Stories are the Toolkit

Narrated by: Scott Webster

Edited by: Celine Huỳnh

Transcript:

The University of Sydney is built upon the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and the University Centre for Rural Health is built upon the lands of the Widjabul Wia-bal people of the Bundjalung Nation. Sovereignty was never ceded – these lands and waters always were and always will be Aboriginal – and we pay our respects to Elders past and present.

In recent years, communities across New South Wales have faced catastrophic bushfires and floods. These have been described as ‘unprecedented’ in their scales and as ‘the new normal’ due to climate change. In many respects, these disasters have had compounding impacts as people endure them one after another and concurrently with other crises – an ongoing global pandemic, disruptions to supply chains, inflation, and a housing crisis.

During these disasters, as systems became repeatedly overwhelmed, communities organised their own response and recovery efforts. Their actions and interventions – some which are still ongoing to this day – have been crucial in saving lives; in providing swift and targeted information, support and care to those in need; and in enacting long-term preparation and risk reduction through disaster readiness activities and systems, coordinated hazard removals and community building.

Often, these actions are informal and arise spontaneously from efforts by residents and local groups, which are regularly undertaken without official support from levels of government or formal agencies. Sometimes, they are established community practices, honed over years of living in place together and learning from past disaster experiences. In most cases, the effectiveness of these actions is rooted in the social connection and local knowledges that already exist within communities.

‘Stories are the Toolkit’ is a vignette series that illuminates some of these actions taken. The stories are based on interviews with 68 individuals who, in their different ways, contributed to community-led response, recovery and adaptation across three regions in New South Wales: the Northern Rivers, the Hawkesbury and the Blue Mountains.

The stories themselves are amalgamations. They blend and combine what people shared to highlight what is common among them all – despite the immense diversity of actions, experiences, places, people and backgrounds. The stories are not a comprehensive account of what communities did during and after the bushfires or floods. There is a whole host of interventions made that are not covered in this series but are just as important.

We are obligated to fairly and accurately represent what community members shared with us, without infringing on their right to privacy. In some cases, however, this was not possible. Identifying the work of some First Nations and LGBTQIA+ participants, for example, would have made it obvious whose stories we heard. It is also not our place, nor is it possible or appropriate, to ‘rewrite’ their stories into amalgamated characters that removed these backgrounds and circumstances.

This means there are limits to the scope of the vignettes and the extent to which we can represent the full spectrum of the communities we engaged. These vital contributions inform our other research outputs and findings that will be shared in different formats. Rather, the stories included here focus on what seems less visible and recognised when we think of community-led disaster response, recovery and adaptation. These vignettes highlight how different contributions can be made through various skillsets, in many ways enabling those more visible actions to be taken. This is a key point that disaster-affected communities wanted others to know.

Another key point is the fundamental importance of social connection and networks. Each story demonstrates how communities often drew upon so-called ‘everyday’ social networks to coordinate support and to access skills, resources and local knowledges – from community pages on Facebook and spreadsheets on laptops, to neighbours checking in on each other and street maps drawn on butcher paper, to tapping into the networks that exist around schools and hobby groups, places of worship, activist and volunteer groups, and all manner of other things that bring people together. In this sense, what is ‘ordinary’ is powerful and has made a profound difference for many people.

The stories also highlight some of the difficulties people faced as well as how they worked around these difficulties. Having to ‘learn as you go’ was routinely cited as a key challenge. Many of those we interviewed said they now ‘feel like pros’, having had to put into practice their organising multiple times over. Others expressed a strong desire to learn from each other to improve how they respond to future challenges. This knowledge is so valuable for other communities – including, potentially, your own! We hope that this vignette series will inspire communities and reduce risk through shared experiences.

The research that informs this series was conducted by researchers at the Sydney Environment Institute and the University Centre for Rural Health in Lismore, both part of the University of Sydney. This research was funded by the NSW Government’s ‘Disaster Risk Reduction Fund’ and undertaken in partnership with Resilient Blue Mountains, StreetConnect and Plan C. Our thanks go to all these organisations and groups.

Narrated by: Genevieve Wright (Vignette); Scott Webster (Intro and Outro)

Edited by: Celine Huỳnh

Transcript: Stories are the Toolkit is a vignette series that highlights the essential role community members fulfil in responding to all phases of disasters. Each story illustrates how different actions were taken, and what challenges they faced, sharing this knowledge with other communities elsewhere to reduce future disaster risk.

Flood-affected communities do not remain idle when the need is urgent. This vignette covers one way in which community members organised a system of tracking and coordinating boat rescues to save lives and to minimise the substantial risk taken by those on the water.

Listeners are advised that this vignette describes people stranded on their roofs due to rising floodwaters. It may be distressing to some listeners, so please take care. If you need to talk to someone, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

The State Emergency Service is the combat agency responsible for coordinating disaster response and rescue in New South Wales. While emergencies call for quick action, and coordination with emergency agencies are not always possible, the SES encourages community organisers to do their best to make their ongoing activities – such as those covered in this vignette – known to them in the given area during future disaster events. 

When Jess woke around 6:00 am on the morning of the flood, the first thing she did was reach for her phone. She had been worrying about the flooding all night, and she wanted to check the BOM app to see how much the water had risen. But she never even got to open the app, because she was taken aback to see 53 message notifications. She scrolled backward through them, trying to make sense of them, and felt her heart start thumping. What the…?! Ash and Lauren had been stranded on their roof in the middle of the night! They had just been rescued by someone, and now they were at a friend’s house. James had also texted – group texts saying he was on his verandah roof with his dog. He had a kayak but thought the water was too strong. He had texted seven times; the last time at 4:14 am.

With a sense of rising panic, Jess called James’s number. Straight to voicemail. She texted the group asking if anyone had heard from James, but she found she was only echoing the concerns of others. People were texting that they had been on the phone to 000 for 10 minutes to notify them of James’s address, and they still hadn’t been put through to anyone.

