The Diva is thinking about starting another blog/website that would provide information to staff and volunteers from non-governmental and voluntary agencies who will be going into the field to help hurricane victims with recovery tasks. (This site tends to focus on those with governmental or other organizational responsibilities for recovery.)

Your feedback as to the need and value of such a site would be appreciated. And offers from potential sponsors are invited.

The issue of insurance, who does or does not have it, and what authorities do to enforce the requirement is a really big issue right now. And with the NFIP due to expire this month unless reauthorized, let’s hope the key decision makers are paying attention.

From Bloomberg News: Hurricanes Highlight Failure to Enforce Flood Insurance Rules. “Government-backed mortgage holders in high-risk areas are required to maintain a policy. But federal agencies are playing “not it” over who has to hold them accountable.”

According to this article, lessons have been learned re disaster response. The next question to be addressed is have lessons been learned about the recovery process?

Sometimes it is hard to be sympathetic when an obvious action, like fortifying a trailer or buying insurance, could have spared a home owner a major loss and hardship. See this article: Florida has 828,000 mobile homes. Less than a third were built to survive a hurricane.  The article points out that not only are most not hurricane-proof, but also half are not insured.

Florida has more mobile homes than any other state — about 828,000, said Patti Boerger, spokeswoman for the Manufactured Housing Institute, a national trade group. Roughly 600,000 are older models, meaning: They were not constructed to withstand hurricane-level winds.

Only half of the state’s mobile homes, meanwhile, are insured, said Jim Ayotte, executive director of the Florida Manufactured Housing Association.

In response to two comments, the Diva now knows that some owners have financial limitations that keep them from fixing a risky living situation. She thanks the two men who commented on this piece in its original form. 

Update:  On Sept. 13, this piece on the same topic from the WSJ: After Irma, Many Mobile Homeowners May Face Tough Choice. About half the mobile homes in Florida don’t have insurance, leaving owners with few options after any major damage

For those people who want to help recent disaster victims and are not affiliated with an organization, the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters — NVOAD is the place to go. States also have a VOAD group.

That organization offers several helpful guidance documents on their website. Here is the direct link to their Recovery Guide. which is 96 pp.

[So far, the two best guides on recovery I have seen lately are this one from NVOAD and the Red Book, cited earlier.]

From Bloomberg News: Get Ready for More Hurricanes. Harvey and Irma should change the way the U.S. deals with catastrophic storms.

The U.S. needs to rethink the way it prepares for and responds to great storms. This will require measuring the risks better, pricing them more realistically, and getting states, local governments and property owners to bear their share.

From Eric Holdeman, who writes the Disaster-Zone blog: FEMA’s Recovery Resources Stretched Thin.

I too have been wondering where the many workers needed to do recovery assistance will come from, but I have been focusing on the question of how to train the staff and volunteers recruited to become knowledgeable about the recovery phase of disaster.

I welcome suggestions and comments.