The 2025 ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred exposed a critical gap in our preparedness to respond to severe weather events affecting people sleeping rough across the Byron Shire.
During severe weather events, people experiencing homelessness can rapidly lose the very items keeping them safe and alive, including tents, bedding, dry clothing and protection from the elements, yet often remain excluded from formal disaster recovery pathways and unable to quickly replace essential survival equipment.
As Byron Community Centre rushed to respond during the event, it became immediately apparent that emergency survival equipment for vulnerable rough sleepers should not have to be sourced in the middle of an emergency weather event or disaster. It should already be prepared, accessible and ready to deploy.
Fortunately, during the immediate response phase in 2025, both Ingrained Foundation and Northern Rivers Community Foundation offered rapid-response emergency grants which enabled Byron Community Centre to purchase urgently needed survival items including tents, blankets, rain protection equipment and other practical emergency supplies for people experiencing homelessness who had lost their own supplies to the extreme weather.
But an important lesson was learned.
In response to those experiences, Byron Community Centre has since been working to strengthen longer-term emergency preparedness capacity for vulnerable community members experiencing homelessness during future severe weather events and crises.
With support from the Northern Rivers Community Foundation’s Cyclone Alfred Response Grants Program, which focused on strengthening disaster preparedness capacity within frontline community organisations such as ours, we have now been able to establish a modest yet critical reserve of practical camping, bedding and weather-protection equipment that can be rapidly deployed via our Fletcher Street Cottage project when needed.
Importantly, this work represents a broader shift from reactive crisis response toward longer-term disaster preparedness and community resilience for vulnerable people within our region.
As climate-related disasters and extreme weather events become increasingly frequent and unpredictable, strengthening preparedness for the community members most exposed to those conditions is becoming increasingly important.
Community members can continue supporting this work through our Fletcher Street Cottage Sleep Pack campaign, helping ensure practical emergency support remains available during future periods of crisis and extreme weather.
Byron Community Centre thanks the Northern Rivers Community Foundation for supporting this important initiative.
Photo: Foreground, Ingrained Foundation’s Jodi Littlewood, with Damian Farrell, Mardi Powell and Amanda Peters from Fletcher St Cottage. Credit: Jeff Dawson, The Echo
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