Meeting to discuss how the community can stay safe in natural disasters at the Lansdowne community hall
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00:00Hi, my name is Len. I'm at the Lansdowne Community Hall at the moment, just about to start a meeting,
00:07talking about resilience in the area following disasters from the past.
00:12Hopefully we can learn from the past and not make mistakes in the future.
00:17Hoping to put a committee together that expands on what we've already got in place
00:22and we hope that people in Lansdowne come along to our meetings and be informed about preparedness.
00:29Hi, I'm Shaz from Midcoast Outreach Incorporated. We have a head office down at Wingham.
00:34We also have an outpost at Booladilla and we're currently, as of this Tuesday,
00:39have an outpost at Lansdowne and for one day a month we also go up to Upper Lansdowne.
00:44Our mission statement is we help anyone in crisis, whether that be personal or climactic.
00:50We're also part of the Community Recovery Network, which I do a lot of emergency work.
00:54We're also part of the SES down at Wingham and part of the flood warden program there.
00:59We want to get this community connected.
01:02Anyone that doesn't have anyone to chat to at Lansdowne, come on down and have a cuppa with me on Tuesdays.
01:08We're also looking for volunteers. We're all volunteers at Midcoast Outreach,
01:13so I need to find some really nice volunteers to run this Lansdowne organisation's Midcoast outpost, which would be great.
01:23Now you'd be pretty hard pressed to prevent a flood or a tsunami or those sorts of things,
01:29but it does mean prevention of ongoing damage, loss of life, destruction of property, all of those things.
01:36So that's where the prevention side of it comes in.
01:39The second quadrant down in the lower right-hand corner is about preparation.
01:47And that's what you're starting to do now, getting prepared for what comes next,
01:52which is really responding to the event that's in front of you, be it a flood, be it a fire, heavens forbid an earthquake or something else.
02:03So there's the first three quadrants of that circle, and the last one is about recovery.
02:10And that's about getting back on your feet, returning to as near as possible normal life as you can.
02:17And I know that Maria will talk to you about those sorts of definitions.
02:21How do we respond?
02:24Just like the fire brigade, you can't have a fire truck in every driveway, and neither can you have a boat in every corner of the wet ground.
02:34So what do we need to do collectively to help you survive?
02:40We've been here in Upper Lansdowne at Coxcomb, helping people or rescuing people and getting them across those rivers.
02:50And we were there when two of the wooden structures just disappeared.
02:54I'm a horsey person, shown horses for over 40 years, travel all over the place.
03:00I have a checklist. When I pack my float, I go through my checklist.
03:04Have I packed this? Have I packed that? Have I packed that?
03:07Nine times out of ten, I haven't forgotten anything, but then I'm not under the pressure of a potential disaster.
03:13And it's nice to have that little bit of comfort and safety net of knowing, yeah, I've gone through it, I haven't missed anything.
03:21The other plan in here, there is a SES flood plan template.
03:27You might say, well, I'm not affected by flooding. I might get isolated, but I'm okay.
03:32I still encourage you to have a look at it, because there's great tips in there about what sort of things to put in your emergency kit, those kind of things.
03:40There's a person-centred emergency plan template in here, and this is quite a large document.
03:46It's close to a lot of our hearts, Belinda's and Shannon's as well.
03:50This particular plan was designed with people with disabilities in mind.
03:56People with disabilities have a whole range of other things that they need to think about.
04:02It could be anything from being in a wheelchair to being on dialysis.
04:07Potentially they don't drive, so if you need to evacuate and you don't drive, how are you going to get out?
04:14It talks through those things. It also talks through what we call a capability wheel.
04:20It's not just focusing on the things you can't do, but what connections do you already have?
04:26What things do you already have and can you do?
04:30It helps highlight some of those things as well.