 So welcome everyone to our second webinar in the State Heritage Emergency Partnership Program. My name is Lori Foley and I'm the Vice President of Emergency Programs here at Heritage Preservation. Ava Lee assisting me in all matters and especially in producing today's webinar is Caitlin or Kate Lee. We're delighted to have so many of you joining us today and I see the number of attendees keeps growing so that's terrific. At the moment it looks like we have about 28 or so people logged in and that number keeps changing and increasing. On the webinar today I can see that we have participants from across the country, certainly along the East Coast, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, a number of people from California, in Snowy, North Dakota and Colorado and Texas as well. And I see that we even have someone from Hawaii, Aloha. So welcome all. And in the lower right corner of your screen is a questions box. And as Kate had mentioned earlier, we're unable to share the chat with everyone but throughout today's session please feel free to post questions in the questions box. We'll hold on to those questions and pose them to Scott during breaks and we hope to get to all the questions by the end of today's session. And if we somehow don't manage to get through all of those questions I'm sure Scott's going to be happy to follow up. We'll post those questions along with the answers on our state heritage emergency partnership webinar page. This series of four webinars has been made possible by a Laura Bush 21st century librarian program grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Our partner in this project, the chief officers of state library agencies. I'm waiting here for the screen to advance. All right, Kate, I think I'm going to have to have you move the, advance the, there we go, slowly but surely. Information about this and the next two webinars will be posted under webinars on our partnership web page. Here the instructors are sharing some really terrific resources and readings that they recommend. Here too you'll find a handout for note-taking as well as a copy of the PowerPoints with one slide per page. As you might recall, we specified that our target audience consists of interested members of state cultural heritage emergency networks. The information is certainly relevant to all cultural institutions but we've limited participation right now in the live webinar so our instructors can field questions that apply primarily to state cultural and emergency management agencies. Our aim is to provide information that's most useful to you as a network member to better prepare you to help your constituents. Soon after the webinar has concluded we'll post a link to the webinar recording and please feel free to share that link with your constituents. I know many of you represent states that have already accomplished a lot of great things in emergency preparedness. So please consider sharing your achievements and even your challenges with your colleagues in other states via the partnership blog. Send us a description around 500 words or so as well as photos if you have any and we'll post your remarks on the blog. Remember R&D, rip off and duplicate? Let's share as much as we can to move emergency preparedness forward in all states and emergency preparedness seems to be moving faster than the slides. Kate, I'm going to have you take over. Okay, there we go. So that is the email blog. So if you're not receiving blog posts that's because you haven't signed up yet. Go to the blog at the URL noted here and in the right hand column you can scroll down to the heading follow blog via email. Enter your email address and click on the follow button then look for the confirmation email in your inbox. You'll be notified when new posts appear. We promise not to flood your inbox with irrelevant information. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us at those two URLs, those two email addresses as well as at the phone number. And now I'm pleased to introduce today's instructor Scott Baldwin. Scott is a mitigation specialist with the Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. He provides technical assistance to communities developing hazard mitigation plans and helps communities with scopes of work for the hazard mitigation assistance programs as well as for FEMA public assistance. Scott is co-chair of Colorado's Cultural and Historic Resources Task Force, a network of cultural heritage and emergency management professionals in the Centennial State. The CHR Task Force works to incorporate museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions into Colorado's Emergency Management structure, all the while improving Colorado's mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery efforts for cultural and historic resources. The CHR Task Force has already made remarkable gains in moving Colorado forward and we're so delighted to have Scott here on behalf of both Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management and the Colorado Cultural and Historic Resources Task Force. Before I hand over the controls to Scott, let's see who's in our audience today. So we're going to ask you to take a poll. We actually have three poll questions. So go ahead and vote. I am a member of the Cultural Heritage Community, the Emergency Management Community, or another community entirely. OK, I think everyone has voted. I think everyone knows what their answer would be. So let's see what the percentages are. Super. OK. So we have 68% of our audience today is from the Cultural Heritage Community, 21% from the Emergency Management Community. And I'm so glad that we have emergency managers here. And 11% constitute another community entirely. And I'm dying to know what that community is, but we'll see. I'm sure some of you are from the for-profit world, which is excellent as well. OK, the next question we have is the next poll question we'll pull up. I have responded to a presidentially declared disaster in my professional capacity. Yes, no, or what's a presidentially declared disaster? Go ahead and vote, please. OK, I think everyone should have an answer for that. Let's see where we stand on that. Wow, OK. So 43% of you have responded to a presidentially declared disaster. 57% have not. And I'm delighted to see that everyone knows what a presidentially declared disaster is. So we're making great gains here. And we have one last question just to help Scott know who his audience is. I know my state's hazard mitigation officer. Yes, no, or I am my state's hazard mitigation officer. I think people are pretty well know what the answers are from their perspective. So let's see how we stand. All right, so 41% say they know them. More than half don't know their state hazard mitigation officer. So that's on your to-do list already. And we don't have any other state hazard mitigation officers online. So I think that's the end of our polls. So now I'm going to turn the instruction over to Scott. So take it away, Scott. All right, thanks, Laurie and Kate, for having me. Appreciate this opportunity. This is my first webinar either as a teacher or as a student. So this will be interesting for all of us. We'll certainly be learning as we go. As Laurie mentioned, if you have any questions, if I use an acronym, you're not familiar with, please ask those. I will do my best to scrub my language of acronym. But I do kind of sometimes fall into my normal lingo. So please feel free to raise your hand or ask any questions. The more interactive this is, I generally