Emerald & Cockatoo EST (Emergency Support Team) are the locals who help the locals. We activate once emergency services have declared an affected area safe, providing a range of immediate relief supports and facilitating longerterm recovery services. We activate after events including storm, fire, flood, power/water/gas outages, and other types of disasters and disruptions affecting our local community. Our volunteers are trained in first aid and psychological first aid and provide the benefit of their local knowledge and connections to direct help where it is most needed in the immediate period following an event. In 2018, residents of Cockatoo established the Cockatoo Emergency Support Team with the support of Wayne Collins and the Emerald EST. In 2020, the transition to a combined Emerald and Cockatoo EST commenced. The June 2021 storm event in the Dandenong Ranges saw our Emergency Support Team activate for the first time as a combined unit, with Emerald and Cockatoo joining forces to support relief centres in both towns. With 18 volunteers activated on rotation across two weeks, EST liaised closely with Chris White (Cockatoo CFA Captain), Ben Owen (Emerald SES Controller), Paul Yandle (Emerald CFA Captain) and representatives of Cardinia Shire Council Emergency Management Team to ensure our activation supported local help getting to local people and targeted local areas of need (not so straightforward as you might expect!) In late October 2021, another storm event impacted the Eastern Dandenong Ranges, and again saw our Emergency Support Team activate. On that occasion 12 volunteers on rotation supported the community by staffing our local relief centre for 9 days, facilitating device charging, hot meals, showers, disposal of spoiled food due to extended power outage, and providing important emotional support to vulnerable and distressed residents ranging from parents of newborns and young children to elderly residents living alone, and those living with disability, poor health and financial distress. In early 2022, EST were approached by Cardinia Shire Council to partner on a Victorian state government grant application to fund a disaster recovery project in the Hills townships of Emerald and Cockatoo. Taskforce (operator of the Cockatoo Community House), Cardinia Shire and EST were successful in the application. The local knowledge that our EST was able to provide enabled some of this funding to directly improve community resilience via training in safe use of generators and chainsaws, mental health first aid, and effective use of technology (apps such as VicEmergency, ABC radio etc). In October 2022, a some of our EST members supported Emerald SES with filling sandbags, and also provided hot meals to the SES members who had been working on flood and storm damage in the community over a period of weeks. Our EST members conduct themselves with compassion, respect and professionalism in difficult conditions.