 Lakeland Public Television presents Currents with host Ray Gildow, sponsored by Niswa Tax Service, offering tax preparation for individuals and businesses across from the City Hall in Niswa and on the web at niswatax.com. Hello again everyone and welcome to Lakeland Currents where tonight we're going to be talking about disaster recovery. And I have three experts on the panel this evening that have all been actively involved in different disasters. And we're talking about natural disasters, it could be anything from a tornado to a training blowing up in a community. And so much attention is given to the disaster, the cameras come in and people get all the attention. What happens when that's all over and those people aren't all gone, that's where these folks come in. It's some very unique things they're doing and I think it's something, if you're a city planner, if you're a person that's working in your community and you're looking at putting some plans together, these folks are the people you should be contacting. To my immediate right is Dan Frank who is a senior program manager with Initiative Foundation and to his right, would be to his right, is Nancy Beers and she's a director of the Midwest Recovery Fund, Center of Disaster Philanthropy. And she's from Alberta and to her right is Brian Curtis who is a long term recovery specialist with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division. Welcome to the show. It's nice to have you all come and I know two of you have come from a long way so we really appreciate that and the kind of weather we've been experiencing sometimes. So who wants to start out and talk a little bit about the overview of what it is that you do? Do you want to do that, Dan? Sure. You want to start? I can do that. As a foundation we cover 14 counties in central Minnesota and probably our wake up call on this subject was the tornado in Laudina back in 2010 and that was a fantastic event. They were very fortunate. There was really no loss of life to speak of. There was I think one individual that was affected that later passed but for the most part they were very fortunate in terms of injuries, loss of life but they lost well over 100 homes. They had their school wiped out, their community center wiped out. They had a lot of impact and so after all of that first part was over they had a lot of rebuilding to do. So really for the first time we as a foundation got involved with how do you set up a long term recovery team and how does a local community come together to really rebuild and it takes a number of years and it took them that long but because of the fact that they paid really good attention to it and that we really learned a lot along with them they've had a pretty good outcome from that disaster in the long term. So that really woke us up to the fact that there's a lot too, this whole idea of how does a community come together, plan for the future after a disaster and then try to bring people back together as much as possible to where they were before it happened and so we learned a lot through that and so we've been a lot more sensitive thinking about the other 162 communities we serve and what happens if something like this happens to them. How can we help them be better prepared? And I remember listening on the radio to the folks from Wadena talking about they did have a plan in place for a disaster and I'm sure a lot of communities do and you know I don't know how much that impacted their recovery but well most of the plans unfortunately most of the plans that are in place most of them are for the initial response. So it's the lights and sirens phase as I call it so you know they make sure their fire department their police department the county police department a county emergency management all of those people are talking to you we're pretty good at that. What we're not as thoughtful about as we need to be is what happens after that how do you organize what we call a long-term recovery group or team which actually is made up by and controlled by the local community. How do you get that thing together and then reach out to the other resources both internal and external that you're going to need depending on your disaster to rebuild and to recover and it's not just about buildings it's about people's mental and emotional state it's a whole raft of different issues that people don't normally think about they're going to be affected by a disaster. And Nancy you've been doing this for a number of years you said so what is it that you do as a specialist in this field? Well my job right now with the Center for Disaster Philanthropy is I run a grant-making program and we go into communities like Wadena and we help put money into building local capacity so that local people can get the right training and hire people to take on some of the more specialized and difficult tasks. So when when Dan was talking I was thinking about what often happens after a disaster is people don't quite know what to do so they start trying to do something and I often come in and say but you're not the first community who's ever had to go through a recovery and so there are some best practices that are used nationally some of them from the federal government certainly from some of them from the state government but there's also a national organization called National Volunteer Organizations Active and Disaster who have been doing recovery work for years really years and years and they're mostly mostly made up of nonprofit groups and faith-based groups but so there's some best practices so we try to help those communities understand what those best practices are but understanding that they have to be invested in their own recovery we're not going to come and do it for you and and it can be a challenge it can be a challenge and we were when in my previous job I was senior director of disaster services for Lutheran social service of Minnesota and we were in Wadena and we had a case manager and a reconstruction manager and we had invested in some of those those front-line jobs those people who are really working directly with clients well if we haven't lost a home it's hard to imagine what it must be like to have everything you had gone and so it must be really they must be very emotional and I always say that disasters are not respectors of persons and so when a disaster hits your home you might be in the best place you've ever been right you might be financially sound and your kids all did great and went on to college and everybody's independent and everything's going well but many people aren't there when that disaster happens and I've met people who are dying of cancer at a client one time who was getting was in the hospital when he lost his house getting his leg amputated I mean there so it ends up that you have to integrate this loss into the story that's going on at that time or you might have had a lot of medical debt