prefer lots of questions and lots of engagement. So please don't hesitate if you have any questions. So I've kind of developed the curriculum around mitigation planning. Mitigation planning is a fantastic opportunity for cultural and historic representatives to engage with local emergency managers. You're not doing it in the disaster environment or after a disaster. Oftentimes you'll get lost in the shuffle and I'll certainly kind of elaborate more on that and hopefully give you some more advice on how to really engage with emergency managers. We'll talk a little bit about what your organization can do to mitigate disaster and environmental impacts. I know Teri Chandel is on the phone on the webinar and she has a fantastic job here in Colorado with providing risk assessments to some of our museums here. And Teri, if I miss anything, don't hesitate to speak up and fill in the gaps. We also talk a little bit about private nonprofit funding eligibility and some of the benefits to participating in the mitigation planning process or at least knowing whether the community where your organization is located within does have a FEMA approved mitigation plan. I've already covered a little bit about engaging with emergency managers, but what we're really trying to do here in Colorado is open up the lines of communication between cultural and historic resource managers. And when I say cultural and historic resources, as I'm saying, EMS, libraries, show collections, it's really all-encompassing of these types of resources. But we want to have the line of communication open so that you all are advocating in advance of a disaster for some of the resources you all may need if you're ever impacted, but you're also being proactive and thinking about if you were impacted, what would you need to sustain your operations? I was actually just at lunch today and I learned that within three months of a disaster, 40% of the businesses impacted often fail at that point. And then within three years of a disaster, there's an additional 40% of businesses fail. So it's a massive, massive impact, these disasters. And we really want to build in some resilience with our on the cultural and historic side, but also on the emergency management side, and kind of increase awareness on both sides to what each partner can do to increase their resilience. So we'll talk a little bit about that as well. So what is mitigation? I certainly won't read to you the definition, but what we are trying to do is, again, be proactive. And as opposed to repairing infrastructure or taking more costly steps after a disaster, what we're trying to do is save money to the governments, to our local citizens, and try to address or take actions that will address these issues. Certainly, we don't expect to ever fully mitigate by taking an action. But again, we can lower potential impacts. I'm not going to discuss this in any great depth, but there is something that I would like to make you all aware of is there is a benefit cost analysis that is a requirement of these programs that I'll discuss a little bit later. And that is that the analysis must show that taking this action, whether through preventing the loss of function or its loss of use or impacting individuals, there's a dollar amount that the federal government or FEMA has come up with that assigns a value to the loss of function, for instance. Let's say that utilities are go down in the community, so now there's refrigeration that's going to be lost. People may have to store their medications. There's all these kind of cascading impacts that can kind of fall out from not mitigating prior to an event, so that's what FEMA tries to capture. And before approving any of these projects, there's this benefit cost analysis perspective. And then what they do is they measure that against, what is the cost to mitigate? And if the benefits outweigh the initial cost outlay, that project is deemed benefit cost effective and is then eligible. So it's a unique aspect of federal mitigation programs. I think it's something that's really, it's a good way to indicate to our elected officials and politicians the importance of maintaining this program. What it's generally said is that for every dollar spent mitigating, you are saving $4 in response and repair after a disaster. So there's a lot of benefit to mitigation that we always want to emphasize. Unfortunately, one of the biggest obstacles we need to overcome on the front end is a general feeling of, well, we won't be impacted or it won't happen here. So sometimes we have to do a little more outreach and education on the front end to get people to participate in these programs. But it's a fantastic opportunity for people to think a little bit proactively and try to mitigate these massive impacts. Talking about local mitigation planning, this is where we, if the exercise of communities identifying what their hazards are, and I'll talk a little bit more about this later, and then determining what mitigation strategies could be used or implemented to limit the impacts of those hazards. I'm not gonna delve too far into the Stafford Act, but this is the codified section of the federal register that gives state agencies such as mine, local communities and the federal government the opportunity to implement these mitigation programs and do the mitigation planning. Again, I just wanna really emphasize, this is a mitigation plan is a fantastic opportunity for you all to be engaged with your local emergency managers. Local mitigation plans are required to be updated every five years. So I know we have people from a myriad of states across the country on today's webinar. I would always recommend you Google, try to find the oftentimes state emergency management agencies will have a list of communities that have FEMA approved mitigation plans and when they are set to expire, that can kind of give you an idea when that plan would need to be updated and when that community will start that process. Always reach out to the local emergency manager and say, how could I be involved? And I'll talk a little bit more later on about the importance of being involved and what the benefits are. We've already talked a little bit about receiving federal assistance. I know a large majority of our audience today is from the private nonprofit world and we'll talk a little bit about what type of assistance you're eligible to receive if your community has a FEMA approved mitigation plan. So there's three programs that fall under FEMA's hazard mitigation assistance. That's really an umbrella or a catch-all acronym for pre-disaster mitigation, flood mitigation assistance and hazard mitigation grant program. Pre-disaster mitigation is how we fund a lot of our wildfire mitigation projects, our fuels reduction, our defensible space projects here in Colorado, but pretty much it's all the remaining projects that don't fit under flood mitigation assistance. Flood mitigation assistance requires that at least one of the properties involved in the project area or that would be being mitigated has flood insurance. Obviously after Superstorm Sandy on the East Coast, there was a tremendous emphasis on lowering costs to the National Flood Insurance Program or NFIP. That is a federally funded insurance program that obviously after Superstorm Sandy had tremendous impacts. It's not necessarily a solvent program, it's highly subsidized and as such, the premiums paid by homeowners is not actually based on their actuarial risk. If in many instances here even in Colorado, we've