Not really sure what to do next, Jess opened Facebook to see what was happening on the Lismore groups. She couldn’t believe what she saw. Scrolling down she read plea after plea from desperate people typing from their roofs or roof cavities, or from friends or family members who couldn’t get in touch with loved ones in the flood zone. She couldn’t see how they could all be rescued in time – there were so many of them! She tried not to think about how many casualties there would be.

By now the adrenalin was pumping, and Jess had decided without really thinking about it that she needed to be there to help. She grabbed what she thought she might need for a day in torrential rain and drove 15 minutes toward the centre of town. As expected, the highway was closed, but Jess was shocked by how high up the hill the water reached. Beyond was an endless expanse of grey water, punctuated by house roofs and criss-crossed with power lines. About 100 metres away, the tops of the traffic lights were just visible. The rain was driving sideways, the water was choppy, and it looked treacherous.

There were people clustered at the water’s edge and a few boats and kayaks, but no one official that Jess could see. A grey-haired couple were climbing out of a boat operated by a young man, and a few people rushed to help as they struggled to lift their legs over the edge of the boat in their sodden clothes.

Where the hell were the authorities? Where was the fleet of boats rescuing everyone stuck on their roofs? Where was James?! Still no news on her phone.

As Jess was standing there wondering what on earth to do, another boat pulled up, and her friend Jen jumped out. Jen helped a man, a teenage girl and their cat onto solid ground after her. Someone had dry blankets in a car and whisked them into it. Jen sat down heavily on the medium strip. She was shaken and exhausted: the boat had hit something submerged under the water, and she had nearly fallen out. She told Jess she had been out since first light about two hours ago, spotting for the guy who owned the boat, whom she’d just met at the water’s edge. She looked very cold, and when another man volunteered to jump in the boat, she gratefully handed him her life jacket. Jess grabbed the man’s arm and told him how to get to James’s house. The man promised to try to find him.

Wrapped in a blanket under Jess’s umbrella, Jen told her a bit about her morning in the boat: about how fast and furious the water was near the river and how she was terrified they were going to hit their heads on power lines. But mostly she talked about the people still out there, hundreds of them, all stuck on their roofs or their neighbours’ roofs or inside their roofs. She’d seen them screaming out and waving frantically as the boat drove past.

According to Jen, the SES hadn’t been conducting rescues through the night and had only arrived on the scene at the same time as her. But there wasn’t that much they could do to respond to such an overwhelming situation. SES Headquarters had been flooded, and they only had a few boats. The SES guys Jen talked to told her that if she wanted to help, she should go up the hill to the makeshift headquarters that was being set up and await instructions. But there was no way she could sit around waiting. Instead, she found someone with a boat who needed a spotter and started rescuing people. She thought they had rescued about 30 people so far.

More people were arriving at the water’s edge now, towing tinnies, kayaks and a few larger boats. Jess could see an SES boat out on the water as well. But Jen was worried – it was so dangerous out there, and there was no plan for how to conduct the rescues systematically and safely. The scene was becoming more and more chaotic. People were just heading out in any direction, maybe trying to find someone they knew. There was no way to prioritise who needed rescuing first or to ensure that those with the biggest boats went to the places where the water was fastest-flowing and most dangerous. Who was making sure that all the online pleas for help were being triaged and responded to?

Meanwhile, Jess’s friend Dave had called to say he was up at the evacuation centre looking for James. He said he had tried calling, but no one seemed to know who was there or not. He had gone there in person, but he couldn’t see James anywhere. Jess felt her stomach tighten at the news, but another part of her mind was wondering why the system at the evacuation centre wasn’t working. Surely having people wandering around looking for their friends wasn’t necessary and would only add to the chaos?

Jess’s mind was racing now. She didn’t really want to get in a boat, but she was good with spreadsheets, and her laptop was in her van. Could she help to create some order in the chaos by starting a spreadsheet to streamline the rescues? She would need to log all the requests for assistance and pinpoint their locations. She voiced her thoughts aloud to Jen, who responded enthusiastically.

‘Yes, I’ll help you!’ said Jen, ‘We can send boats to check the houses street by street, and we can mark them off when they’ve been done. It might save lives, and it will be a lot safer for the people on the boats.’

So that’s what they did. They reversed Jess’s van right to the water’s edge and sat inside it, side by side, Jess on her laptop hot-spotting off Jen’s phone. Jen started to direct the boats street by street, and Jess logged it all into the spreadsheet she was creating. She also began entering all the addresses people had posted on the Facebook pages and prioritising the most urgent rescues.

Whenever a boat pulled up and unloaded more people, Jen had them line up at the van and Jess recorded their names and addresses. Each person’s address was marked on the map, and they were added to the ‘safe’ list.

Through the morning, the team grew from the two of them to five people; a friend of theirs and two strangers had come down to see how they could help out. At one point, someone handed Jess a coffee, and around lunchtime, someone else turned up with an Esky full of hot pies and cheese and spinach triangles. Jess put her laptop down for five minutes and surveyed the surreal scene around her. Somehow, she and this random team of people were coordinating the boat rescues.

As Jess was finishing her pie, a text came in from an unknown number. It was James. He had dropped his phone in the water, but he was safe at his parents’ place. Jess felt like she was like letting go of a breath she didn’t know she was holding. There was still all this craziness and panic going on around her, but thank God James was okay. It bolstered her sense that they could actually do this – they were actually doing this! They were saving lives. It was working!

Later that afternoon, Dave rang back. He was still at the evacuation centre and had heard about what Jess and Jen were doing. A friend of theirs at the evacuation centre had started a similar database up there. It was live online, so people could log on to see who still needed rescuing and who was safe. Dave was helping her, and they wanted to link Jess’s spreadsheet in.

And that’s how things were for the next day and a half. Jess felt like she was living out of her van. She was in constant contact with Dave at the evacuation centre, updating the live database of people marked safe, either because they had been rescued or they had turned up at the evacuation centre. And she had established a good rapport with some of the police officers who were now working alongside them, checking in with her about the jobs she had logged.

Jess and Jen stayed at the water’s edge until every last house and street had been cleared. When the boats finally stopped, they put their laptops down in disbelief and stretched their cramped limbs. There were cheers and hugs and tears. Jess suddenly felt so exhausted she could barely stand. As amazing as it had been to be a part of that, she needed everyone’s stuff out of her van right now, so she could go home for a long hot shower.

