Community kept me alive – but the system wasn’t there for us
By Liz Church, National Project Administrator, CCS Disability Action
Published 7 July 2026
When I read Environment Hubs Aotearoa’s Community is Climate Resilience research, I recognised myself in its findings straight away. The report shows that during the 2023 severe weather events, it was neighbours, marae and local groups who carried much of the response – while disabled people often faced inaccessible alerts, missing welfare checks, equipment failures and exclusion from planning. My experience during Cyclone Gabrielle is one personal example of exactly that.
I use a powerchair and live alone. During Gabrielle, I was without power for seven days. My only accessible entry and exit was through an electric garage door, so when the power went off, I was effectively locked in my house. For a week, my survival depended almost entirely on my neighbours and local friends, not on any official system.
Community as my emergency plan
From day one, my immediate neighbours were the most helpful resource I had. Every day, one of them came over to manually open my garage door in the morning and close it again at night. On one occasion, when there was an alert about someone dangerous in the area, my neighbour came straight over to shut the door early and make sure I was secure.
My neighbours helped me set up a basic cooking area when I lost power, and at first I was able to share hot water with them until they were set up themselves. We checked on each other constantly. It was informal, practical, and lifesaving – exactly the kind of community response the report describes.
Communication was one of the biggest challenges. With no power, there was no way to charge phones or my powerchair. I was lucky, as my phone service was still active, unlike many others in the region. I started handwriting updates for family and friends, taking a photo on my phone, and posting it to Facebook whenever I could. Those posts became my lifeline.
Because of those posts, local friends and acquaintances turned up to take my phone away to charge at their workplaces, brought extra gas when I was running low, and cooked food that was defrosting faster than I could eat it. They brought meals back to me and later helped set up a generator when the council finally delivered one, five days into the outage.
The council team who brought the generator were office staff pitching in, not civil defence specialists, and didn’t really know how to set it up. Luckily a friend with experience arrived at the same time, and between us all we got it working. For a few hours I could charge my powerchair – and I had every neighbour’s phone plugged in too. Again, it was community that made that work.
The gaps the research warns about
The Environment Hubs research and DPA’s commentary highlight serious risks for disabled people in disasters: inaccessible alerts, no welfare checks, medical equipment failures, and exclusion from planning. My story fits that pattern.
For most of that week, I was largely immobile. I had to conserve my powerchair battery because I didn’t know when – or if – I’d be able to charge it again. When I finally heard there were places where people could charge their chairs, the closest option seemed to be a local medical centre. But when I phoned, I was told no, I couldn’t bring my chair there to charge.
A few days after the cyclone, the local companion service taxi company checked on me and offered to take me either to the medical centre or out to the airport, where people were charging phones. I could have charged my chair there too – but none of that was clear at the time. I was piecing it together by word of mouth.
On day five, community nurses turned up at my house. They told me that yes, they had seen someone charging their powerchair at the medical centre. So the information staff had on the ground was different from what I’d been told on the phone. That inconsistency added to the frustrations. Coincidentally, just after the community nurses checked in another team turned up for a welfare check, though I can’t remember where they were from.
The only reason these welfare checks and the council generator turned up at all was because a colleague in our national office had been lobbying behind the scenes to get me some support. I only ended up on their check-in lists because CCS Disability Action staff kept ringing around everyone they could – the council, community nurses, anyone – to make it happen. Realistically, it seems that five days is the average time it takes for external support to arrive – if someone is actively lobbying for it.
Radio was another frustration. I had a battery‑operated radio, and at first it provided useful information. But very quickly, it shifted into sensational stories and general entertainment. There was no real attempt to connect communities – to tell people where there were shortages, where there was surplus, or how to link those up.
I had food in my fridge and freezer that I would happily have donated to people who had lost everything. Only much later did I learn that local groups were cooking for people who needed it. At the time, I had no idea they existed. The food went to waste when it could have fed people who remained homeless and in need for weeks. That’s exactly the kind of coordination gap this research points to.
After the storm: still outside the plan
What worries me most is what happened after the cyclone, when there was time to reflect and improve.
