Elly Bird, executive director of Resilient Lismore, has helped coordinate the community response to the floods. And she was a Community Hero finalist in the 2023 NSW Women of the Year Awards.
“There’s so much to love about Lismore. I could talk about its location, the beauty of its landscape and the diversity of experience that can be found here. The flipside, of course, is that it’s also prone to flooding and since 2017 we [first as Helping Hands Lismore then, since 2022, as Resilient Lismore] have been instrumental in amplifying messaging around disaster preparedness on social media in line with emergency warnings.
“What drives you to keep going is a passion for getting your people into safe and secure housing.”
When the 2022 floods first hit, I knew the recovery period ahead of us would be lengthy, complex and traumatic. It was imperative to first ensure that people who were using social media were getting timely and accurate information but at the same time I knew we had to plan for the community response once the waters went down. The logistics behind coordinating our response were significant; thousands of people poured into the community to help and well-intentioned people from all around the country sent – or drove over – trucks of donated goods. There were warehouses to establish, network meetings to conduct, media interviews to raise awareness of the community’s plight and connections between services and volunteers to create. I worked 60-hour weeks for the first six months but what drives you to keep going is a passion for getting your people into safe and secure housing as quickly as possible.
It’s lovely to receive recognition for the work I’ve been doing but it’s important for me to shine a light on the fact that we still have a long way to go. Volunteers get burnt out and with disasters of this scale we need everyone – government, the private sector and private citizens – playing their part. It would be a huge help to properly fund communities so they can do this kind of community support network and it needs to be more than a conversation about community members lending a hand. We can do better and we can think bigger.”