Cover Story

Group empowers villagers to be more prepared after last year’s storms, assisted by the MDCC

In the lead up to winter, and following the experiences of many through the storms of 2021/22, we hope all homes and businesses in the Mid Deeside Community Council catchment will now have received a booklet titled “Preparing for Emergencies – A Guide for Residents”.

Mid Deeside Community Council formed its Resilience Group at the beginning of this year; the group’s task was to consider the ways that the community can look after itself in the short but critical interval, from an incident occurring to when the emergency services and local authority arrive to take the lead.

The Resilience Group, comprised of residents and business owners in the area, have considered the possible risks and the strategies that might be possible for a small volunteer group to implement for a period of 24-48hrs.

While there are several parts to our resilience strategy, the first and perhaps the most important, is household resilience. The booklet that we have prepared and distributed is intended to encourage all households and businesses to think ahead and to have specific items ‘to hand’ in the event of an emergency.

We hope that we don’t have a winter of storms like we did last year, but we can never know what emergency might happen, so we believe it is best to prepare, to be ready, just in case.

Where we might experience storms or other emergencies that significantly impact our rural community and where there is for example a power outage for 24hrs or more, we are preparing our second level response, the Resilience Hubs.

Mid-Deeside Community Council Resilience

Preparing For Emergencies A Guide for Residents

We have four Resilience Hubs currently in development:

Kincardine O’Neil Village Hall Aboyne Scout Hut Dinnet Village Hall

Estate Office, Glen Tanar

The Resilience Hubs will have power (from generators we are in the process of purchasing and installing), offering heat, light and charging for mobile devices. We will have hot water and food and we will offer respite for those who can make it to us from their homes.

Our experience of the last storms, and from discussion with other resilience groups in Deeside, is that there will be some who are unable to make it to a Resilience Hub; the weather or a fallen ----------- continued ------->>>> 9

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