Thank you for listening!

For more on how long-term members of flood-affected communities are reaching out to newcomers, check out ‘Stuck in the Mud’, a vignette included in the Stories are the Toolkit magazine which can be downloaded through the link in the episode description. In our next episode, ‘Know Your Neighbours’, we look at a street-level facilitator network preparing for the coming bushfire season.

Narrated by: Scott Webster (Vignette); Genevieve Wright (Intro and Outro)

Edited by: Celine Huỳnh

Transcript: 

Stories are the Toolkit is a vignette series that highlights the essential role community members fulfil in responding to all phases of disasters. Each story illustrates how different actions were taken, and what challenges they faced, sharing this knowledge with other communities elsewhere to reduce future disaster risk.

Disaster-affected communities frequently emphasise the need to ‘know your neighbours’ – know who they are, what their needs and plans may be and what skills and resources they have. This vignette demonstrates how for some communities this takes the form of warden or street facilitator networks; people who understand the lay of the land, can serve as a point of contact for advice and organise street-level disaster preparation and readiness activities.

Listeners are advised that this vignette mentions bushfire events and describes the lead-up to the 2019-20 bushfire crisis. It may be distressing to some listeners, so please take care. If you need to talk to someone, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Trevor stepped out his front door. It was morning, but the day was already heating up. This spring had been unusually hot, although hotter springs aren’t really that ‘unusual’ anymore. He didn’t want to think about what this meant for the coming summer. It was all just a little bit too familiar.

Four years since the last big fires. The fires that changed what Trevor thought ‘big’ was. He had seen his fair share of bushfires. You live in these mountains long enough, you’ll see them. But those fires four years ago were something else. Everyone calls it ‘Black Summer’, but the truth is the fires burned earlier and longer than just summer. Trevor didn’t like to think about it, but at the same time, it was the reason he was going for a walk. It was time to check in with his neighbours.

For most of his life, Trevor has lived in these mountains. He grew up here in the fifties and sixties before moving away for work. He returned in around eighty-five or eighty-six, with his wife, Debbie, and they have lived here ever since, on the same battle-axe street just off the main highway. They have had to leave a few times during bushfire seasons. It’s never an easy choice. You always leave wondering whether your home will still be standing when you return. Trevor gets why others, like Jed next door, stay and defend, but it’s just too dangerous where they live. There’s only one way in and out, and it can easily get cut off during fires.

It’s a risk we live with, Trevor thought as he walked onto the footpath and made his way over to Jed’s place. That’s what we always say.

Some of the houses here back onto the bush. It’s why everyone loves to live here. But it has its dangers, and the firies may not always be there to save them.

‘Heya, Trev. It’s time to clear our gutters?’ Jed had seen him approaching through his kitchen window and was waiting to greet him. He had a smile on his face. Jed had clearly noticed the bunch of notes in Trevor’s hand.

‘Yeah, gotta be done … this summer will be a scorcher, I reckon. Debbie and I are thinking next weekend,’ Trevor said.

Jed nodded. ‘Yeah, I’ll fix up my place then too,’ he said, eyeing off the roof of his house.

Trevor didn’t bother handing him a note. All it said was that he and Debbie were going to do the work around their house to prepare for the coming summer – mostly clearing the gutters and cutting back any vegetation near the house – and that if anyone else wanted to join in or needed help, then just let them know. Some bigger jobs might need to happen at a different time, like if a tree needed to be lopped, but he usually got a handful of houses doing their clearing at the same time. Jed was one of them. At the end of the day, they’d all come back to Trevor’s place for a few drinks and conversation.

‘Did you need to borrow anything for your place?’ Jed asked.

Trevor shook his head. ‘Nah, but Beryl and Vic said they needed someone to help with the ladder. I was hoping you could do that?’ He chuckled. ‘Vic has finally admitted he shouldn’t be the one climbing that thing.’

They both laughed, although the truth was they were not far off Vic in that respect.

It was after the fires a few years before Black Summer when Trevor had first taken on this role as his street’s ‘facilitator’. It sounds more official than it is. He’s certainly not ‘in charge’ of anyone. The neighbourhood centre put a call out for volunteers to become this sort of street-level ‘fire-ready’ network. Trevor isn’t a member of the RFS or anything. But he and Debbie know most of their neighbours. They organise the street’s Christmas party every year, where everyone comes over to their place, usually the weekend before. Their neighbourhood has a few younger families, but it is mostly a mix of retired folk or those approaching retirement. Coming out of that fire season, Trevor thought such a fire-ready network seemed like a good idea. Plus, he was already halfway there, given how well he knew his street and how long he had lived in the mountains.

The first meeting in their general area was attended by about half-a-dozen other volunteers. The plan was that each would keep in touch with their 10–12 houses, generally the size of a typical street or near enough to what was manageable for any one person. They would just get to know the people who lived in these houses – what their plans were, if they needed help figuring that out or tending to their homes in the lead-up to the hotter months, whether they might be at risk for different reasons – and deliver the newsletter the network produced each month. Stuff like that.

The volunteers would also share information – sometimes through doorknocking, other times through putting stuff in letterboxes or through a mailing list, whichever was most appropriate for each street and most comfortable for each volunteer. They would serve as a point of contact about fire readiness or for when residents put their plans into action. Each of them made their phone and email contact details available to be shared with anyone within their street’s area.

Trevor said goodbye to Jed and moved on to the next few houses. He put a note in each letterbox he passed, except for the Roberts’. He knew they were on holidays. Their son was going to come up soon to check on their place and make sure it was ready. Their dog was already staying with him while they were away.

Of course, not everyone likes to feel they are being told what to do. It’s not about being preachy about fire readiness, or assuming people don’t know what they are doing. Most of his neighbours were old hands at it already. Trevor mainly just wanted to know if anyone needed help with preparing their place. Many of them were retired and, like Vic, not necessarily in the best health. The younger families could be time-poor or need the extra hand with the little ones running around. And if asking everyone if they need help meant some of them were reminded to do it, then great!

