We believe that one of the most important things a community has to do to reestablish itself after a disaster (after saving lives and property to the greatest extent it can) is to get its people back to work. Productive enterprise, as much as any other activity of the community reestablishes the normal rhythms and fabric of the community. Getting all of the segments of the community back to work quickly begins to reconstitute the community’s economic base and prevents long term job loss because of population dislocation. A working community says “we’re back and we’re recovering.”
Key to getting back to work is having some place to live. A resilient community plans and prepares to get its people back into their homes as quickly as possible. People who get back into their own homes even under less than optimal conditions are much more ready to participate in the process of restarting the community.
A CARRI affiliate, The Resilient Home Program, is a coalition of the willing working to improve the life of homeowners following natural disasters. Combining the resources of the Savannah River National Laboratory, North Carolina State University, the US Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory and Clemson University, the Resilient Home team is examining the complete spectrum of ways to get people back into their homes quickly following a disaster. These include: response – stabilizing the home and rendering it a safe interim shelter; rebuilding – rebuilding with available resources in a more durable manner than before the disaster; prevention – protecting the home from the short- and long-term effects of a disaster; and assessment – determining the extent of damage that occurred to the home in a quick and cost effective manner.
Getting people back into their homes is important. You can find more about the Resilient Home Program through a link on the CARRI web site, http://www.resilientus.org/.
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Resilient Homes are Key to Resilient Communities
ReplyDeleteYour statement that people who get back into their own homes, even under less than optimal conditions, are much more ready to participate in the process of restarting the community is right on target. I would add that true community resiliency would be best jump-started by exactly this, the building of single household resiliencies and preparedness house-by-house, building-by-building and block-by-block. Resilient homes can begin by preparing for temporary disruptions, for example an energy interruption lasting for 72 hrs. Here the family would prepare for water needs, alternative light needs, radio for emergency news, safety issues and so on as usually is recommended in the ready action web sites.
If the need then came to evacuate the home due to a natural disaster or terrorist event, the next level of preparedness will kick in with ready ‘go-bags’, plans for relocating with family members if separated or a ‘shelter-in-place scenario’ in appropriate pre-arranged rooms in the house. The significant resulting action here is that as ‘resilient homes’ are created, optimistically then they will inherently next create ‘resilient buildings’ and ‘resilient blocks’ and ‘teams’. Here they have already identified elderly or disabled individuals in the building and blocks and have created a momentum and way to assist neighbors and evacuate or shelter them as well.
I would add here however that these core resilient strategies and crisis planning would not be initially developed from a vacuum; it truly does begin with leadership. This leadership can be at the grass root level such as community efforts from schools, fire safety officials, law enforcement agencies, and emergency medical services with common goals. Leadership and guidance can be had from trained groups such as; the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), The Fire Corps, USA on Watch (UOW)-Neighborhood Watch, Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) Program and Volunteers in Police Service (VIPS). This is the way to begin in mobilizing first the homes and then the community into resiliency.
CARRI’s affiliation to The Resilient Home Program, which assists homeowners following natural disasters, is certainly a specialized need that would greatly assist families in getting back to their homes and thereby their communities. It might fill the gaps that are created by FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program (IHP), which provides money and services to people in disaster areas when losses are not covered by insurance. IHP however does take insurance coverage into consideration (I’m not sure if The Resilient Home Program does) and covers only what is not covered by the insurance. It will however assist in temporary housing, repairs to make the house safe and functional etc. As I am sure CARRI’s mission is, the point to me is that here, the embracing of partnerships in the community and that time is of essence, is what is critical.
In response to the last paragraph of Al Fuentes' comment, the Resilient Home Program looks at insurance and insurability in the following ways. First, the Program has begun discussions with insurers about offering reduced rates for homes that meet certain standards of robustness, in a similar manner to what is done now for commercial buildings. While those discussions are by no means complete, the insurers seem genuinely interested in moving them forward. The RHP will be working with the Institute for Business and Home Safety (esp. their new research center in Chester, SC) to bring this to fruition.
ReplyDeleteSecond, the RHP is also focused on speeding the damage assessment process after a disaster occurs. In many cases, the homeowner can't rebuild until the insurance check is received. Currently, damage assessment is still largely a manual, labor-intensive, process. As the nation has seen in the aftermath of Katrina, Rita, and now Gustav and Ike, damage assessment is often the process that truly limits how fast a community can rebuild. The RHP is developing approaches to automate this process to the maximum extent possible, and thus to help communities to speed their "return to normalcy."