A community plan to deal with major emergencies such as Storm Arwen is to be drawn up for Cove and Kilcreggan.
Last week community councillors agreed to look at resilience for the area in the event of a ‘fast onset emergency’.
Secretary Sheelagh O’Reilly said major councils had emergency planning plans but increasingly they are looking for local communities and community councils to lead on this and establish local community emergency plans.
This would not cover nuclear emergencies at Faslane or Coulport, which are covered by major national plans, but major storms or flooding.
Storm Arwen in 2021 saw 80,000 households in Scotland without power, some for several days, while 8m trees were damaged.
“One of the benefits of a community plan is that in some cases for the first 72 hours most people in that community have resources themselves, so that what emergency services are available can be targeted at the most vulnerable, the people most in need,” she said.
“In Aberdeenshire and Dumfries & Galloway their plans have developed after major storm events – we have been remarkably lucky in the recent past that we have not had this kind of event.”
She suggested that households themselves should consider what they could do, for example making sure they had spare batteries for a torch and a way of charging mobile phones.
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service lists the following on its community risk register for the west of Scotland:
- Influenza type diseases – pandemic
- Weather
- Animal and plant health
- Total power outage
- Flooding
- Industrial site accidents
- Pollution and contamination
- Transport disruptions
- Significant cyber attack
The community council agreed to set up a sub-group to pursue the issue.
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