After 12 years and 20 disasters, one Mid North Coast volunteer says the response system is broken

West Kempsey local James Raye has been a State Emergency Services (SES) volunteer for 12 years. In that time, he’s responded to upwards of 20 disasters across the Mid North Coast, from bushfires to floods and storms. 

Now, Raye is calling for urgent changes to better deal with more frequent, more extreme weather events. He says it all comes down to local solutions and hands-on-help.

The issue: With years of on-the-ground experience immediately after a disaster, Raye says red-tape is slowing what needs to be a rapid response.

• “There's so much red tape between the government, the council, the emergency services, and then you've got the military,” Raye told the Mid North Coaster. “The work that is needed to be done gets a backseat while they sort of gripe and grumble amongst themselves and work out who's going to do what.”

The longtime SES member says as volunteers they are trained to respond in an emergency, but action is delayed or blocked because of confusion on who is managing what.

• “Homeowners have just been through a really horrible situation, and then they're faced with a fragmented, confused response.”

• “There's going to be more of these events happening more consistently and more diverse and widespread,” Raye said. “There needs to be an essential management organisation that has the full authority and control over all services and it falls on them.”

More storms, less time: Just last year, the region was hit with major floods and destructive storms leading to four “natural disaster declarations” from the NSW Government. 

There was flooding on the Mid North Coast in 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, not to mention bushfires, including the Black Summer of 2019/20. The Australian Government’s first National Climate Risk Assessment warns that concurrent events and reduced time between severe events will become more common. 

Given this, the region’s emergency services and the state government is facing a future that requires more – and quickly.

Hands on help: Along with a clearer line of communication, Raye wants to see the community able to better help after a disaster.

In his eyes the solution lies in the rebuilding of people’s “tattered” homes.

• “Because we all know when we see something start to come alive and rebuild and new stuff, we start to feel better,” Raye said. “The mental health side of things will go down to a dull roar purely because their living arrangements are getting better. If they're consistently looking at mould and rotting stuff, it just brings [them] down.” 

Once immediate support of food, clothing and shelter are seen to those displaced out of their homes, and after safety measures are practiced, he says the priority should be rebuilding homes and fast.

Raye would like to see groups of people allocated to streets where homes need rebuilding, to restore the homes to a "comfortable state of living.”

• “I feel this is the best recovery there is, because even though we're resilient, we're very autonomous Aussies. We're not forward in sticking our hand up for help. And that's not going to change any time in the future.” 

Place-based planning: Doctor Timothy Heffernan, lecturer at the Australian National University and author of a 2025 report on improving community resilience to future disasters, says community-led responses should be part of mitigating disaster impact.

As it stands, issues can arise in the wake of a disaster when communities are left to pick up the pieces. 

Heffernan said the government often steps in for the first 100 days after a disaster but does not necessarily address what the community would want. This leaves councils and locals stuck with “half-commenced” response projects. 

He says communities shouldn’t be brought in after the fact, and instead be part of the planning process to better prepare for extreme weather impacts.

• “There should be some sort of community representation on different kinds of committees and boards,” said Heffernan. “A more  grassroots approach.”

Local knows best: Often it's the people living in these regions who best know the land, the way it changes, and the response needed for recovery. Heffernan pointed out it's this closeness that means community consultation would result in solutions with long term, trusted benefits. 

Some communities have benefitted from documents shared widely that list labour skills of individuals, phone numbers of people in the area, resources of who has generators or batters, who can use pumps, who knows CPR and where the two-way radios might be. 

• “Communities know best.. They know what will work, they know what will cut through and will have a long term benefit,” Heffernan said,

Heffernan says the priority should be listening to local knowledge and resourcing communities in a pro-active sense to better prepare for extreme weather events.

• “It’s about getting the community together to write their own preparedness plans and doing their own scenario planning, because it's one thing for government or emergency services as he says services to give a community a plan, It's another thing for that community to have devised that plan themselves.”