or you might be getting a divorce I mean there's all kinds of things that are already going on in your life and now you're homeless basically and you've lost me also your biggest asset and in a flood most people aren't insured tornadoes Wadena most of the people were insured I think about 89% of the people were insured in Wadena that were about 89% were insured some under insured of course but still insured but then the flood that Brian and I are working right now in southern Minnesota I think it was 2% insurance at all 2% of the people had insurance so we're talking about 98% of the people their losses are not covered by anything other than now FEMA's coming in and doing some grant making but if FEMA wasn't coming in that money would have to be generated locally yeah and that's a lot of money and so it becomes really a challenge is there a typical response or is it just all over the place when people get floods how do they how do they cope with that what do they do what's the first thing they usually look to do I think it's usually it sort of depends on the situation where the floods of 2012 in Duluth in the north of north eastern Minnesota was widespread that was very it was and it was sort of all over the map you had some some damages that were in the city of Duluth who was able they were able to manage some of that to a better degree whereas some of the more rural counties of rural areas they had a lot more difficulty in reaching out and getting assistance to the people out there and so that's kind of where some of these things kind of come into play here with long term recovery planning in that you know it's not a quick and easy fix kind of thing the responses may be fast you know usually as Dan was pointing out we're very attuned to life safety we want to make sure that anyone who's in any threat or any danger gets assistance right away you know whether it's you see the dramatic films on television and things like that of rescues and things like that but it's sort of the day after then what happens and the long the long planning that takes it needs to take place the planning that needs and the actions that need to take place to build put the communities back on their feet and make them hold again you know we use the term now a whole community recovery because it's that's what it takes it's it's not just well it's just this business or this institution it has to be the entire community coming together and Brian you said you were with public safety but also homeland security I work for the division of Homeland Security and emergency management which is part of the Department of Public Safety in Minnesota in my job as community recovery specialist I'm I work with groups like Dan's Initiative Foundation and Nancy's Center for Disaster Philanthropy and some a number of other voluntary organizations and foundations trying to get working to help communities plan for these kinds of events that have been happening through sort of the school of hard knocks we've learned that you know the more planning you do ahead of time and this just goes all the way down to your own family kind of thing you plan for emergencies kind of thing but what what happens to a community and the one thing we do know is that the communities really need to take this on for themselves to help rebuild them as as part of their identity to a certain extent we can provide some technical assistance we can provide a lot of information and that's kind of what my role is with working with them let's maybe use an example of Melrose because Melrose had a couple disasters last year they had well this this church one of the major Catholic churches had a serious fire then it wasn't a whole lot later they had a serious fire in downtown Melrose didn't they right and that's a nice little example that's it's a could be a good one to look at well and as part of that example here the the church actually is pretty well insured and so they're they're really going through a process right now I've been in the church look at the damage very looks a lot worse on the inside than it does on the outside I can tell you right but they're pretty well insured and so you know now they're just trying to decide you know that's a historic building what do we do etc and their meeting is worship somewhere else so really a challenge and difficult for that faith community but pretty much financially under control for the most part now the downtown fire displaced 11 businesses and about 50 people wow who were in apartments upstairs of those businesses and so we're involved as the initiative foundation and other organizations including Catholic Charities who's doing our case management there you know we talked about the importance of that piece involved in trying to find housing etc long term now that you know they had initial housing that Red Cross and others helped with but in the long term housing is in short supply in Melrose so now they've got these families that are looking for housing there's about 11 or 12 families and most of these families by the way are relatively new immigrants most of them are Hispanic they and most of them do not have English as a first language which is why Catholic Charities was chosen to do case management because they have people that speak Spanish something they're very familiar with in the area and then of course we have these businesses that we're working with in cooperation with a number of funders a ag star helped out with that some of their local banks and credit unions helped out the Blandon Foundation helped out so in the long term recovery there we have a business area which is true in almost every community businesses need to recover to it's very important right it's great if you have a house but what if your business you don't have a job now yeah you know or you can't get the services you need because the business is gone so you need both of those areas and so we're working with the community through a long term recovery team and a long term recovery fund where we help them raise money through all these different sources some of it much of it local and so now we're working day to day with the hard work of actually getting those people back into houses having the furnishings they need and getting those businesses relocated and an opportunity to come back and that's probably going to take a good year or so at least for that and then of course you've got the business owners they lost four pieces poor businesses in their downtown that were totally wiped out and so now those people that own those businesses have got to decide if they're going to rebuild or not and needless to say the insurance that most of them had probably most of them that insurance not quite adequate to rebuild what they had at today's standards I was going to say that's probably you know you see the disasters on the national television and so many times you see small business owners saying there's