Anarchy in the Uki! How a hybrid of structure and autonomy can exist in community self-organisation

Self-organising community-led emergency responses and recovery are here to stay. Increasingly frequent, more severe, longer and more widespread natural hazard events mean that the demands placed on official response and recovery agencies will outstrip capacity. Drawing on a mix of first-hand accounts from 2 community leaders and excerpts from research interviews with community members, this paper focuses on 2 linked case studies of community self-organisation; the experiences of greater Uki (Uki and surrounds) and the experiences of the Byrrill Creek community, which sits within greater Uki but has its own Community Resilience Team. These case studies serve as a useful comparison of how community selforganisation and activation can be successful, but different, in 2 locations despite encountering similar challenges during the same flood event. They show how pre-organised and decentralised structures combined with strong links with emergency services can be mobilised to support community self-efficacy. The requirement for flexible approaches to enable communities to plan and self-organise in ways that suit their contexts and compositions is an underlying theme. Accommodating these idiosyncrasies is one of many challenges facing emergency management organisations as they transition to a complex and balanced power-share with communities and identify ways to integrate with the cooperative, democratic and sometimes fragile forms of anarchy they possess.