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Why Communities, Not Agencies, Hold the Key to Emergency Resilience
What Aboriginal language groups and disaster survivors can teach us about real preparedness and resilience.
Philippe Borremans
June 04, 2025
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Dear reader,
Greetings from Melbourne, Australia.
In this week's edition of Wag The Dog, I'm bringing you insights from the Emergency Media and Public Affairs (EMPA) conference, where I've just attended two sessions that I think are covering crucial topics for emergency communicators.
I chose to cover these particular sessions on day one because I'm convinced that communities will and are making all the difference in emergency resilience.
These two sessions went beyond standard crisis communication and provided very practical examples of community engagement and what it means to be truly resilient.
Enjoy!
PS: It was also great to meet up face-to-face with readers of Wag The Dog on this side of the globe. 👍🏼
Table of Contents
Breaking through language barriers: lessons from the Northern Territory
Tess Nekrasov from the Northern Territory Government Public Information Group delivered a session on culturally responsive emergency communications that completely focused on audience segmentation and cultural diversity.
The numbers tell the story: the Northern Territory has over 100 Aboriginal language groups, with 29% of the population speaking an Aboriginal language. When disasters strike, and they often hit remote communities hardest, English might be someone's third or fourth language .
The NT approach is systematic:
They've built a library of 550 emergency messages across 21 Aboriginal languages, serving 39 language groups. But it's not just about translation.
They've also completely reworked their deployment strategy, using everything from local radio and Aboriginal Broadcasting Services to community stores and Facebook groups, all mapped through a matrix that gets the right message to the right community in minutes.
The training component made the difference:
Nekrasov described training sessions with Aboriginal interpreters that started in 2021, working with NT Police, Fire and Emergency Services, and the Bureau of Meteorology.
These interpreters have become integral members of local emergency committees, bridging the gap between decision-makers and communities .
The training taught them critical lessons about language simplification. "In working with interpreters, we learned that simplicity in language can save lives.” They had to abandon jargon and long sentences, focusing instead on short, simple statements that facilitate accurate interpretation .
What makes this work is the deployment strategy.
They use a cross-referenced, geo-targeted matrix that ensures messages reach the appropriate regions and language groups quickly. During concurrent emergencies (they ran multiple Emergency Operations Centres in 2024), the same public information teams managed several operations simultaneously .
The SecureNT Facebook page joins and posts in local groups for rapid dissemination to remote communities. Emergency alerts include specific instructions and contact numbers.
The bottom line for comms pros: "Short, simple, translated, and culturally sensitive messages enable rapid understanding in crisis situations."
The long road: rethinking recovery communications
The disaster recovery session focused on community engagement in recovery processes. The central point should make every emergency communicator stop and think:
"The event wasn't the trauma. It was actually the recovery that was the traumatising event".
This should make us stop and think about how we approach post-crisis communications.
Many affected individuals report that the recovery process, not the initial disaster, causes the most distress. Our typical "we're back to normal" messaging can actually re-traumatise communities.
The speaker made clear that recovery isn't a destination; it's an ongoing way of being. This means our communication strategies need to shift from short-term crisis response to long-term relationship building. Top-down approaches are not just ineffective, but they can also be actively harmful.
The community engagement approach needs a complete overhaul. Agencies should ask, 'how can we help?' when entering communities and genuinely listen to local needs. Building relationships with key local figures, those recognised as leaders within the community, is crucial for effective engagement .
Steve Pascoe's personal reflection, 17 years after his own disaster experience, was profound: "Material stuff doesn't matter much anymore; it's very much about being generous and kind and helping other people".
Recovery becomes about supporting people to live lives they have reason to value, even if those lives are different from before .
Media and communications practitioners face specific challenges during recovery. They need to prepare for the transition from response to recovery by developing messages that acknowledge past traumas and avoid conflicting narratives. This includes conducting peacetime briefings and exercises to ensure readiness for future recovery messaging .
The critique of current recovery processes is damning: recovery is frequently implemented through short-term and disconnected processes that don't reflect lived experiences or scientific evidence.
The politicisation of disaster recovery causes debates over who could do a better job, eroding community faith in recovery efforts .
Rural communities present unique challenges and opportunities. They often rely on key local figures, someone at the pub who is recognised as the 'boss', to drive local engagement. Time and persistent effort are necessary to build meaningful, long-term relationships with community leaders .
The most important point:
Honest, practical communication about the true duration and complexity of recovery increases preparedness and engagement. Stop promising quick fixes that you can't deliver.
One of the speakers emphasised, "It's disingenuous to look people in the eye and say, look, we know you're going to be in this space for a long time, and then implement a whole lot of processes and programmes that really demonstrate how little we genuinely understand that at all."
Four practical takeaways for your next emergency
Simplify ruthlessly: if your emergency message can't be understood by someone for whom English is a fourth language, it's too complex .
Build genuine community relationships before disasters strike: Focus on identifying and working with authentic local leaders, not politically appointed figures .
Think recovery from day one: your crisis communication strategy should include honest messaging about the long road ahead, not just immediate response .
Challenge the race to recover: don't impose quick fixes that don't address long-term needs or the lived realities of affected people .
These sessions reminded me why emergency communications is such specialised work. It's not only about managing reputation or controlling the story; it's about saving lives and helping communities recover.
References and further reading.
1 EMPA - Emergency and Crisis Communicators. EMPA - Emergency and Crisis Communicators. https://www.empa.org.au/events/empa-australia-2025
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What I am reading/testing/checking out:
Let’s meet!
 Here are the events and conferences I'll be speaking at. If you're around, feel free to message me, and we can meet up. |
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