Trevor got the idea for a street-wide fire readiness day from ‘old Bill’, his family’s neighbour from back when he was a kid. There had been a bad fire back then, although he only barely remembers it. Afterward, his parents would always clear their gutters and tend to the vegetation when they saw Bill had done his. He never told them to do it. And, as he became less mobile over the years, Trevor’s parents would help him out before spending the rest of the day tending to their own home.

Trevor made his way down the opposite side of the street. He dropped a note in number 53’s letterbox. He didn’t really have much to do with the Landows, having had some ‘neighbourly disagreements’ in the past. They never joined in the fire season preparations, but it didn’t feel right to leave them out of the loop just because they weren’t on friendly terms. In any case, they hadn’t complained yet about Trevor’s letterbox notes.

Susana was in the front yard of the next house over, pruning her garden as little Josie played with her toys on the front steps. Their car wasn’t in the driveway, which meant her husband, John, was most likely out. Before Susana’s family had moved in, the house had been a bit of a revolving door. Different tenants had moved in and out since the fires before last, and then it had sat empty for a while. The owner was largely absent, and the place had gradually become overgrown. No wonder nobody wants to move in, Trevor had thought grimly. He’d even called the real estate once to complain, using the details on that interminable ‘for lease’ sign that was always out the front. Despite the agent’s evasiveness, some workers did appear the following week to tidy up the place.

Soon after that, Susana’s family had moved in. A few days later, once they were settled, Debbie and Trevor popped over to say hello and to introduce themselves. Susana was from overseas, and John wasn’t local to the mountains before moving to their street. Trevor didn’t mention he was the street’s facilitator at the time, though. They were greeting Susana and John as neighbours, first and foremost, and Trevor was mostly just relieved the house finally had occupants again. They seemed nice, and a few months later Josie arrived.

There were a few years where preparation did become a little lax, particularly when the fires before Black Summer became a more distant memory and the risk of future fires didn’t seem that pressing. Trevor also noticed a drop-off in attendance for the facilitator meetings then, too. Admittedly, he missed a few himself. You just don’t know what is going on in others’ lives, and it does become harder to engage people in preparation when enough time has passed since the last fires. Given the amount of rain they’d had since Black Summer, it did sometimes seem ridiculous to even talk about bushfires. Yet, that rain had certainly helped the bush undergrowth to flourish...

‘Hello, Trevor!’ called Susana.

Josie waved, which Trevor returned with a wave of his own. He filled Susana in on their plans and asked if her family would need help with anything.

‘No, we need to do some clearing out the back, but the front and the gutters are mostly ready,’ she replied. ‘It’s been a very hot spring so far,’ Susana added with a note of concern in her voice. ‘I think we will leave earlier this time.’

Trevor nodded. He knew this was something that troubled Susana after the last fires.

Trevor had checked in on his neighbours at the last fires’ peak. Some had left early and asked him to keep them updated on their street, as long as he could. There’s an element of trust there, letting people know that your home is empty, which is important. Not everyone could leave though. There were a few families whose only car was often with their partner at work, which was the case for Susana and her little girl, who was still a baby back then. They were prepared. Susana had a friend she met through the local library’s story time group who agreed to give her a lift to John’s parents’ house down the mountains if John himself wasn’t around. But Susana found it difficult to make the decision to leave.

Trevor and Debbie had stayed as long as they felt they could. They eventually left to stay at Debbie’s sister’s place. Facilitators are not firefighters. We are not there to help defend properties or rescue people. Our purpose is to model bushfire readiness, and a core part of that is knowing when to leave. But it’s a tough decision to make, even when you have experience with fires. When they made the decision to leave, Debbie went across the street to tell Susana they were going. It was then that Susana finally decided she would do the same and called her friend.

Trevor left Josie and Susana to their play and gardening to continue his circuit around the battle-axe. The first facilitator meeting post-Black Summer was interesting. The others told stories about how they helped out-of-area firies navigate some of the streets because they can be pretty confusing to people who don’t know the area. Another worked with the firies to make sure the right information was up on community pages online to help reduce the panic caused by misleading posts. It’s a good idea that the emergency services should tap into our network, Trevor thought to himself. He could have passed on the information about who was left on their street to them instead of just Jed, who was focused on his own house at the time. It could save them time spent checking on already empty properties.

Some facilitators have stepped away from their roles since. Trevor understood why. It was a stressful time, and people need to take care of themselves. People shouldn’t feel obligated to continue when they are running on empty. Many of them were old-timers now, too. Trevor wondered sometimes what that meant, what would happen when more of them stepped away.

People within the community will step up, though, Trevor thought. They always do. New facilitators had already joined, and folks down in the valley and in the small towns around the mountain were interested in setting up their own network now. They saw the need for something like this there, although it may need to be a bit different to suit their specific communities. But it’s not like you need to be part of some ‘official’ facilitator network to do it. ‘Old Bill’ wasn’t. It’s really just about knowing your neighbours. And then there are people like Susana and John. They weren’t locals when they arrived – but we all have to start somewhere, and, well, they have experience now. They are ready.

Thank you for listening!

For more on how street facilitators are trying to connect with temporary residents, absentee property owners, and other isolated people, check out 'Rough Sleepers’, a vignette included in the Stories are the Toolkit magazine which can be downloaded through the link in the episode description. In our next episode, 'Everybody Pitches In’, we look at how a family drew upon their networks around work, school and sports to organise response and recovery support across multiple floods.

Narrated by: Denise Wright (Vignette); Scott Webster (Intro and Outro)

Edited by: Celine Huỳnh

Transcript:

Stories are the Toolkit is a vignette series that highlights the essential role community members fulfil in responding to all phases of disasters. Each story illustrates how different actions were taken, and what challenges they faced, sharing this knowledge with other communities elsewhere to reduce future disaster risk.

Community-led actions are enabled through their ability to draw on local networks, skills and knowledges to respond swiftly and flexibly in times of crisis. This vignette describes how a family drew upon their ‘everyday’ networks around work, school, sports and their neighbourhood to organise response and recovery support across multiple floods.

