SRA Annual Report 2020-21: Online Somerset Community Resilience event
In summer 2020, Emma Giffard became Joint Chair of Somerset Prepared, alongside an Environment Agency representative. Somerset Prepared is a partnership between local emergency services and organisations that help to enhance local resilience. The partnership works closely with communities and gives advice, support and training.
Every October, Somerset Prepared usually hosts a popular Somerset Community Resilience Day with talks, demonstrations, mini-exhibitions and workshops. This event is supported and partly funded by the SRA.
Coronavirus pandemic restrictions meant that people could not gather as usual last October, so an online event was held instead. Over the summer, when fewer restrictions were in force, the SRA’s community engagement team filmed a series of socially-distanced interviews, about people’s experiences of planning for and responding to emergencies. Videos then premiered on YouTube included flood group case studies, resilience equipment grant testimonials, and stories of organisational pandemic adaptation. Featured communities included Ham, Holcombe, Langport, Martock, Misterton, Moorland, Taunton and Westbury-Sub-Mendip. Text continues below the video stills.
The Environment Agency also produced a series of videos. Subjects included:
- the Flood Online Reporting Tool (FORT);
- Dunball Sluice between King’s Sedgemoor Drain and the River Parrett and future plans for its refurbishment;
- and Environment Agency field teams, featuring Bradney Depot, watercourses near the Foal Mead Viaduct west of Langport, and repairs and improvements at North Drain Pumping Station part-funded by the SRA. The field teams video has some eye-catching drone footage of the viaduct and the pumping station.
Communities Prepared and Mind in Somerset offered free training, including sessions on Flood Volunteers, Co-ordinating Emergency Volunteers, Looking After Your Wellbeing and Supporting Others, and Crisis Recovery.
All videos can now be found on the Somerset Prepared website at https://www.somersetprepared. org.uk/somerset-prepared-2020-events/
A selection is also on the SRA website in the News section. Three links are below.
Video: How two Somerset flood groups have helped their villages
Video: River Parrett Field Team, North Drain Pumping Station