seen that businesses that currently pay $1,200 a month for their, I'm sorry, $1,200 a year for their flood insurance could see their premiums rise to $50,000 or beyond. There has been legislation that was enacted known as the bigger waters legislation and it attempted to get the NFIP to actuarial rates and try to make that a more sustainable program moving forward. But as you can imagine, what FEMA and the federal government's biggest emphasis is placed on is removing structures from the flood plain. Those that are consistently being flooded constantly have claims going into the NFIP system and they're constantly on the NFIP program. So most of the federal government money resides in mitigation on the flood mitigation assistance program. There's less emphasis on wildfire projects and those types of projects, but there is money there. When we talk about HMGP, this is when we, Laurie had the question, are you familiar with what a presidential lead to Claire disaster is? FMA and PDM have yearly grant opportunities. Once a year they announce, we are accepting applications to these programs and here in Colorado, we start helping communities develop their applications for those programs. HMGP is only allocated to a state after a presidential lead declared disaster. Some states only allow the allocation of those fun new areas that have been declared. For instance, in September, after our major flood in 2013, we had eight of our 64 counties declared. We do open up our HMGP program to all 64 counties, but in some states they will limit their money, their opportunities to those declared areas. So just be aware of that and that's a question you may wanna ask your state emergency managers. This is the only program private nonprofits are eligible for and it's important to know again, is your private nonprofit in a county that has a FEMA approved mitigation plan or often in Colorado, we have cities do mitigation plans. Generally those are cities that have populations in excess of 50,000 people. But find out if your entity would be considered under the mitigation plan. Generally speaking for local governments, it's a requirement that they participate in the development of the mitigation plan. They'll be required to document how they participated, which meetings they attended, so on and so forth. That is not a requirement of private nonprofits for HMGP eligibility. You will, it is not required that you have participated in development of the plan as it is being developed, only that ultimately there is a plan that has been approved by FEMA for the community which organization resides. Before I move on, does anyone have any questions that I've covered so far? Yes Scott, I think you just answered it. Terry had asked whether collecting institutions with a 501C3 status need a risk assessment to begin a pre-disaster mitigation grant application. But you've emphasized that 501C3's private nonprofits are only eligible for the hazard mitigation grant program, is that correct? That is correct. It is not required that they have undergone a risk assessment to be eligible in this program. But we certainly, Terry, I think your experience here in Colorado is a great example. We definitely want to encourage the organizations to do that. I think there's a lot of benefits beyond just federal disaster potential outfall or funding eligibility. And I'll talk a little bit more about that movement forward. But as long as you have the documentation, the 501C3 documentation from either the federal government or here in Colorado, we also do those designations at the state level, then you're able to provide that as documentation. We would consider an application directly from you. If you do not have that documentation, that doesn't mean that you couldn't participate in these programs. What you would have to do is develop a relationship with your local community. And actually, they could be the fiscal agent to apply for these funds on your behalf and actually do some of the grant management process or whatever you and that local entity could come to an agreement on or create a memorandum of understanding for to outline who's responsible for what aspects of the process. I just want to emphasize that you're not 100% percluded from participating in these programs. You just couldn't be the primary recipient. If you don't have that documentation or you want to have a project completed for a PDM or FMA. Great, that's all the questions we have for now, so onward. Okay, great. So I've talked a little bit about the prior types. Here in Colorado, we do fund mitigation planning activities, wildfire projects, going into parks and reducing fuel loads, doing hazardous fuels reduction or defensible space around homes to lower their risk to wildfire. Acquisition and elevation is another project type. We often acquire private property and remove it from the floodplain and demolish whatever is there and again, that is the only case in our side that we consider something to be fully mitigated. There's a lot of emphasis on acquiring private property, demolishing it and turning it into open space. And actually, it's a requirement of our homes that these properties be deed restricted in perpetuity. A lot of our communities are interested in pursuing this as this allows them to create park space along rivers and it's a way to beautify the area and lower risk. So it's definitely a win-win. We also do some elevations here in Colorado and that is just as it states, taking a private home or business and raising it to a height that it would then be out of the base flood elevation or the BFE. We also do flood control projects infrastructure improvement. Again, this is a very complex type of project because to meet the benefit cost analysis requirements you have to categorically state to what extent you are lowering flood impacts to structures. So if you wanted to increase conveyance by increasing the capacity of a bridge or culvert, you would have to say, well, we currently have flood levels at three feet for 60 homes and we would be taking it down to a foot and a half. So a lot of analysis, a lot of engineering and design needs to go into those projects but we do see quite a bit of those in Colorado. Generators, this is very simple. People want to be able to maintain their operations if they're impacted by an event. So keeping the lights on, the power going is key to that. So we do quite a bit of generator projects and then also 5% projects and 5% projects are projects which cannot fall under the benefit cost analysis as listed here, public awareness campaigns, warning systems, updating building codes. These are things that can't be associated with such numerical data to determine their benefit cost analysis but there is benefit to the communities that do them. FEMA still wants to provide funding for them and there is funding for those types of projects. What I've listed there is certainly not all encompassing but that's really where we see most of those projects. So I talked a little bit about the benefits of the mitigation planning process. We've really broken it down into four stages. I'm not going to discuss the fourth because it's really not relevant to you all but I'll break down the mitigation planning process and explain to you how you all can be engaged in each aspect of these first three processes. So for this one, what we always want to emphasize to our emergency managers is that they think of their whole community and FEMA has a fantastic whole community document. It is something I really strongly believe in and that