As a follow-up to the article published on the 25th of February, ADRA has detailed its response to Cyclone Marcia in Central Queensland:

• After Marcia hit central Queensland on Friday 20/02/15, and following a series of teleconferences between ADRA staff and regional staff in SQLD, ADRA identified the key area to deploy an Emergency Management staff member.
• Kevin Munro, National Management, Emergency Services was deployed to Yeppoon and Rockhampton from Monday 23/2/15 to Friday 27/2/15.
• Key issues for the community-at-large (including Adventist community – church members and the Capricorn Adventist Retirement Village [CARV]) were lack of power, the heat, food storage and green waste.
• Other issues for the community were the number of damaged and destroyed houses
• Critical areas were the first to receive power – hospitals, aged care facilities, large shopping centres, Council Emergency Management areas etc.
• Accommodation was scarce, as most did not have power for cooling, food storage and hot water. The church pastor kindly accommodated Kevin Munro for the 5 days of his stay
• The church members generally faired well. Some independent living residents at CARV experienced some home damage from fallen trees.
• The pastor did a great job visiting church members following the disaster to check on their welfare.
• Kevin Munro helped in the clean up at CARV and at the Rockhampton SDA church.
• He also made contact with a local community development office (CDO) (a church member) regarding options to assist in the future.
• Kevin Munro provided suggestions and a framework to the pastor for the church to assist in the future.
• Currently there is a surfeit of help that has “flooded” into the area, so the local church and ADRA is not needed at present.
• As this help diminishes with time, the CDO will keep contact with the pastor (with ADRA in the loop) to identify options to assist and local church capacity to respond.
• This pilot deployment was very useful in the engagement with the local church and community contacts, support provided and to position ADRA to facilitate local church support for the affected community in the future via the local church pastor. It is ADRA’s intention to support and facilitate the local church to engage with their community in times of disaster and recovery – not to take over.