The NSW SES has called for Dungog residents to play an active role in emergency situations.
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The service has urged residents to join the Dungog SES unit or take on a leadership role during floods and storms to help keep the community safe.
The push comes after the service reflected upon its response to the April super storm and recent flooding last month.
The SES is about to embark on a 12-month push to help every resident in the district become better prepared when disaster strikes.
Assistant Commissioner Mark Morrow said each resident needed to follow a flood plan during emergencies and respond to the conditions before danger arrived at their doorstep.
He said this would allow the SES unit to focus on responding to emergencies and make disaster management flow more smoothly.
“The SES is there to support communities and do the emergency response stuff when people find themselves in trouble but we’d like to think the community itself and leaders within these communities will act to keep themselves safe,” Mr Morrow said.
“It’s not about us as an emergency service planning what they should do.
“It’s about communities working with us to develop plans which enables them to take the actions they need to take without us potentially coming around and knocking on their door.”
Mr Morrow said the four members of the Dungog SES unit did their best during emergencies, but could only do so much with such a small team.
He said residents needed to undertake a leadership role during floods and storms, which would complement support provided by the SES.
“Having local resources is the best answer to the problem because if you’ve got more people in to support you can do a lot more at once,” Mr Morrow said.
“It’s important people know we also need volunteers on the unit who are good with computer use and incident management.
“Administrative functions are just as important as responding to emergencies because most of our jobs come in through an operational management system and we need people who can prioritise and make sure we get the response to the place that has the highest priority.”
Residents will have several opportunities to share their views with the SES in the coming months.
“We need the community to tell us what they think is going to make it easier for them as a community as a whole to respond in a way that keeps them safe but they feel as though they own the actions that they need to take,” Mr Morrow said.
“We also want to more actively engage with communities in the development of our plans.”
The push to make residents more flood ready comes after the devastating April super storm and recent flooding in January.