is that when disasters happen, the entire community is impacted. That goes from roads and bridges to basic human services to cultural and historic resources. Everybody is impacted, maybe not to the same extent but whether if the community has been really impacted, these kind of cascading impacts affect all members of the community. So what we always emphasize to a community that's starting the mitigation planning process is that they involve subject matter experts and stakeholders from all of these areas in their community. I've highlighted local nonprofits and businesses but although we emphasize this on the front end, we generally see emergency managers defer to, okay, who are the local agencies in my jurisdiction, who do I know and who will I invite? Well, this is why it's really important for you all to act as advocates for your museum, library, a special collection organization and say, hey, we would like to be involved with us. We've actually identified some areas that we would like to have mitigated and only we can speak to with the greatest amount of knowledge to our institution and what needs to be done. So that's, it's really the benefit and what I always want to say is, and I'll touch on a little bit later, is you always want to make a value proposition. It helps get your foot in the door and it explains why you want to be involved in the process and what you can do to help facilitate the process. And the benefit to emergency managers is that you're developing this relationship. They know who you are. They can be thinking about you all as you may be impacted. And you can also say, I'm bringing expertise and potentially other contacts within this cultural and historic realm to the table and they may have impacts that you're not aware of, but we just want to increase everyone's awareness and do everything we can to mitigate issues in advance of a disaster. If they can't be mitigated, understanding what we can do to prepare. And then ultimately, if God forbid we were ever impacted, knowing that we need to recover just as other aspects of the community need to recover as well. So we really want to emphasize having that diverse group that can really speak on many facets of how a community may be impacted. I've talked about the advocacy. And so what you also want to think about is advocating not only for your organization, but also for the preservation of the collection you may have. That's extremely important. And it's incredibly important to community sense of identity. And we've seen multiple times in the federal government has really been proactive in this and saying, we understand the importance of these resources. Oftentimes our focus has been on rebuilding infrastructure and housing, those really essential pieces of a community that are almost impossible to overlook. But we want to also recognize the importance of these artifacts and collections to a community and realize that a community is not gonna feel that they have recovered from a disaster if these aspects of their community are no longer a part of the fabric. So really, it's a fantastic selling argument to emergency managers. And it's really important that we all realize the importance these collections play in our communities. I've talked a little bit about our expertise, but I do want to emphasize, again, in your absence or in the absence of a representative from your organization at the mitigation planning process, I can guarantee you that you'll be overlooked. Unless somebody is going to really think and speak up on your behalf, that's what you're leaving to chance as opposed to being intimately involved with the process and constantly shifting the focus back to your organization as well. And recognizing, again, where cultural and historic resources fall into this. The emphasis, as I said earlier, will always be infrastructure and housing in those basic amenities. But again, saying that there is still an important role that your organization plays within the communities is important to always emphasize. And I'll talk a little bit about the importance of developing the community relationships a little bit better about what we always, a little bit later, but what we always say is you don't want to be coming to a disaster and exchanging your contact information then. Priorities are constantly shifting in the disaster environment. People are pulled in a million different directions, especially emergency managers. So if you come to the amount of the blue with the expectation that you're gonna be served adequately in the response phase, I just want to manage everyone's expectations, that's likely not gonna happen. But if you develop those relationships, you've participated in the mitigation planning process, you've advocated for mitigation strategies that address your concerns and potentially maybe even implemented some of those. An emergency manager would be more willing to say, okay, look, this person has done their due diligence on the front end, they're still being impacted. I'm more willing and receptive to helping them. So again, I cannot overemphasize the importance of developing those relationships in advance of a disaster. So the next few slides, I think it's the next two or three slides are kind of geared towards community mitigation planning. But as an exercise, I'd like you to think about your own organization and think about how the hazard identification and risk analysis are a high rule of process, how you would complete that for your organization, and then also what mitigation strategies you would do. So I'll try my best to overlay the, again, the local mitigation planning process onto a specific or an individual organization. But please keep that in the back of your mind. So this slide talks about how communities do the hazard identification and risk assessment process. It is really, it's a pretty simple process. There is a little bit of an art to it, but generally what you're doing is through the hazard identification process, recognizing where you live in the country and what your impacts are. In the Dakotas, we constantly see snow and high storms leading to loss of power. And okay, so if we lose power, what is my, do I lose a climate controlled environment? And if I do, what is the risk to my collection? So again, you're just trying to, you first identify what the hazard is and then what are the potential outcomes of that disaster. Like I said, it's pretty simple, but it does take some time to really think everything through. What are my potential impacts? And now that I've done that, what could I potentially do to mitigate those? Another example is, again, being a wildfire state. We've devastated wildfires that will burn through all our vegetation. Now we've lost the capacity to absorb even a small amount of rain. Now we've changed kind of the environment and homes or businesses or museums and libraries that were not previously subject to flooding may now be in a flood area. It's important that all organizations and local governments continuously assess what their risk really is. And that's why FEMA requires these plan updates in five years so that they're continuously thinking about this at the community level. But just as we ask the communities to think about how this is applicable to your organization. If you live in a hurricane zone, you're well aware of the fallout from that and there's multiple things you may be required to evacuate a number of days in advance. Well, how do you secure your facility? There are all these things that even before the, in that case, that