A majority of people in the UK want to help if disaster strikes in their community but would not know what to do. A 16-page report, ‘When Crisis Hits: mobilising kindness in our communities’, suggests that almost nine in ten people (88pc) say that if an emergency happened in their community they would want to get involved, yet more than half (53pc) would not know what to do if a disaster struck.
The British Red Cross, with the insurer Aviva, is calling on people across the UK to sign up to a new scheme, community reserve volunteers, to help create a national network of people ready to help in a local emergency. The scheme hopes to recruit 10,000 such volunteers across the UK by the end of 2019. It takes ten minutes to sign up at redcross.org.uk/reserves.
The volunteers don’t need any specialist skills and will be called in if crisis strikes in their area. Community reserve volunteers will be contacted by text if there is an emergency in their community they could help with. They will undertake practical jobs such as packing food parcels, blowing up airbeds for rest centres and filling sandbags in times of flooding. The British Red Cross experienced one of the busiest years since the Second World War in 2017, assisting 9,300 people in more than 1,500 emergencies across the UK in 2017, including terror attacks in London and Manchester, and the Grenfell Tower (pictured) fire in west London.
Other emergencies might be fires, gas explosions or large scale power outages, requiring evacuations that the Red Cross in the UK are commonly called to. The report points out that unlike earthquake zones, the UK does not have a well-developed culture of crisis resilience.
The British Red Cross and Aviva surveyed more than 4,000 UK adults about how prepared they are for a local emergency. Among the findings, more than nine in ten people (93pc) who had experienced a major emergency helped or had wanted to help. Two thirds of people (66pc) who had been involved in a major emergency felt there was more their community could have done to help, if they knew how.
Last year’s terror attacks in London and Manchester have heightened awareness of crisis response in the UK. More than half of people (53pc) feel it’s more likely that their community could be vulnerable to a major incident. The most prepared areas were coastal locations, where three in ten (30pc) people had experienced an emergency and 66pc of people feel their community is prepared to cope with one
People want to help, but don’t always know how. More than nine in ten (94pc) of people feel it’s important to know how they can help in an emergency to help speed up the recovery. The biggest reasons that would hold people back from helping in an emergency were not knowing how they could help (27pc) and feeling like they didn’t have the right skills (19pc).
Thomas Milburn, 26, signed up as a community reserve volunteer after being assisted by British Red Cross volunteers when he was badly burnt in the Shoreham Air Show disaster. He said: “I looked up into the sky and this plane was coming straight towards me. The next split second I was engulfed in flames. I thought ‘I’m not sure I’m going to make it out of this alive’. The British Red Cross got me sat down, checked all my vital signs, and made sure I was alright. If I had been away from their help I’d potentially have had much more serious injuries.
“In the aftermath of the crash the British Red Cross did a lot to help the emergency personnel on the scene and people in the community can help with in those extreme circumstances. I think the community reserve volunteer initiative is a really great idea because not everyone has the time to volunteer on a weekly or monthly basis but people do want to get involved when something major happens. It’s something that I’ll be proud to help the Red Cross with.”
Simon Lewis, Head of Crisis Response at the British Red Cross, said: “The British Red Cross responds to a UK emergency every four hours. Last year we faced a huge number of major emergencies like those in London and Manchester. They brought tragedy to so many people, but we witnessed remarkable acts of kindness and saw that people really want to give practical help when crisis hits. The findings of our report with Aviva show that despite this desire to help, people often don’t know how best to assist or worry they don’t have the right skills to get involved.
“By creating a national taskforce of community reserve volunteers we want to put local people at the heart of emergency response, to help communities rebuild and recover faster. Everyone has a role to play when disaster strikes, even the smallest act of kindness can make a huge difference. It’s quick and easy to sign up online community reserve volunteers, you don’t need specialist skills and we need your help now more than ever.”
