Consensus on Clean up

One of the greatest assets individuals and communities can have before, during, and after a disaster is the knowledge of what happens next, and the confidence to act on that knowledge. Unfortunately, the current state of preparedness in many communities is far from that ideal and as a result, leaves room for ambiguity around key issues that mark turning points in an individual and community's recovery.

A great opportunity to clear up some of this ambiguity while working to set and manage homeowner expectations is to, as a response community, agree and adhere to standards around the work done on behalf of impacted homeowners i.e. mucking/gutting/debris removal/sanitizing/mold treatment/etc. By gaining consensus on this issue, standards can be proactively communicated as a part of preparedness initiatives to help bring both homeowner and responding groups (established or spontaneous) onto the same page when engaging in cleanup activities. Not only that, but by actively pushing cleanup standards, homeowners don't have to wait around for someone to help them, they can quickly and aggressively begin the process with friends, family, or spontaneous volunteers from the community and work to a standard that is applied across the country...in essence, working to create more resilient communities.

Is it done?

Is it Done?
I would bet that if you were to show the above photo to different people with different levels of experience in response, homeowners included, and asked what needed to happen next, you would get a variety of answers. Not to say that they would be wrong, but finding a definitive answer would not be an easy task because until recently no checklist existed, there was no "how to" guide endorsed by a coalition of organizations or FEMA to help define the process. Given that more than a handful of organizations have been doing this type of work for years spanning hundreds of disasters, one would think that an authoritative guidebook would've been written before now, if for no other reason than to give homeowners a chance at a full recovery without such reliance on response organizations. I say this because responding non-profits can't serve everyone, and after a certain point, they begin to pack up taking with them their know how and experience, leaving the remaining work to fewer and oftentimes less experienced resources. What remains is often a mash up of homes taken to various stages of "completeness," and a lot of grey area around how best to move many of them forward.

In recognition that the resources and surge of Volunteer power are not inexhaustible, the National VOAD Housing Committee has created guidelines to formalize an understanding of what completing the steps involved in clean up means. This was done to bring some uniformity to how we talk and act in the field on behalf of impacted homeowners and renters.

Go here for the download

While the creation of the above guidance documentation is a good start, I believe packaging these guidelines with documentation and other relevant resources should be used as a part of community preparedness programming; preparedness is about more than having food and water, it's about having the knowledge and understanding of what happens next. 

The goal is to ensure that all homeowners and responding groups have a clear understanding of expectations around what the different phases of cleanup are to mitigate the guesswork so that consistency can be created in the work done on behalf of impacted homeowners.

In the post, 'Disaster Response in the Digital Age' I talk about the need for the creation of a standardized data set so that information can flow freely between the proprietary software platforms being utilized during response. I believe the creation of this guidance document is an important first step, because without consensus around the definitions of cleanup activities, getting consistency in data collection and tracking, the first step in data set standardization, isn't feasible.

Funding Disaster Preparedness and Community Resilience

I recently posted about the Rockefeller Foundation and their move to create a $100 Million Preparedness fund, something that will hopefully change the mindsets of how private donors and foundations view the funding of disaster-related initiatives.  

Any opportunity to challenge traditional funding mindsets is important and I believe by Rockefeller establishing this fund, the current funding trickle that disaster organizations fight over can turn into a steady flow for disaster-related operations and programming. While establishing consistent access to funding is key, I believe there may be a larger opportunity connected to what Rockefeller is doing; I believe there may be an opportunity to leverage this fund, or the idea that spurred the creation of this fund, in a way that can work to create an environment of accountability in reporting, coordination, and the creation of standards to improve the unity of effort around preparedness and community resilience.

Challenge

The current landscape for disaster funding comes as a reaction to events and as such is based around a shorter-term view of how to measure impact. A great number of donors have their own ideas of what “success” is as it relates to preparedness, response, and recovery, with little overlap existing between those ideas. This diversity makes generating consensus around standards in any facet of the disaster life cycle difficult because everyone is beholden to different funders—for many of whom disaster response is not a part of their mission / mandate.

With the push for broader inclusion around the ideas of resilience and preparedness at a local level, and the money to back it predominately coming through state agencies to local/county Emergency Management Agencies (EMA), there is little room to support those at the ground level through education and planning to further the ideas of resilience beyond its current state.

Opportunity

As a philanthropic leader, The Rockefeller Foundation can as part of its existing preparedness fund, or with the creation of a separate fund, begin to implement a standards-based grant program that offers money for preparedness and resilience focused initiatives. In exchange for accepting funding, community based organizations would have to adopt an operational framework and common standards that relate to disasters that scale to meet needs, and can be easily replicated. Sounds easy, right? We know money is a means to an end, and we’ve seen the success of this funding model with the dollars flowing from the Federal government to City, County, and State EMA. As long as NIMS/ICS compliance is maintained, State Agencies remain eligible for Federal dollars, which is what a large percentage of their operational budgets are derived from.

The result is consistency in action across City, County, and State EMA, something that hasn’t been possible in the non-profit world. The reason why there is uniformity of effort and a greater consistency in language amongst the federal family is because of the strings attached to available dollars requiring compliance with NIMS/ICS.

I believe The Rockefeller Foundation can be the financial muscle that gets the ball rolling for a similar initiative amongst disaster response and community resilience focused non-profits. With the help of IAEM, CNCS, NVOAD, FEMA and other leaders in the sector, the creation of a commonly accepted framework for the preparedness and response can be built with a financial incentive for adopting it.