disaster hits, that you have to take into consideration. And that's what this process is intended to do, to deliberately walk through how your organization may be impacted and thinking about the hazards associated with those impacts. So we talked a little bit about, again, based on your location, your hazards are gonna change. If you're in the Gulf States, you're more focused and prone to hurricanes here in the Western states. We've seen a lot of wildfire in recent years. In the Northeast, you've got major snow storms. We're seeing the impact of climate change as well. We're trying to keep up with how our risk is constantly changing. Magnitudes and severity. Very simple, what's duration of these events? When you think of, and the extent, how could we be impacted and what is the impact of a longer duration event versus a smaller duration event? And I also wanna emphasize here, for myself, I often kinda get caught up in the major disaster events. When you're thinking of this at the local or the individual institution, think about the prospect of a pipe breaking. Maybe that is a catastrophic event for your institution. If key pieces of your collection were impacted, it doesn't necessarily have to be these huge, splashy events. And that's, again, why I always recommend that individual institutions perform these risk assessments. Do you have a sprinkler system in effect? And what would be your expectation that it's properly responds? Do you have people constantly, once a year doing a check on the system itself? So you wanna take all of these things into consideration as you go through this process. You always wanna look at historical hazard events, what's happened in the past can often be a good indication of what will happen in the future. But again, we're really seeing a lot of changes in disaster behavior in the past couple of years. So don't think that necessarily it's 100% accurate, but it is a helpful place to start. Scott, we have a few questions before we head on to this next slide. So we have a question about, Terry, again, assessments for historic and cultural resources. So the question is, should we take to those risk assessments? Should they be given to the local emergency managers? And if so, how do you use it to advocate for pre-disaster mitigation funding? Well, I would absolutely share that information obtained through a risk assessment with a local emergency manager. What I've seen here in Colorado is that they are focused on the institution itself. And it gives the emergency manager an idea of how prepared is this institution? How aware are they of the potential impacts of a disaster? It's extremely valuable information to have. Well, do they have a sprinkler system in place? Have they had the local first responders take a look at the collection? Do they know where the valuable pieces are? What steps are they taking to lessen the impacts of, for instance, I keep going back to this example of a pipe rink? If somebody, again, this is that partnership, if somebody was taking action proactively that would lower the amount of times I would have to respond to that facility, and doing everything that they can to be proactive, I'd be very appreciative of that as a local emergency manager and as a first responder. So I think that's extremely valuable information. With regards to becoming eligible to the pre-disaster mitigation program, again, unfortunately it's not a possibility for private nonprofits. However, if you've gone through your facility and said, we can categorically say, by implementing this mitigation activity, we will be less impacted and we would like you to apply for these funds on our behalf and we'll be partners in this. That's a great way to start that engagement and potentially put out the feelers and find out the local communities to apply for those funds on your behalf. Great, and we have another question from Connecticut, Lizette. Is there a tool available from FEMA to help with the risk identification process and analysis? There is plenty of documents online from both a business continuity perspective that I highly recommend private nonprofits look into. Thinking about how if you were removed from your organizations head first, how would you sustain operations? I always recommend that people look into business continuity. As far as performing the hazard identification risk analysis, there should be technical assistance documents online. Whether they're FEMA documents, I haven't seen a FEMA document, but that's not to say that one doesn't exist. And certainly Teri Chindell is on the webinar and she has done a number of risk assessments for cultural and historical organizations. And I'd certainly, Teri's awareness of those types of documents, feel free to speak up. And this is Lori again, just to plug one of Heritage Preservation's resources. We do have available for free a program called Risk Evaluation and Planning Program, or R-E-P-P, or REP Program. And it's quite a comprehensive, it provides quite a comprehensive number of different tools for a walkthrough questionnaires that look at both your facility as well as policy, collections policy, certainly disaster preparedness, and those are all available on Heritage Preservation's website. And I just want to give another, wearing my hat as a member of a state cultural heritage network in Massachusetts. In terms of the 5% projects that Scott referenced for HMGP grants, Co-STEP Massachusetts, which stands for Coordinated Statewide Emergency Preparedness in Massachusetts. What did receive after a number of years applying and revising the application, a 5% project for an HMGP grant called Mitigation, we called it Mitigation for Memory, and it includes meetings with regional planning agencies, community meetings to which both cultural heritage and emergency professionals are invited to attend. And in those meetings, the discussions all focus on the identification of hazards, how to perform a risk assessment, and really how to work together and develop mitigation activities. It also includes workshops on risk evaluation and planning using wonderfully the rep tools developed by Heritage Preservation. And also the money also included presence at conferences and the development of resources such as emergency response cards and brochures to help get the word out to both the state cultural heritage network, well, to the state cultural heritage institutions as well as the emergency management community and the planning communities across Massachusetts, just to brochure about that organization. So we will add the rep link to Scott's resources that are listed on the webpage. But it wasn't easy getting that 5% project, but I do have to say it's been really worthwhile. It's a lot of work. There's a lot of reporting that has to be done. So you have to go in it with your eyes open, but the whole emphasis is raising awareness of the cultural heritage community among the regional planners in the state. And it's made a huge difference in terms of networking and moving forward. So, okay, enough of my plug. Julia, I also recommend that you put the coast up document up as well. Yes, it is a fantastic document. And one last plug, I would always recommend the West Pass or the Western States and Territories Preservation Assistance States. Julie Page is kind of the boots on the ground for that. She does a fantastic job of, she has workshops that she does and allows people to develop emergency preparedness plans. I believe there is a risk analysis component. She may have a separate workshop for that, but