Community Resilience

What is Community Resilience?

Community Resilience is about knowing who your community are and being able to help and support each other in the face of a common crisis. Throughout the history of mankind we have overcome adversity by acting together whether the threat has been one of conflict, natural or man-made disaster. Even during quite innocuous events such as a power cuts, storms and snowfall, community resilience (or plain simple ‘looking out for each other’) makes good sense. It strengthens the bonds and links between your community and has all sorts of positive spin offs.

Community resilience is particularly relevant today. In recent times we have seen many local post offices, shops and public houses closing in rural areas. This has cut the number of natural links between people in local communities. Increasingly people use the internet to gain access to information, goods and services. This is an all important and natural progress but we should always be prepared to fall back on our traditional support networks.

Examples of Community Resilience are:

• Knowing who your neighbours are and sharing contact details
• Knowing whether you have any vulnerable neighbours and checking up on them (in severe weather for example)
  Knowing whether any of your neighbours have special skills/professions which might be invaluable if your community were isolated (for example nurses, doctors, tree surgeons)
• Knowing whether any of your neighbours have equipment which could be of use if your community were isolated (for example generators, 4x4 vehicles, emergency lighting, spare beds, blankets and clothing)
• Preparing a box of essentials within your home so that you are ready for power cuts or possible periods of isolation.
• Think about what you have that relies on power and ask yourself how you can manage without that power. For example, is your phone the type which plugs direct to the wall, thereby using power from the exchange (which is preserved in a power cut for around 14 days)? Or do you have a battery charged wireless telephone which relies on mains power only and would therefore be useless in a power cut. Other things to think about are wind up chargers for mobile phones (the mobile network is likely to be operating in a power cut for at least 24 hours).

A few examples of the type of items you may wish to include in your household box of essentials:

• Wind up torch or a head torch can also be very useful
• Wind up radio
• Vital documentation in weather/flood proof container
• List of contact details including family and friends
• Candles
• Matches and lighters
• Toiletries
• Food (Non perishable/long life)
• Tea/Coffee making kit inc powdered or long life milk
• Bottled drinking water
• Medication (and a list of medication)
• First Aid Kit
• Blankets and warm clothes

You may be able to think of other items.

If you are interested in promoting resilience further within your community you could volunteer as a Community Emergency Coordinator. This involves putting together a simple plan to gather information which may be useful to your community in the event of an emergency. The plan might include a map, lists of vulnerable people, a coordination/meeting point (eg village/town hall or similar), people who possess specialist skills (doctors, nurses etc), any notable risks for your community (eg flood risk areas, industrial sites etc).

If you are interested please speak to your parish/town council to check someone is not doing the job already (if they are you may be able to volunteer to help them anyway), and call us as required for further guidance.