Overview

Although natural disasters cannot be controlled or avoided, clubs can take precautions to help build their resilience, or ability to bounce back following a setback.

Such precautions will help:

• Support the safety of members, volunteers and staff
• Protect the club’s property 
• Assist the club to quickly resume its operations after a disaster
• Maintain a good reputation amongst members and the community 
• Minimise the financial losses that the club may incur 

This chapter looks at two key resources for your club. 

1. Roles and communications plan
   
   It is important to appoint and train people who are tasked with helping the club prepare for, respond to and recover from natural disasters. Equally important is a communications plan which lays out how to effectively communicate with club members and stakeholders in the event of a natural disaster. This is covered in more detail in the Disaster Management: Roles and Communications Plan resource.
2. Disaster resilience action plan
   
   The Disaster Resilience Action Plan (DRAP) is a template that your club can build on to effectively prepare for, respond to and recover from natural disasters. The DRAP helps protect your club’s premises, stock and equipment, as well as continuing your services during the disaster, if at all possible.

The DRAP should be reviewed following every such event. Regularly assessing the effectiveness of your DRAP will help improve both your preparedness for, and recovery from, natural disasters.  

Further information 

The list below is a selection of relevant ‘go-to’ websites.

Keep up to date on weather warnings from your local Council’s Disaster Dashboard – eg Brisbane City Council Disaster Dashboard 

1. Small business disaster hub checklists 
2. Emergency alerts and contacts for Queensland businesses
3. Queensland weather warnings
4. Severe storm preparation for small business