Listeners are advised that this vignette mentions flooding and bushfire events. It may be distressing to some listeners, so please take care. If you need to talk to someone, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Annette has lived in a semi-rural village on the river for 30 years. She is married with two kids; her son (Jaime) is in Year 8, and her daughter (Rachel) is in Year 5. Annette works in the office at a primary school in the next village over. Before that, she was heavily involved as a parent-volunteer with her children’s primary school, running the canteen once a month (usually with Sandra, the mother of Jaime’s best friend) as well as during the sports carnivals. She also helped organise and run the yearly disco dance and various fundraisers. Both Annette and her husband, Mark, also run the canteen during home games for Jaime and Rachel’s junior cricket and soccer clubs.

Annette remembers her parents were always members of this association or that group – she supposes their community-first attitude rubbed off on her. Mark is supportive, although he knows better than to try and stop her. He has his own community spirit, though, with the sports clubs. Mark knows every child’s runs and goals and averages for the season and often shares this knowledge when he crosses paths with other parents during groceries. The family often makes fun of him for this (they say he ‘corners people’), but for Annette the experiences with the fires, the floods and even COVID has really underscored how important these connections with people in the community are.

Not long after Black Summer, the first flood hit, and the bridges went under, meaning they were cut off from the other side of the river and from town. This was when Annette began assisting with disaster response. Thanks to work, her school volunteering and just being a mum with two kids at different schools, Annette knew many of the parents and children in the local area, as well as everyone from local principals and teachers to the cleaners. Her kids also know a lot through visiting friends’ houses; Annette swears her daughter has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the pets and their owners on their street. And this gave her some insight into the families that proved useful during the floods. It was through Rachel, and her friendship with Emily, that Annette learned that Emily’s mum, Hayley, was expecting. Through Jamie, Annette learned that his friend’s father Dan is a single parent and works night shifts.

When the bridges go under, it can be a matter of days and even over a week before they reopen again, so food and other supplies can go scarce. In the floods that followed the fires, the local supermarkets were cleared out in a couple of days. It had been quite a while since the last flood, and Annette thinks a lot of people – herself included – were caught off guard. As the days dragged on, Annette started calling some of the families she thought might need help. She called Hayley herself, and asked Jaime to check in with his mate to see how Dan was getting along; both fridges and pantries were starting to get bare.

Annette asked around her street for some ingredients to cook up (along with some from her own cupboard) and other supplies like toilet paper to put into a hamper. Sandra, who lives nearby and has worked in hospitality as a chef, came over to help cook the meals. It was like working at the canteen, but with more home cooking and less kids asking for Zooper Doopers! Annette will never forget the emotion on Dan’s face when she knocked on his door and handed over several cooked meals (pasta bake and a potato salad), two loaves of bread, a few litres of long-life milk and a pack of toilet paper. She realised he was becoming quite desperate, and others would likely be in a similar position. Some might also be unwilling to ask for help...

Annette knew of several other families at both her work and children’s schools who lived pretty hand-to-mouth and could probably do with some help. She called a few more people she knew to check-in. Mark did the same for some of the parents they knew through weekend sports. For some of the families she knew from work, Annette asked others to check in on them instead. She thought it would be better for someone with closer connection to reach out, rather than the lady from the school’s front desk cold calling. Maybe that would not have mattered, but Annette was already checking in on a lot of people by then.

She also put some callouts on a few of the local Facebook pages – the ones usually reserved for people bickering over council pick-ups and the like. She asked for donations of food ingredients and other supplies, as well as if anybody else needed help. The response surprised her. People seemed to rally around the call, and were generous with what they gave, despite the panic buying in the area. People really shifted from a focus on themselves, and their homes, once the reality of the flood set it and the need for help became clear around them; it was genuinely a collective effort. Mark was soon driving around collecting donations, and Jaime helped him so he could get out of the house. They ended up using the empty granny-flat next door as a makeshift pantry. Their neighbour, June, said it was fine. Nobody was living in it then.

Hayley also suggested contacting a local social support service who would have an even better sense of who may be in need. As it turns out, their team members were split across both sides of the river, so they welcomed the extra help in producing supplies that they could then distribute further. Annette and Sandra were cooking so much. Hayley and Emily joined Mark, Jaime and Rachel with packing the hampers. Mark ended up delivering more as Annette simply did not have time, and Sandra did a delivery or two when she went home.

The next flood hit a few months later – and the rains caused a landslip that took out the road around the mountains. That road is the only other way supplies get to the western side of the river, besides by helicopter or by boat. Annette knew that they would have to do it again, and for longer. Fortunately, those who helped last time were keen to contribute again, and others joined in too.

She would get random knocks on her door, and it’d be one of Rachel’s school friends who had asked her mum to bake ANZAC biscuits to be given to people, or Jaime’s friend’s older brother and his mates popping around in their cars to help to deliver food. They had their P-plates and were going a little stir crazy, not being able to drive their cars anywhere. Annette gave them some of the hampers to deliver in the nearby streets, places where she knew the conditions weren’t too bad. Sometimes it would be a local she had never met, someone who didn’t have a direct connection to anyone in her family, like the gentleman who lived further up the hill. The word had spread about what they did last time, and everybody wanted to pitch in. Annette sure knew a lot more people now!

Annette put the calls out on Facebook too, immediately this time. She even posted further abroad, in some of the pages for remoter communities that get even more isolated during floods. She told people to share her mobile number, and she received calls from these communities. The SES were overstretched, and, although Annette had worked with them to bring some food to the really cut-off people, Mark knew someone who lived on the river (a grandparent of someone on Jaime’s soccer team) who had a boat and knew how to navigate the waters to reach some of these places. A few of the other cricket dads had utes, so they could transport the fuel they had coming in – the donations were more than just food at this point, due to the landslip. Annette wanted to make especially sure the fuel was distributed by someone she knew she could trust.

There have been more floods since, and each time Annette and her community did the same thing. By the fourth or fifth flood, they felt like pros at it. The people they knew they could count on just grew with each flood too; the strangers became friends. Of course, it was exhausting work, and there were definitely times when Annette felt like collapsing. She also knew she was blessed to have as much help as she had. It was amazing to see how people came alive in their times of need. And, for this reason, Annette would do it all again.