that's extremely valuable information. So, again, without being able to point specific document, my apologies for that, I would always recommend just jumping on Google, asking, typing in institutional hazard identification, risk assessment. And then also, what we always recommend here in Colorado is off with your local first responders. And this is, again, a great way to develop and engage those members of the group having a little information session, showing them what pieces of your, individual pieces of your collection may be of interest to them, so that they kind of develop the understanding of the importance of the collection. Also, if they ever were requested to respond to an incident at your institution, they would understand how to respond as opposed to just coming in and turn their hoses on everything. Maybe they'd be able to evacuate a portion of the collection, or at least they would know the important pieces, what would be required of them to handle those. And so we always recommend that you do that outreach on the front end, so that you can kind of, again, increase their awareness. And generally, we've seen a lot of it in that way. Super, and we have unmuted Terri, so she can answer you. Great. What I wanted to point out is to know the audience. So when you Google risk assessment, and depending on your audience, so if it's a library, there's quite a bit of information on risk assessment for libraries. The rep tools that Lori was talking about, you can adapt those. Those are public documents, and how Dave Christian wants you to be able to use them for specific audiences. So for instance, we do small, rural, and tribal, and remote, very, very remote. And Region 8, which is the Dakotas, FEMA Region 8 is the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. So we adapted those tools so that everyone can do, but they can't do their own risk assessment. They can get help to jumpstart themselves. And Julie Page has a technique that she teaches people how, what is the most important, and how to do it themselves. But the whole communication with your emergency manager, we're all working on that. It's very different in different parts of the country. So yeah, anybody can contact me offline, and I can tell you more about the remote and rural type of interaction we do. Okay, that's it. Great, thank you. Thank you, Teri. And I do want to give a shout out to Kathleen Donahue, who has been virtually holding her hand up for a long time. Kathleen, welcome, and so good to see you, and to hear from you. Kathleen is with the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services, and she wrote in the question box, in North Dakota, we are promoting involvement of historical and cultural organizations in mitigation planning as one of our strategies. We have had Mark Ryan from Plains Arts Museum and Jenny Yaras of the State Historical Society present during one of our planning classes. Our emergency managers have discovered how valuable cultural and historic organizations are to developing a HERA H-I-R-A. So thank you, Kathleen. It looks like North Dakota, and we know that North Dakota is really making great strides in connecting these communities and working together, moving emergency planning and preparedness forward. So thank you for that contribution, Kathleen. Okay, back to you, Scott. Okay, so now that we've gone through the hazard identification risk analysis process, that allows you to take the next step and develop what mitigation strategies would be appropriate for your institution to lower your risk. And again, just as you're doing this at the local institution, this is what we request local governments do as well. So they've identified what their risks are, and then they would say, okay, we see continuous impacts to this portion of our community, and here's what we would propose a future mitigation project to be to lessen those impacts. So we always say, try to make these these mitigation actions as measurable as possible. Give them a timeline that you'd like to complete them. Try to assign an estimated dollar amount so that at a local institution level, you may have a contractor come and say, here's what we would expect that cost to be so that maybe you can budget for it. Maybe you try to have a savings to address these issues. But again, we find that there's a much higher level of success for those people that not only identify what they would like to do, but again, make it more measurable. They provide a timeframe that they would like to complete it in. They identify people who may be helpful in assisting them, complete it, and then even go as far as identifying a potential funding source. And then again, that's where pre-disaster mitigation, flood mitigation assistance, and post-disaster hazard mitigation grant program, federal funding would come in to help assist that. So those opportunities are always out there. Again, FMA and PDM is on a yearly basis. HMGPs follows a presidential disaster. So as far as some of the simple things, we always wanna address the low-hanging fruit too. There's a lot of things an institution can do to mitigate disaster impacts that cost little to nothing. For instance, not storing valuable or really important pieces of your collection in a basement that maybe the foundation's leaky, or you have flood impacts, whatever the case. Again, that's where that high-rider, or that hazard identification risk analysis is really important at the institutional level. If you live in a part of the country that has mold, you know, mold spores are continuously a problem, what do you need to do? Do you need to have a climate-controlled area, or do you need to improve your HVAC system? So again, that's not necessarily stuff that's eligible for HMGP or PDM or FMA funding, but it's important that you do it, and it's still considered definitely mitigation. You know, we always wanna emphasize having a thorough inventory of the collection, knowing exactly what you have, the condition it's in, so that, you know, in worst case, then if you ever did have to evacuate it, and you did have to take it to somebody else to store it for a while, you could explain to them clearly we know in what condition these pieces arrived in, and we expect these pieces to arrive back at our collection facility in the same condition. Again, knowing that that piece of your collection are stored properly is so important. Often it's, again, this is the lulling fruit that's often overlooked, but it can be quite easily addressed. Knowing your insurance coverage, we can't emphasize enough. While although public and, I'm sorry, private non-profit entities are eligible for FEMA public assistance and HMGP, we always wanna emphasize federal assistance is really, you know, it should be a last resort, and as Lori was explaining, just to get the HMGP funding for the COSTEP process in Massachusetts, there's quarterly reporting that's a requirement. It sounded to me like it took a number of disasters where she had to reapply, and there's no guarantee of funding, but if you are adequately insured, it will ensure that the speediest recovery is certainly, we don't expect that after a major event, that everything will go back and be hunky-dory, but again, with knowing your insurance coverage, it is a fantastic way to know really what your risk is, and hey, maybe you have the ability as you add your institution to increase your flood insurance coverage. Fantastic, maybe that means that you don't have to do a major mitigation project because your risk has been lowered as far as how you