A year later, I moved house. Because of my experience and the rising risk of severe weather, I tried to make sure my new place was properly considered in emergency planning. I’m now closer to the sea, and I had no choice about that – it was where accessible housing was available.
I tried multiple times to get support with planning and evacuation:
I called the local fire department and left a message asking for a home safety and evacuation check. No response.
I attended an emergency preparedness course for disabled people where we were told about a FENZ website where you can register for a free home visit. I registered. Again, no response.
At another emergency preparedness course, a Community Hub organiser from my area took my details and promised to follow up. Nothing happened.
Later, I met another Community Hub organiser at a community day, gave them my details, and still never heard back.
When I mentioned the barriers preventing disabled people from getting involved in Community Hubs, a civil defence person said that it’s up to us to get involved and educate our local Community Hub about accessibility (make that make sense). The problem is: most people don’t know Hubs exist, where they are, how to get connected, or whether the Hub meeting spaces are accessible. There are no flyers in people’s mailboxes. I only heard about Community Hubs because I happened to be at those courses. Later I learned that many communities don’t have Hubs yet because it’s the community who has to set them up. They are not civil defence centres, but an extension of the ‘neighbours helping neighbours’ concept.
A year or so ago, there was a local tsunami drill, organised by council and civil defence. It seemed to be set up as a fun outing for mobile families. Older people with mobility issues and those of us using wheelchairs were not considered. The place for the community to meet, socialise and get emergency preparedness information from after the drill was somewhere I’d need a taxi to reach, and I didn’t know if the venue was accessible for me. Disabled people were definitely missing from the planning and implementation of that drill.
All of this tells me that, despite the lessons highlighted in the resilience research, disabled people are still not being meaningfully involved in planning – even after a disaster as traumatic as Gabrielle.
This year we found ourselves at risk again from Cyclone Vaianu. It brought back memories and I certainly didn’t meet anyone in our region taking this news lightly. People were refreshing their emergency kits, buying generators and generally making plans. I even purchased a UPS to keep my electric bed powered in an outage. I spoke to one man who was feeling extremely wary, having been hit hard by Gabrielle before he moved from Auckland to Hawke’s Bay. I heard nothing about local Hubs, but my workplace and two support services checked in with me before and after that weekend, which was reassuring.
We were lucky this time, but felt for the regions hit hardest. We could relate to their distress and loss.
What my experience adds to the resilience research
The report shows that community is a powerful source of resilience in disasters, and I agree. My experience confirms that neighbours, friends and local networks often move faster and understand our needs better than formal systems.
But my story also underlines DPA’s warning: disabled people are facing serious, avoidable risks because emergency planning still doesn’t centre us. In my case, those gaps looked like:
No proactive welfare checks, despite relying on electricity for mobility.
Conflicting information about where I could safely charge essential equipment.
A lack of communication channels that truly connected people with surplus resources to those with unmet needs.
Repeated attempts to be included in preparedness planning that went nowhere.
If severe weather events are our new normal, as Cyclone Vaianu has recently reminded us, then actively including disabled people has to become part of our new normal too.
What needs to change
Based on both the research and my lived experience, here are some practical steps:
Proactive welfare checks that disabled people can opt into. We need systems that are effective and collaborative, and that avoid duplication. This way people who rely on power, equipment or support workers – before, during and after an event – get the essential support they need.
Accessible, two‑way communication. Information must be available in multiple formats, and channels like radio should help communities connect surplus and need, not just broadcast dramatic stories.
Real representation in planning and hubs. Disabled people and whānau hauā/tāngata whaikaha Māori must know about and have access to emergency planning groups, Community Hubs and community drills so that we can participate and contribute our knowledge and expertise.
Clear, consistent information from health and disability services. Everyone – from receptionists to community nurses – needs to know where people can safely charge life‑sustaining equipment and how to prioritise that during outages.
Community was my lifeline during Cyclone Gabrielle, and I’m deeply grateful for my neighbours, friends and local businesses who stepped up when systems didn’t. But our safety shouldn’t depend on luck and personal networks. If we truly believe that community is climate resilience, then disabled people and our communities must be informed, resourced, included and planned for – not invisible and excluded.