Thank you for listening!

For more on how communities organised temporary-yet-long-running recovery hubs, check out 'Spontaneous Flood Recovery Hubs’, a vignette included in the Stories are the Toolkit magazine which can be downloaded through the link in the episode description. In our next episode, 'Six Months On...’, we look at the critical role social media fulfilled for small or remote communities in sourcing external support and resources needed for long-term recovery following floods.

Narrated by: Zachary Gillies-Palmer (Vignette); Scott Webster (Intro and Outro)

Edited by: Celine Huỳnh

Transcript:

Stories are the Toolkit is a vignette series that highlights the essential role community members fulfil in responding to all phases of disasters. Each story illustrates how different actions were taken, and what challenges they faced, sharing this knowledge with other communities elsewhere to reduce future disaster risk.

During and after disasters, social media platforms become critical communication tools that enable the sharing of information, linking of donations and volunteers with those who need assistance, and help local groups to coordinate recovery activities. This vignette highlights how social media can aid small or remote communities who find themselves beyond the reach of government, emergency management and social service agencies and in need of external support to bring in what is needed.

Listeners are advised that this vignette describes flood-affected homes and communities. It may be distressing to some listeners, so please take care. If you need to talk to someone, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

The State Emergency Service is the combat agency responsible for coordinating disaster response and rescue in New South Wales. While emergencies call for quick action, and coordination with emergency agencies are not always possible, the SES encourages community organisers to do their best to make their ongoing activities – such as those covered in this vignette – known to them in the given area during future disaster events.

On the six month anniversary of the flood, Ben slept in. He hadn’t slept well since the disaster, so it was good to feel a bit more refreshed than usual when he opened his eyes. He stretched, feeling how sore his body was, and leaned over the side of his mattress to grab his phone and begin the day’s business. Connor had sent a message an hour ago to say he was on his way down and expected to arrive in about an hour and a half. He lived in the city and was one of a group of guys who had been helping locals strip and rebuild their houses for months now. The plan was to start gyprocking Ben’s walls today.

Kylie from the community recovery hub in town had sent a message too – would Ben like to do an interview for local radio about the flood recovery six months on? Not really, Ben thought to himself. He was tired of telling his story. It felt like he’d repeated it hundreds of times by now. But he texted Kylie straight back to say ‘yes’. If it brought more attention to their situation, then how could he refuse?

The other message was about a delivery that would be arriving tomorrow. Another truck of donated goods! They were still arriving, six months on. And somehow, without really meaning to, Ben had become the local point of contact for it all.

It had started on the very first day, when he’d been trying to get hold of a boat so he could get to his place and check on his neighbours. Ben had been staying with his mum in town on the night of the floods, helping to make sure her house was prepared. When he saw how high the water had come the next morning, Ben was certain his own place and many of his neighbours’ houses would be flooded. Some of them might be stranded. Ben doubted the emergency services would be able to get out to all of them in time. He needed a boat.

Ben ended up meeting a woman from the city, Leah, who had a big Facebook and Instagram following. She used her social media networks to not only source a boat but to crowd-fund the petrol and other supplies needed to run it for several weeks until people were no longer flooded in. She set up a GoFundMe page, and Ben couldn’t believe how the donations had just poured in from hundreds of strangers!

When the boat had arrived from the city, Ben had used it to get to home, checking on several neighbours and other properties along the way. His house had flooded up to the windowsills on the second storey. It still hurt just to think about. Everything inside was ruined. He had lost everything he owned, apart from what was in his car.

Ben had stopped in at more properties on the way back. Some houses were deserted, and he presumed the people in them had got out early, although he knew a few had had to be rescued by helicopter from their roofs. But lots of people whose floors were above the waterline were still at home and refused to leave. His neighbours, John and Sarah, were two of them. They wanted to sit tight and wait it out so they could look after their dogs, but they were trapped in their raised house until the water went down. They had asked if Ben could get a script filled – John’s medication was running low.

Ben ended up taking the boat out daily until the water was gone, delivering supplies and just being a point of contact for people. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted to be doing. The days were long and tiring, and it was frankly bloody dangerous, with submerged objects everywhere. You needed someone up front as a spotter to make sure you didn’t hit anything. But he didn’t feel he had a choice. Emergency service resources were stretched too thin, and he was the only lifeline to a lot of people out there.

Then came the next phase – the so-called ‘recovery’. This was when the people whose places had been flooded, Ben included, could get back in by road and begin the long and exhausting task of piling all their possessions into stinking, muddy heaps outside their homes, blasting the mud off the walls and floors with pressure cleaners, and prising the sodden innards out of the houses – walls, ceilings, kitchen cabinets – until they were stripped down to their bare bones and ready to be rebuilt. It was tiring and filthy work, and in between they somehow mustered the energy to drive into town and wait in the queues to lodge their applications for recovery grants. For many of them, it was the only money they would get to help them rebuild their lives. Most people Ben had spoken to weren’t insured, or, if they were, they didn’t think the insurance companies were going to pay out.

Just getting into town was so difficult in those early days. Lots of people had no vehicles because they’d lost them in the flood. A couple of the volunteers Leah had sent down to Ben from the city started ferrying people to town and dropping them home again afterwards. The money raised through the GoFundMe page had helped pay the petrol. More and more locals heard about it and asked if they could get a lift to town too, so after a few days Ben used his Facebook page to organise an impromptu carpool roster.

Ben didn’t use Facebook much before the flood, but now he was on it all the time. In the early days he had dozens of new friend requests every day – often people from around the country, even overseas, who had seen the GoFundMe page or other things Leah had posted. People wanted to send money, food, furniture, hay. They drove from all over the place – sometimes overnight – with their cars packed full of stuff or a trailer full of cooking equipment so they could set up a makeshift kitchen for a week or two and provide everyone with hot meals. People really were amazing.

