, • What about cooking and heating? Page 21
