Author Archives: recoverydiva

Residents Return to Fort McMurray

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Neither re-entry nor recovery are easy to do. See: Fort McMurray Fire: Road Blocks Lifted As Residents Allowed To Return To City. Some details:

Returning residents are being warned that it won’t be business as usual and to bring with them two weeks worth of food, water and prescription medication as crews continue to work to get basic services restored.

Crews have been working to get critical businesses such as banks, grocery stores and pharmacies running again. Supplies of some items may be limited in the beginning and the government says some things may need to be rationed.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley plans to be in Fort McMurray when the first evacuees return because she says the city will not be the same one they left. It’s not like, ‘OK, you’re home. See ya. Bye bye,”’ she said.

World Heritage Sites in Danger from Climate Change

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From the NYTimes, this article: Report Warns of Climate Change Disasters That Rival Hollywood’s. An excerpt from the article:

A joint report, released on Thursday by Unesco, the United Nations Environment Program and the Union of Concerned Scientists, that detailed the threat climate change could pose to World Heritage sites on five continents.

Here is the direct link to the report, which is titled New Report Shows World Heritage Icons at Risk from Climate Change

Shame on you Australia: Australia asked UN authors not to include Great Barrier Reef in their report for fear of damage to tourism.

RAND on Disaster Recovery and the Private Sector

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The Diva is amazed at the number of significant recovery-related programs and reports that have come out in the past two weeks. First the Frontline TV show, then the GAO report, and now a new report from RAND.  The need for attention, improvements, and reform to recovery is coming to the fore.

New from RAND: Disaster Recovery and the Private Sector: New Roles and New Challenges. (24 pages)

The report, titled “What Role Does the Private Sector Have in Supporting Disaster Recovery, and What Challenges Does It Face in Doing So?”, provides an examination of how the role of the private sector has shifted, given the shifting nature of disasters both in frequency and nature. As disaster declarations now include those that are natural, human-caused, and technological, the question at the helm of the disaster recovery conversation is “who pays for this?”.

New GAO Report on Disaster Recovery Framework

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Hot off the presses, this report on Disaster Recovery from the GAO. As the Diva noted a few days ago, the Frontline TV Show featured the huge problems with recovery and with the National Flood Insurance Program after Hurricane Sandy. One would expect that the show would have generated a lot of scrutiny. But as we all know a GAO takes many months to complete. So it is an interesting coincidence that this report was released today.

Disaster Recovery: FEMA Needs to Assess Its Effectiveness in Implementing the National Disaster Recovery Framework. Report is 45 pages. GAO-16-476: Published: May 26, 2016.

For those of you as impatient as the Diva, the first 16 pages of the report describe what should happen, and then on pages 17 -30 the report digs into what actually happened and the problems identified. The conclusions and recommendations for action are on pages 30 and 31.