And they did need the help. Around here wasn’t like the towns and the villages closer to the coast. Ben lived on the floodplain, mainly farming country, and people out here often kept to themselves. In fact, that was why many of them had moved here in the first place. But it did mean that at times like this they weren’t really on the radar. They didn’t have all the services running around organising things, like the towns did. They were used to being forgotten.

But they had managed to connect with the outside world in unexpected ways, thanks to social media. They were getting heaps more help from strangers than from the government, Ben mused. Take Connor and his mates, for example. They drove up from the city every weekend, and sometimes on their days off, to help out with the rebuilding. Most of them were tradies. They heard about Ben’s community from Leah’s GoFundMe page and had turned up a few weeks after the flood with a ute-load full of tools and pressure cleaners.

People around here liked it better that way, thought Ben. They didn’t much like strangers turning up at their houses, but most thought it was better than someone from the government. They had a pretty low opinion of the authorities even before the flood, and it certainly hadn’t improved since. What worked best, Ben reflected, was when people stayed around long enough to get to know the community. Like Connor and his mates. They were trusted now – people would invite them over for some food if they saw them around. At the start people were suspicious of their intentions, but over time, they proved themselves to be good blokes.

Ben’s phone pinged again. It was the guy on his way up with the truck, full of fridges and washing machines apparently. He wanted to organise a meeting point. Ben wasn’t really the type to be putting himself forward and organising everyone else, but somehow he’d become the guy everyone called. It was good, he supposed, because it gave him something to do. There wasn’t much he could do around his place until the grant money came through. Some of Connor’s mates had helped him strip his house a couple of months ago, and since then he’d just been waiting, living in his mum’s caravan next to his house.

They had organised a second GoFundMe to raise money for building materials, and that had been pretty successful, too. It had raised over $15,000 in the past month or so, with some donations even coming in from overseas. But Ben wouldn’t feel right using that money. It was for the people who were higher priority than him – like the family up the road who were living in a tent. They needed to get some walls up inside their house before winter hit.

Now that Ben’s grant money had finally come through, he could order the materials he needed for his own rebuild. He was going to have to pretty much start from scratch, and it did seem quite daunting. He’d built the house himself twelve years ago, but he didn’t know if he had the energy to do it again on his own. Thank god for blokes like Connor who were happy to help out.

By now he’d made himself a coffee on the little stove in the caravan, and he wandered up the front steps of his house to sit on the verandah in the sun. He had a camping chair up there, and on this sunny morning it was peaceful and warm. His phone rang and it was Kylie to tell him that she had passed on his details to the local radio station. They would be calling him soon. Ben told her about the truckload of stuff. He was going to meet the truck in a carpark in town the following day, and he needed to get the word out for anyone who needed a fridge or washing machine to be there with a ute or a van. She thanked him and reminded him to drop by the recovery hub when he was in town tomorrow to pick up some frozen meals for himself.

Ben could see a whirl of dust on the horizon now, coming in between the sugarcane fields. A vehicle was coming down the road, and now he could make out Connor’s ute, which was slowing and turning off onto his potholed driveway. Ben reached over to pull on his boots. Next job: rebuild the house!

Thank you for listening!

For more on how people created and managed social media pages to address disaster-related needs, check out 'Get Facebook’, a vignette included in the Stories are the Toolkit magazine which can be downloaded through the link in the episode description. In our next episode, ‘Grassroots Resilience’, we look at how a flood-affected community is organising long-term preparation and resilience building to reduce their reliance on outside help in future disasters

Narrated by: Emma Pittaway (Vignette); Scott Webster (Intro and Outro)

Edited by: Celine Huỳnh

Transcript:

Stories are the Toolkit is a vignette series that highlights the essential role community members fulfil in responding to all phases of disasters. Each story illustrates how different actions were taken, and what challenges they faced, sharing this knowledge with other communities elsewhere to reduce future disaster risk.

Experiencing a disaster is often the catalyst for communities to realise the importance of being prepared, particularly when people have been forced to rely on each other in the absence of outside help. This vignette highlights how some local communities have since formed grassroots resilience groups to ensure that recovery, climate adaptation and preparation for future disasters occurs at the local community level. 

Listeners are advised that this vignette describes the aftermath of catastrophic flooding. It may be distressing to some listeners, so please take care. If you need to talk to someone, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

As she turned out of her driveway and onto the potholed road to the school, Claire realised that she felt exhausted. It wasn’t just the restless night’s sleep, the early morning with the kids, and preparing the lunchboxes. This was a tiredness that seemed to have settled in her bones. Where the road dipped down to cross the creek, revealing the cliffs of mud sheared off by the torrent of floodwater and the tangle of broken trees and hills of boulders that the water had slain and sculpted, she felt the tears welling. It was nearly a year since the flood, and so much still felt so broken. In moments like these, it was good to drop the kids at school and have the 10-minute drive to the community hall alone in the car to cry.

By the time she got there, the feeling was passing. She needed to get it out of her system every once in a while. But seeing all the other cars already parked on the side of the dusty road lifted her spirits. She hoped there was going to be a good turnout today.

Inside, the rest of the team were already busily at work setting up the room. Maybe there hadn’t been any breakfast tantrums in their homes this morning, thought Claire. She put down the box she was carrying and began to unpack the projector she had borrowed from work. Today was another step in consolidating their community flood plan, and she was excited by the program. Someone Sharon had organised was coming to talk to them about UHF radio networks, and then Mandy was going to lead a meditation and yoga workshop. They had all recently agreed that they needed to make some space for self-care.

People began trickling in and filling up the plastic seats. All the usual members of the resilience group were there. Most of them had been regulars since the first weeks of the flood, Claire mused. But there were plenty of others too, which was great to see. Everyone was much more aware of the need to be prepared after what they had been through. The hall was respectably full when Sharon got up to introduce the radio guy.

Sharon opened with a brief background about the resilience group, which had evolved out of the recovery hub they ran for about six weeks after the flood. Cut off from the outside world by a washed-out bridge, the community had had to help itself. Claire had joined them about a week after the flood – once the landslide on her access road had been cleared and she could actually drive out of her property. She knew there was no way she could just go back to work, so she took a month of unpaid leave and turned up at the community hall every day instead. Sharon had been there since day one.