may be impacted there, and if you store your collection properly. So again, all these considerations need to be evaluated and the next steps really need to be determined when you get to the mitigation actions themselves. We've spoken a little bit about Julie Page and West Pass. I can't emphasize it enough. They do a fantastic job. They have a website that shows when their next workshops will be offered. They are free. You really just need to sign up and show up, and you will, in some of the workshops, walk out of there with a disaster plan. Julie always follows up and says, all right, how many of those people that have attended my workshop have actually exercised the plan? It is, they are fantastic opportunities, a great resource, so please be advised of that. And then again, just that low hanging fruit, training your staff, knowing what's expected of them if you were ever impacted by an event. Again, this doesn't fit into the area of FEMA's nice definition of mitigation. It's a little bit of a more preparedness activity, but for today's discussion, I think it's really important. Giving the staff the tools that they would need to adequately respond. And we often see with these organizations, they're volunteer-based, so turnover can often be quite high. Sometimes you may need to address staff disaster training two or three times a year so that everyone's up to speed. But just, I always want to just emphasize, these are easier actions. They don't necessarily require grant funding. There is a little bit of time that would be required on your part to complete them, but just good opportunities and again, just sound collection care is a great start to mitigation. Any questions before I go into the partnerships? Some of this is gonna seem a little redundant, but if you have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer those now. You're good to go. Okay, fantastic. So we've talked a little bit about partnerships. Think about developing partnerships with other institutions in your area, in your state. I know Terri Schindel, again, she's working on developing regional partnerships. What we often see is volunteers and workers for these institutions reside locally, and often they're impacted personally by these disasters. And quite understandably so, that's where their focus will be after a disaster. So it's really important that you develop some networks and capabilities outside of your immediate institution so that you can rely on each other. Again, if you need to evacuate your collection, it's really important that you understand where I can take my collection to, to a location of the state that's outside of this immediately impacted area. So we always wanna emphasize developing the relationships with your local emergency managers so that if you're impacted, they could potentially provide some resources and assistance if you're impacted. But again, their expectation is that you're self-sufficient if you're ever impacted by a disaster too. And part of that self-sufficiency is going to be developing those regional partnerships so that you can turn to each other and say, hey, we would like to evacuate our collection here or do you have some volunteers that you could potentially send to us, all of ours that are being impacted? Here's what we would like. So we really wanna touch on and emphasize that. Think about how you all can assist each other in a disaster. So when you start engaging with emergency managers, first responders, what we always ask is that that you recognize the importance and the response priorities immediately after an event. Obviously, as you can imagine, the greatest emphasis is gonna be on life safety. Doing the search and rescue missions, getting people out of harm's way as soon as possible. Often that overwhelms the community, that's gonna soak up a lot of the resources. So we're constantly trying to balance and realize in a disaster, we're often driven by our most immediate priorities. Again, first and foremost, being in life safety and then second, property. And with greatest emphasis on primary residences. Once those areas have been addressed, then we can start having a conversation about, okay, how do we potentially provide assistance to the cultural and historic resource community if they need it. But we always wanna emphasize and be respectful that our emergency manager, if you come to them with the expectation that you're gonna be helped and served right away while other things are unfolding in the community, oftentimes it's a great way to really burn a bridge before you've even been able to get the resources you need. It's just important, we always manage expectations that you come to the table with the understanding that life safety and property will be given the highest priorities in a disaster. But that's not to say again that there's not a seat at the table for the cultural and historic resource community. Once the situation or the disaster has stabilized a little bit, I think it's absolutely appropriate that you all say, hey, this is how we've been impacted. Is there any assistance you can provide us? But again, you're gonna have a much higher level of success getting those resources if you develop the relationships with each other in advance of the disaster. I think you're not sharing that contact information then. So again, the mitigation planning project, bring those local responders in to come and do an irresistible, share some stories or pieces of your collection so that they realize it's important. These are all kind of touch points that you can leverage to help those relationships that are important after a disaster. One last thing is really always think about being at the after flexible. Sometimes, and we often, assistance we expect or we're hoping for after a disaster, it's important that we all understand everyone's trying their best. It's likely that people aren't working at their highest capacity due to the stress, exhaustion, but if you can remain adaptable and flexible and say, hey, look, I understand that you promised me this 36 hours ago, something else that you weren't aware of popped up, please just don't forget us. Again, that understanding and adaptability can go so far after a disaster. So please always keep that in mind. And that way, those people that can potentially help you out will be more likely to do so. So that's, oh, okay, one more, okay. So I touched on the reciprocity. Again, my approach is it gets a little redundant. But always think about how you can assess emergency managers. And one thing I haven't touched on is what I always say about emergency managers is we are the, we're not the subject matters in really any field. What's really important for us is to again have those relationships in place so that if anything were to happen, we would know who to call. I'm certainly not a transportation engineer. I'm not a public health expert. I can't fully understand in the level of detail that a subject matter expert does impacts in those fields. So what's important for me to be successful is I know who to call. I've been trained and they'll know how to respond if I can get them into a room on emergency operations center and we can kind of brain dump or walk through what the impacts are and figure out ways to resolve the issue. A great value proposition that you all can bring to the table is if your community's ever impacted by something such as a disaster. Well, I understand how collections need to be handled or how a library needs to be handled after a flooding or I have a number of contacts