no way I can get back into this business again I just have to quit that's a real tragedy that is or I would guess that may be a part of the planning process is to make sure people understand how much insurance they have to have yeah would true that's helpful how much insurance they should have and then also once it happens what are the resources available and for instance right we never used to think that we could make grants to businesses because they're not really a technically speaking they are not a charitable organization but actually there are methodologies that we've been able to work with others where we do grant some dollars to businesses to help them reestablish to help make up the shortfall between their insurance that they have and what it's actually going to cost them it doesn't make it up totally they still are hurt but if we can make it possible for them to get back in business and help the local community do that then that's worth doing so if you were to walk into a community like brainer and I have no idea what brainer it's planning for stages are here but what's the first things you do to start working on this well I don't do that I don't do planning stage my job is specifically I always say I'm kind of like the nonprofit FEMA person where I go into community only if a disaster has happened and I help them build capacity but I always say to the communities the best time to build your capacity for a disaster is after disaster that's right because nobody wants to be more prepared when they really until they realize how poorly they prepared they were right so it's really a great opportunity so one of the things that we're trying to do with our program and I know other philanthropies are doing as well is trying to understand this idea of community resiliency and how that ties into disaster recovery work so as we do recovery work we're also building resiliency for future disasters so making sure we're not putting people back in harm's way making sure that we're making better decisions about you know placing trees or taking old tree stone if you live in a community with a lot of old trees and like we do in the Midwest really talking about floodplain and what floodplain means and and making sure because our most vulnerable people live in flood plains most people aren't that are building today aren't building on our near flood plains but the older houses that live there cheaper land cheaper land a lot of rental properties right and so we're adding vulnerability to vulnerability and so we really need to be making better decisions and you know we were talking a little bit earlier about the fact that disaster recovery is also about about community development or redevelopment right so if if things were located in areas that weren't really good for the community it's also a chance to redevelop and and so those opportunities come along I know they came along in Wadena as well but but the planning part that Dan's talking about which is really this idea about getting people understanding the process of recovery it's pretty new a lot of I mean a lot of communities unless you live in New Orleans or or in Hurricane Alley where you know it's a given that this is going to happen but you know we're seeing more and more catastrophic events in the Midwest more drought versus flash floods they almost happen simultaneously and it really exacerbates the situation making the the case for these kinds of ideas is actually becoming easier because we can show people that these things have to happen we can show we talk about Wadena you know later later next year we're gonna be talking a lot more about Wasika and all these kinds of things one of the hard things that though is to figure out how do you do this and that's kind of one of the things that we've been talking about Dan and I have been talked to some some communities where we've we reach out to some of the local civic leaders and local governments to talk about these sort of things and ask them how would you how you know we and provide some technical knowledge and talk to them about you know engaging their local communities about these kind of topics who would lead a long-term recovery effort in your town they may not know but we can give them some ideas of who would be good people you know civic leaders of some sort it doesn't necessarily you don't necessarily want to necessarily have a mayor or an official kind of thing because you wanted to have it to be more of a you know a civic project kind of thing so one of the things that we do is we go out to these communities across the state where that can identify some vulnerabilities either from floods or tornadoes or anything else like as you said you know perhaps you know some kind of an oil train or something like that where you can say these are things you need to think about and what happens after and who would you who would you go to you know how would you put this together there's a lot of technical aspects to this stuff where you can say you should plan for this stuff and they say okay but what does that really mean you know you're gonna be collecting money people give donations you know who manages it who gets the money how do you you know prioritize the needs of the community and those are the kinds of things that these long-term recovery committees that we're encouraging communities to create would be tasked with and we can show them through both from good and bad examples and I think along through history where these things have are obviously hopefully the good ones to say these are some thoughts that you need to put behind this as you move forward what we've been doing with we did two pilots this last year we did one in Staples and that's why we were hopeful that Melissa would be able to be here but she wasn't able to and we did one in Malacca and what we actually did is we went in and we set up a skeleton a small long-term recovery team before they have a disaster of about 10 people and then we train them in what kind of disasters might they expect and if they did have a disaster what are the elements that they would have to deal with as a long-term recovery team and then we give them resources and materials we spend a day with them and when we leave the idea is is that next time their fire department or their police department does a disaster drill like say an oil train derailment okay because that's been in the news in the past or flood and so they do that and they and when they do those disaster drills they practice the initial response you know how do you get people health and safety but then we're saying now now that you have that team for long-term recovery and they have some knowledge the day after the disaster drill that team then has a drill to say okay we just practice an oil train derailment now we would have had an oil train derailment what are the things we would need to be dealing with if that would have happened and