Over time, Claire and Sharon had become co-coordinators of the group. Well not ‘coordinators’ exactly – Claire thought that sounded too official and suggested some sort of formal process. It was more that she and Sharon were just around the most. They were the first ones there every morning and the last to leave at night. ‘Community weaver’ was a term she had heard recently – maybe that’s what she and Sharon were doing, helping the community to weave itself together into something stronger and more resilient?

The UHF radio stuff was fascinating – not something Claire had any prior knowledge about. Over lunch the team discussed the possibilities. They had earmarked some of their grant money to buy some radios, and they were much clearer now about what was needed.

There was an air of excitement, and together they marvelled at all they had been able to achieve in nine months. They had held a community debrief and undertaken a community mapping exercise. They’d also managed to get a tiny grant to put towards training and resources, which they were going to use on things like radios and first aid supplies, as well as some accidental counselling and grant-writing training. And next month they were going to have a Christmas party at the hall, which would be an opportunity for everyone to come together, let their hair down and celebrate community spirit.

Not that it hadn’t been without its challenges. The early weeks had been intense, Claire recollected, with so many needs and so much chaos. One of the most difficult things had been realising that they really were on their own. The authorities were overwhelmed and under-prepared, and it became clear pretty quickly that they weren’t going to come and save the day. So, the community got on with the job. Despite several people having prior experience with community organising, no one had ever lived through a disaster of this scale, and everything had to be invented on the fly. So many systems had to be created simultaneously in the early days: maps for welfare checks, managing the influx of donations, preparing and distributing the cooked meals, setting up volunteer rosters, the logistics of sending remote teams up the valley delivering supplies on foot. In those first days, it had all happened organically, with people gravitating towards the task that best suited them. And, since everything was equally urgent, it more or less worked out.

Six weeks, it had taken, before it felt like every family in the valley had found their feet enough for the recovery hub to wind down its operations. By then, nerves were frayed, the adrenalin rush was ending, and everyone needed a good, long sleep. For the most part they had done well to avoid schisms or conflicts from bubbling up, but it got to a point where people needed a break from one another, and from the relentlessness of it all. Lots of people were quite traumatised by what had happened, and when they turned up to help, they could sometimes be quite tricky to manage. Sometimes, Claire felt that managing people and their big emotions was her main job at the hall, one she shared with another woman in the group, who was a psychologist.

Things got a bit less intense when the recovery hub wound down, and Claire returned to work. But the group had formed a solid bond by then, and they were thinking about the longer term. Not just the long-term recovery, but preparation, resilience adaptation. The looming threat of the climate crisis. The absolute necessity that the community be able to look after itself the next time around.

So, they formed a local resilience group and started meeting fortnightly at the hall. There were other groups like theirs springing up in the area, too, and they shared ideas. In fact, Claire reflected, sharing information and resources with other organisers – mainly via a resilience group Facebook page that had been created since the flood – had been the best support they’d had. It was through that network that they’d got in touch with the UHF radio guy and had learned of opportunities to advocate for themselves to the local council, which was overhauling its emergency management structure. Next time a disaster struck, they wanted their skills, preparation and deep knowledge of the local community and conditions to be taken seriously by the authorities.

They had also got the idea of a community debrief from one of the other groups. There was so much trauma and grief and simmering community conflict – not to mention the anger people felt towards the authorities for not being there, for not having their backs despite the huge load the community was carrying. Even though it had been overwhelming to organise a big event just five months after the floods, it had given people a chance to get things off their chests and had been an important marker in their healing journey, Claire thought.

The question of how to sustain the group and access resources had been a tricky one. Naturally, the energy waned once the recovery hub wound up, and it was always the same faces turning up to the resilience group meetings. Everyone was so stretched! A couple of members of the group, like Sharon, were retired, but most were parents with jobs and mortgages or rent. Well, most were mums, Claire corrected herself wryly. There was a most definite and unsurprising gender imbalance in the group. They had so many good ideas but a very limited capacity to get things done.

They had heard that a couple of other groups had become incorporated associations and managed to access some small grants to set themselves up. They discussed this at length among themselves – should they get incorporated too? Some people wanted to stay grassroots and were worried the ‘magic’ of their organic organising would be lost if they formalised. Others were all for it if that meant getting access to funding. Others were cynical of the government’s willingness to recognise their work, whether they formalised or not. The absence of any meaningful support from the state government or local council in the six weeks they were operating the recovery hub left a bitter taste in many mouths.

In the end, it was the sheer burden of the task that turned them off. No one had experience with this sort of thing, and no one had the time to sit up at night and do the paperwork. They opted for being auspiced by the community hall and decided they would review things in a year. It was working well so far, meaning their time was free to pursue the small grant, which had been successful. The grant was only a few thousand dollars though, and it wouldn’t stretch far. They would love to go for something bigger, but most of the grants around seemed to be aimed at larger organisations. Besides, it was very difficult for them to find the time for grant applications, being all unpaid volunteers as they were.

With or without funding, here they were, nearly a year on, getting on with the job. In three weeks, they would be hosting a workshop on regenerating the banks of the creek. And yes, they were tired, and all had moments like Claire did this morning. A couple of people got really burnt out and had to step back to look after their own wellbeing. And yes, they would be able to do so much more with some money behind them, or a few more people to share the load. But they were doing it, and those that had stuck around all knew that they were involved in something very important. Something quite precious, in fact. Community coming together to help themselves, meeting their own needs in the way that only community can.

As the lunch break ended and Sharon and the others wandered back inside for yoga and meditation, Claire had a sudden realisation about how much these people meant to her. They had been through so much together, and now they felt like family. She felt so much more embedded in this community than she had a year ago. Despite the hard work and craziness, she wouldn’t change any of it. But she was looking forward to unrolling her yoga mat and lying down on it for a bit.

Thank you for listening!

For more on how communities are bringing people together to forge the social connections and local knowledges necessary for action, check out 'You Build Resilience Through Building Community’, a vignette included in the Stories are the Toolkit magazine which can be downloaded through the link in the episode description.