Restoring our city

In the immediate hours following a disaster, City of Gold Coast will coordinate the recovery efforts for the city.

Restoring the city can take a long time. It's a team effort as we partner with a range of agencies and organisations to provide support to residents, communities and businesses affected by the disaster.

The long-term recovery program for our city and across Queensland is supported by the Queensland Reconstruction Authority.

Local Recovery Group

The City’s Local Recovery Group consists of members including City staff, emergency service agencies, government and non-government organisations who work together to plan and coordinate recovery efforts for the city. This group works with a range of stakeholders to identify programs to assist short to long-term recovery focussing on human-social, economic, infrastructure and environmental recovery.

Pathway to recovery

Planning for recovery starts during or immediately after a disaster. This includes providing short, medium and longer-term recovery responses. Our recovery plan is always delivered in response to the community’s needs.

After a disaster, we help the city to recover across the following areas – human and social (people), environment, infrastructure, economy and resilience.

Human and social

  • Support with immediate needs
    - safety, shelter, essential needs (food, clothing, medical)
    - psychological first aid
    - access to essential services (water, electricity)
  • Access and support (grants, financial, insurance)
  • Provide a range of accessible ways to access and receive information
  • Connect people with services for additional support
  • Enable and empower the community to develop resilience

Environment

  • Community safety via
    - monitor water quality
    - clean-up environmental damage (fallen trees, debris, erosion, vegetation loss)
    - mosquito control
  • Regenerate and restore natural areas
  • Work in partnership with conservation and wildlife partners
  • Assess and manage bushfire risk and clearing trails

Infrastructure

  • Restore, rebuild or re-establish essential services (roads, power, telecommunications, water and wastewater) as quickly as possible
  • Restore impacted community infrastructure (schools, community centres, sporting, recreation, parks)
  • Remove impacted infrastructure, green waste or storm debris

Economic

  • Advocate for grants and government funding
  • Help impacted businesses operate again
  • Support impacted business sectors (for example, agriculture and small businesses)
  • Advocate for impacted businesses insurance needs

Resilience

  • Learning from disaster events
  • Restoring public trust
  • Identifying critical lessons
  • Mitigating risks and impacts
  • Delivering disaster readiness programs
  • Improving disaster response