Here are some things you can do to help your community recover from a disaster

Get together with other survivors

After a disaster this can be the biggest step you can take towards recovery.  There is power in numbers and organizations will be naturally attracted to helping you and your group.

Someone will need to stand up and be recognized as a leader in this situation.  They will need to get a leadership group together who can not be afraid to call upon other organizations for help.  When I first started this group I didn't know who to call or what to ask for.  Here are some things I wish I would've done.

1. Call local government (city, county and state), churches (all of them, not just yours) and service organizations (such as Kiwanis, Key Club... whatever is in your area) and tell them you need a space for an office.  Preferably one with off hours because usually people need to come in for help after work.  A good schedule might be something like Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 8PM.  If you can't find anything right away, don't worry too much, just go to the next step.
2. You will also need a meeting hall.  The size will obviously depend on the amount of survivors in your area.  It would be ideal if the office and the meeting hall were close together.  This should be easier.  Places like the public library, churches and government buildings usually have meeting spaces available.  Depending on the number of survivors you will probably need it a couple of times a week. 
3. Pick a good evening for a meeting Tuesday and Wednesday seem to work well or a weekend afternoon.  Maybe one of each to reach different people.  For example, Wednesday at 6pm and Saturday at 2pm.
4. Find a speaker for your first meeting.  A good speaker would be someone who has survived a previous disaster.  Community Partners is keeping a list of people who are willing to help.  Community Assisting Recovery (CARe, Inc.) is also a good resource for this.  You can check out the Old Fire Recovery Group's home page for a list of speakers they've had or you can check out the CFRRG Yahoo! group to see what they've done.
5. Create a flyer and announce a meeting.  Take it to local businesses, go door to door... anything and everything else you can think of!
6. After the 2003 Wildfires, FEMA funded a group called the "Wildfire Recovery Group" who offered free or low cost couceling to disaster survivors.  Find a group like that to do child care during meetings and have them prepare appropriate activities.
7. Call the local government and tell them of your intentions.  Tell them you need to get in touch with other survivors.  In our area the local tax assessor was invaluable.   They have a list of every property, the owners name and mailing address.
8. Start collecting information on survivors.  A list from the Tax Assessor would be an invaluable start.  Other relief organizations are collecting information, but due to privacy laws, they will not share their information.  On the other hand, tax records are public record. You can DOWNLOAD a BLANK copy of the database I used to track everyone's contact information and make mailing lables etc.
9. Start collecting printed information provided by organizations and provide it in your recovery office.  Don't forget to keep the information required to order more.  Most government and non-profit organizations will provide their packets for free or for the cost of shipping.  Take advantage of it.
10. In a perfect world, someone would provide a full-time employee (or a group of vollenteers) to staff the office.  Ask the local government, churches and service organizations if they can provide a person or funding for this.  Again, in this perfect world, a government employee would be at your meetings to report back to the "powers that be" what's really going on in the disaster recovery world.
11. At this point you will realize you have accounting and organizational issues.  You can either decide to create a non-profit organization on your own, or you can use the help of an organization like Community Partners to help.

For more information:

Community Partners has written a short book with some tips on creating a group called From Chaos to Community .  You can download a copy of it HERE or contact them and if you are a in a community where a disaster has struck, they will send you a printed copy for free.  If you want to learn more about our recovery experience, you can download "Fire Stories". 

Organize to Win - is actually written about organizing a grassroots "campaign" but the information will be essential to "win" people over to help the community.

Community Assisting Recovery has a short section on creating a community group which you can view HERE.

Joe Sterling (who helped organize a San Diego community after the 2003 wildfires) has also written a paper which you can read HERE.

Previous disaster survivors urge people to unite and fight in a December 13, 2003 article in the Riverside Press Enterprise:
Advice to fire survivors: Unite and fight

And again in a December 26, 2005 article in Louisiana's Times Picayune following Hurricane Katrina:

Survivors share hard-won wisdom

In a June 29, 2007 article in the Tahoe Daily Tribune titled:

Community members will have to rely on one another to rebuild

Online groups

You might find online tools can be very helpful.  You can start your own website like we did, but it takes someone dedicated to updating it.  We also had weekly email updates, but again, it takes someone dedicated to the task.

Other groups have found that an online forum such as a Yahoo! group fits the bill because it facilitates discussion and you still have the ability to share information, create databases, share links, pictures and even files.  After the Cedar Fire in San Diego, a group called the CFRRG (Cedar Fire Rebuild and Recovery Group) started a group which persists to this day.  After Hurricane Katrina, a group called Rebuilding Lakeview was created which quickly became extremely active.

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Last Updated: April 10, 2008