On 12 October as part of Resilience Week 2015, we attended the Get Ready Queensland Pop-Up Town in Reddacliff Place, Brisbane to promote Emergency Volunteering.

Now in its third year, Resilience Week encourages the community to prepare for disasters and learn more about what you need to know to survive an emergency.

It's all about being informed, making connections and taking action so we can bounce forward as a more resilient country.

What is a disaster?

"A disaster is a serious disruption in a community, caused by the impact of an event, that requires a significant coordinated response by the State and other entities to help the community recover from the disruption."- Queensland's Disaster Management Act, s.13(1)

The Queensland Government expects that you will be able to look after yourself for up to 72 hours, without official external help.

As we saw during 2011, with 75% of Queensland a disaster-declared area, sometimes the scale of the disaster is simply too great. The government and emergency services simply can't help everyone at once.

Why does it matter if your community is prepared?

You have your emergency kit, a get-away plan and are ready to roll come what may... so who cares if there's fisticuffs at the supermarket emptying the shelves, if people are grid-locking the highways trying to get away or get home...

CREW stands for Community Response to Extreme Weather – and that’s exactly what it is. Emergency Volunteering (EV CREW) is a volunteer referral service managed by Volunteering Queensland. We operate year-round taking offers of volunteer assistance from everyday Queenslanders, registering and linking them to natural disaster response agencies when help is needed. 

There are two phases of action for Emergency Volunteering CREW - these phases affect the amount and type of volunteers being deployed.

What is community resilience?

Community Resilience is a complex topic so there's not just one definition. When defining community resilience we prefer to use the definition provided by the Australian Government's Social Inclusion Board:

Community resilience means the capacity of communities to respond positively to crises. It is the ability of a community to adapt to pressures and transform itself in a way which makes it more sustainable in the future. Rather than simply 'survive' the stressor or change, a resilient community might respond in creative ways that fundamentally transform the basis of the community.

Disasters have a cyclic four stage lifecycle. Understanding this lifecycle helps us to be prepared for disasters, respond safely and recover quickly and effectively.

At each stage there are different things to know, different actions we should take and different ways we connect with people. These stages can change rapidly and often overlap.

Engaging, participatory and educational workshops where disaster and volunteer matters can be discussed with volunteers or those involved in emergencies across organisational boundary lines.