then they go through what we call a tabletop exercise to talk through okay we would have needed this this and this where would we get that etc and we've already given them the information and training so they know where to go for the help to organizations like for instance to the homeland security emergency management and our local emergency manager who can then reach out to minnesota void the voluntary organizations active and disaster who can bring in other people even for long-term recovery that can help them with that process or people like nancy's organization and or homeland security itself that can help connect them with resources so it gives them a head start they've got a team of people who've already thought about this so that's what we did in two cases and the the evidence won't be in until and if they have a disaster and we see how much that helps are most of those folks volunteers or are some of them most of them are volunteers we try to get in for instance most of them have been like somebody from the city the local emergency manager somebody from local hospital or clinic somebody from the school district somebody from the chamber of commerce faith community and if you have anybody in town that does psychological type services and emotional services and of course nonprofits like for instance when we had the wind storm here in brainerd in 2015 bridges of hope actually and lutheran social services and the salvation army and tricap you know community action agency all work together to do case management so those are the things they need to think through so what we're trying to get them to do is just give them a little training help them get organized and then once they have a disaster they're ready to go into action quicker which is really key if you have a disaster even long-term recovery groups need to get started very quickly after the disaster happens i think the other thing that we um take for granted is that a community is going to be able to organize but the community has been traumatized yes and we forget that the that everybody in the community is traumatized usually if it's a significant event and so really the fact that the three of us kind of can stand in that gap while the community sort of mourns their losses and and kind of gets past this initial you know every this is what always happens right people say well at least no one died or i'm okay i'm okay but the truth of it is you're okay today and that's great and we're all grateful for that but in two months when you you can't repair your home because you have no money and you don't know where to turn for help that's when the community really needs to stand in that gap and in between those two stages i think people like us come in and say let's get you organized so when that part comes we can find we know that we can have the resources available for it's really about developing resources at the end of the day all of this organization and all that we do happens because we want to make sure that every single person who has lost their home in a disaster can be go back home and that can be really complicated because you have to work with people on an individual basis everyone has different insurance has different needs has a different payment plan on their house has different people living in their house lots of times and especially in places like minnesota and this is drug work in the midwest drug work in 10 states in the midwest we have a lot of people for example who aren't deed holders of their homes yes oh really there's a lot of legal issues so you know a lot of small towns in the midwest um families have moved into you know into town but they still own their homes in the rural towns like the small 200 300 elevator towns that we have all across southern minnesota um those how those homes might your cousin might live there or your nephew might live there and if you're not the deed holder for the home you can't get help from a lot of organizations right so we bring in legal aid we bring in all kinds of people animals and farm um get farming communities have pets there's all these different layers of that you don't think about that you don't think about one of the terms that we use with a lot of our planning is called meeting the unmet needs yes it's looking for um when when fema comes to town or other uh uh assistance is out there we can we can help rebuild in some of these cases and things but it doesn't cover everything and oftentimes you know there are needs beyond what um you know the grant from fema or from state or anything else any other local can do and that's where these committees need to get together and because uh we live in a in a good place here where you know there's it's there's generally not no shortage of getting donations from local uh uh benefactors here you know from uh local communities but then you know how does that money get to the people who need it the most uh and what is it for and and how can we make sure that these gaps uh um that nancy talked about are filled and sometimes they don't show up right away and so the long-term recovery committees are something that oftentimes can take months years uh to fulfill their mission if you just look at things even as you know the large-scale things like hurricane sandy they're still they're still out there trying to put isn't that so yeah yeah right and the recovery in rushford took 18 months that was a large disaster in southern minnesota and the recovery in in uh in northeast minnesota took 18 months that committee that committee was not completely over yet either i mean there are still things that are popping up now and then that uh were a result of that event so so being able to keep a committee together um and committed to rebuilding those communities often takes a lot of commitment from the volunteer local people yeah we're down to our last minute what advice would you get and we're going to post your website on the end of this is that the place that people should start that's one place they can start and it connects to resources from both that uh have come out that uh nancy's certainly used or referred to and also with uh homeland security uh so that's not a bad place to start one thing is there's lots of resources and on that website that they'll see we tried to narrow it down just to a good sampling both for communities and businesses so that's a good place they can start and it'll connect you to our other key partners that are sitting here at the table well that's really in good work that you folks are doing and i appreciate your taking the time to jump on the show with us today and talk about this and we'll have that information posted and if you're a city manager or whatever uh this is the place to start so thank you folks very much appreciate it thank you you've been watching lakeland currents when we're talking about what you're talking about i'm ray gildow so long until next time