throughout the country that can come in and help evacuate special collections. Well, that's a subject matter expertise that again, emergency manager isn't gonna have but could potentially be extremely valuable. And so again, there's that value proposition. You're not again just coming to the table and saying, I need, I need, I need, it's what here's what I can do for you to help you. I understand you're overwhelmed and certainly you probably never anticipated all these museums, libraries and archives being impacted by an event. But I know some people that could potentially help. If that's something you're interested in pursuing we can have a discussion. So always again, think about how you can, how you can assist in disaster. Oftentimes, we find ourselves overwhelmed and we think that there's nothing that we can bring to the table or that other priorities are higher. And I just ask that you don't, don't necessarily just don't just jump to those conclusions. Obviously again, my safety and private property will always be of highest priority. But from there, it's you don't know. Maybe the community hasn't been as impacted as heavily as you may think and there's the ability to pursue those alternatives. So again, just think about the value proposition what you can bring to the table to assist in a disaster as well. And I believe that's the end of the slideshow. Again, I'll certainly open up to any questions. I'm always open to a discussion as well if anybody would like to have those. So go ahead folks, if anyone has any questions, go ahead and type them into the question box and we'll pose them to Scott. In the meantime, I just wanted to remind people of a couple of things. You'll be receiving an email soon that contains a link to a brief seven question evaluation. So click on that link when you get that email and please complete the survey for us. As I mentioned at the top of the program, this webinar series is brought to you by the generous support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. So your response to the evaluation can demonstrate the value of the programming and your feedback can certainly help us garner future support. Second, our next webinar on continuity planning Scott had touched on that ever so briefly at the top of his program will be held next Thursday, November 20th. While many organizations and agencies have disaster plans, plans that help us respond to disaster, how many of you have continuity of operations or COOP plans? What plans are in place to keep your operations running following the disaster? So tune in next week to learn about COOP planning. Following Thanksgiving on December 3rd, we'll have a webinar on disaster aid from the US Small Business Administration, the SBA. For emergency protective measures and debris removal, FEMA public assistance is available. But for permanent repairs and or collection stabilization, most private nonprofits don't realize that they need to apply first to the Small Business Administration. Only after the SBA declines the loan application or when the damages exceed the amount of loan may a private nonprofit then apply to FEMA for further assistance. The two agencies, FEMA and SBA, operate on different schedules and have different requirements. So it's important to know what to expect from both. Our June webinar, if you missed it, is archived on the partnership page. The June webinar discussed FEMA public assistance and the December 3rd webinar will discuss the SBA loan process. So let's see, we have a question here. All right. We are organized by FEMA Region 8 for a federal grant. Does anyone online, Nova Group from the Historic and Cultural Resources Group organized by FEMA Regions? So Terry, a group organized by FEMA Regions. Well, the Heritage Emergency, the State Heritage Emergency Partnership project of which this is one component, is organized by states and we're trying to get each of those states first set on their ways to combine the cultural heritage community and the emergency management community at the state level to get them talking to each other and working towards a statewide emergency preparedness. There are, I think, perhaps New England, the FEMA Region 1 is the only one right now where the state cultural heritage networks are combining to just, and they're just beginning to think about how they can respond as a region when something happens, but it's a long and slow process and it requires that each of the states within each FEMA Region collaborate and work within themselves first to get to move forward. Terry, does that answer your question? Okay, we will unmute you, Terry. Yes, Lori, that was very helpful and because FEMA, the way FEMA works is local, you know, your response comes from the local to the county, the county to the state and the state to FEMA DC, any request. So we always are working on the local level. So that's what I was wondering, I think the statewide programs are great. The trickle-down effect definitely works, but in the meantime or parallel to that effort, we've organized on the local level. So I think I was asking, I was looking for someone, if FEMA Region 1 has started that, I would definitely like the context there, so we're not just reinventing the wheel. Yes, and we are actually having what we call it is a FEMA Region 1 NCH or Natural and Cultural Resource Historic Properties Alliance meeting next, let's see, in next Wednesday, actually, and I'll be happy to send you information and anyone else who might be interested in the information. We are not, again, the states vary in terms of emergency preparedness. None of the six states in the New England Region can say that they are fully prepared to address an emergency, bond fully, and effectively for all cultural heritage institutions, but we are certainly trying. And so pulling something together for FEMA Region 8, it has, again, as you said, it has to start locally and build its way up. And then when the states feel comfortable moving forward, then they can start reaching over the borders and start connecting. Okay, great, thank you. You're welcome. Other questions? I will be happy to post information about the Cultural Alliance, the NCH Alliance that I just spoke about. We don't have anything written because it's so informal still that we don't have any material, but I'll be happy to send information. Any other questions? I think, Scott, you covered it so well that there are no more. So, do you have any last words, Scott? Yes, thank you, Lori. I did want to add something. Is there anywhere you could put? Leslie Williams just redid our Cultural and Historic Resources website here in Colorado, so there's a little bit more information there. If you could put a link there up on the website as well, we'd really appreciate that. Sure thing, I'll contact Leslie, make sure we have the right URL for that. Perfect. If there are no other questions, thank you all very much for participating and hopefully you have my email address. Don't hesitate to shoot me an email. My apologies, those that do speak with me on a regular basis, no, it takes me a long time to respond to emails, but I will certainly do my best to get back in touch with you as well. Great. Thank you, Scott, for such an informative webinar and I'd like to thank Kate, too, for being the wizard behind the virtual curtain and certainly thanks to all of you who logged in today. So we look forward to seeing you online next week for the COOP planning webinar and to seeing you sign up and contribute to the blog. Have a fantastic rest of your day. Goodbye.