Two people are walking and one is pushing a wheelbarrow, the other carrying a spade. There is a person greeting them and pointing towards the Community Emergency Hub who is wearing a yellow lanyard.

Get Involved

Community members and volunteer organisations play a vital role in your community’s preparation for, response to, and recovery from an emergency.

Imagine a large earthquake has struck the Wellington Region. You've made it home and checked on your family and neighbours. What do you do next?

WREMO's Emergency Management Advisors hold events around the region to provide practical guidance on how your community can organise a response to a disaster.

A person wearing a yellow lanyard is giving directions outside a community emergency hub. Three people are fixing a broken window. There is a damaged powerline in the distance.

Emergency Response Practices

In an Emergency Response Practice you will use a real-time earthquake scenario to practise how you can respond as a community by sharing information, skills and resources.

Find an event

Household Earthquake Planning Workshops

In these workshops, residents and businesses get together to make a plan and identify the potential resources in your local area that could be useful in a disaster.

Find a Workshop

Your role in an emergency

Everyone has something to offer, and your skills and experience will prove invaluable to your community's response in a disaster.

Following events both in New Zealand and around the world, eight roles have been identified that make the coordination of an emergency response happen faster and more effectively. At the Community Emergency Hub, you'll find the roles needed to coordinate an emergency response.

You can read more about each of the roles by clicking the links below:

Find an event near you on our Calendar of Events

How to run a Community Emergency Hub

Our Hub Guide explains:

Volunteer in your community

Communities that work together do better in emergencies, and the connections that you make through volunteering help build stronger communities.

Whatever organisation you volunteer for, or even if you just show up to help occasionally, you can promote preparedness and increase the resilience of the Wellington region.

We’d love to see you and your community group at any of our community preparedness events. Check out our calendar of events for what's coming up!

Here are some of our partners you could volunteer with:

New Zealand Response Teams

New Zealand Response Teams are groups of people from the community, who volunteer their time in emergencies to help when the emergency services are overwhelmed.
Response teams are part of the response to an emergency – their activities are coordinated through the Emergency Operations Centre.

They are trained to professional standards as an emergency resource that can complement or support the emergency services, if the size of an incident or event is beyond what they can usually manage.