Emergency management in Australia is the shared responsibility of the emergency services and the community. The community then are more than customers of the emergency services. They are also stakeholders. Therefore, we contend that the enhancement of community empowerment, ownership, and resilience to risk can only be successfully derived from a shared understanding of responsibilities and needs gained through community engagement.

The Deaf Community is one community sub-group whose needs are not well understood. Deaf people face additional challenges when responding to natural hazards. Information on appropriate actions to take before, during and after a natural disaster is often unavailable in accessible formats including Auslan. NSW currently has no strategy to assess or meet the needs of deaf people when natural disasters occur. Accordingly, the University of NSW is collaborating with the Deaf Society of NSW, the NSW State Emergency Service, Fire and Rescue NSW, and Rural Fire Services NSW on a project aimed at:

(1) Increasing the Deaf Community’s resilience to hazards by improving access to emergency management information; and

(2) Improving deaf awareness for emergency service staff and increasing the resources NSW emergency service organisations need to best support deaf people.

In this paper, we present the project’s key findings sourced from a community needs assessment and an emergency services capacity assessment. First, we outline emergency practices in NSW before detailing the main challenges deaf people face in effectively responding to hazards and their current needs. Drawing upon this foundational knowledge, we present a range of actions that will improve deaf peoples’ preparedness levels and increase the capacity of the emergency services to effectively assist deaf people. These strategies are outcomes of engagement between the emergency services and Deaf Community members, which creates a solid platform for future collaboration on and greater community ownership of risk management.