The Shepparton floods have revealed cracks in our emergency response systems

What we have experienced in the Shepparton region over the last few days has been a massive disruption to our daily lives: road closures, towns and communities cut off, evacuation warnings, lives and houses at risk. At the same time, many residents have been confronted with the difficult, heart-wrenching decision to stay or go.

A week earlier, this situation – so close to home – was unthinkable to me. I was across the efforts for a donation drive for victims of the floods in Pakistan with Shepparton’s small Pakistani community. But like many events scheduled for the weekend, it was cancelled.

The irony of cancelling a fundraiser for the tragic floods in my home country because of floods in my adopted home was not lost on me.

It is now obvious to many of us that ferocious and frequent weather events are now a reality around the globe. Whether in a low HDI (Human Development Index) country like Pakistan or a high HDI country like Australia, the effects of such challenging disasters on our communities are enormous and overwhelming. They cause colossal loss of lives, livelihoods and infrastructure and escalate the disadvantages of already struggling, vulnerable cohorts.

The Shepparton region is blessed with community-minded people and local businesses who, just like during the Covid-19 emergency, have shown their resilience and stepped up to help and support each other in whatever possible way. But what does learning to live with disasters mean for our communities, towns and regions? Climate change is central to this discussion.

If Greater Shepparton, like other regions, has to deal with these natural disasters more frequently, what could strengthen our collective preparedness to prevent and mitigate them? There are many facets of these challenges and the required responses. I highlight only a few here:

Shepparton has a large multicultural community with diverse and intersecting needs. As Guardian Australia has reported, recovery information, communicated mainly via email and social media, has been inadequate and made some communities more vulnerable.

 

Rescue efforts by state and local lead agencies without interpreters have proven to be complex and ineffective. Do the lead emergency response agencies have the cultural competency and understanding to prepare a tailor-made emergency response to these multicultural communities?

More often than not, Shepparton’s Ethnic Council, in such emergencies, becomes the go-to organisation for local and state level emergency response authorities. The problem is that this puts too much expectation on a small organisation with no clear authority, resources, structures and training in emergency response.

The organisation’s network of bilingual volunteers and its ability to reach vulnerable non-English speaking families is admirable. But the excessive reliance on this volunteer network and ad-hoc systems and structures working outside (rather than integrated into the overall emergency response system) is a problem worthy of a sustainable solution. A substantial investment in scaling up these local organisations and assigning them a formal role in the region’s overall emergency management plan would be one practical step towards preparing for future disasters.

Our local food donation group, FoodShare, which played a vital role getting food to people isolated in their homes during the pandemic, is operating from a temporary site as its building is inundated with water. Such community organisations must be strengthened (in infrastructure and capacity) to operate in all emergency scenarios.

It is a no-brainer that living with the reality of unprecedented floods means better land-use planning and development based on updated flood modelling. Although a very costly provision for our financially constrained local councils, regularly updated flood studies and modelling should form the basis of any new development. For local councils to effectively undertake this exercise, support and adequate funding and partnership from the state government is needed.

While extending immediate relief operations in the current emergency response phase, it is equally important to find ways of living with the new reality of climate change. This requires, among other actions, fixing the above problems before the latest experiences of the climate crisis fades from memory.

Seema Abdullah is Australia’s first Pakistani-born Muslim migrant female councillor and the former mayor of Greater Shepparton. The views expressed here are personal and do not represent the views of the Greater Shepparton City Council