[StBernard] Disaster Staff

[Westley Annis]

I was invited to be a keynote speaker last week at a seminar sponsored by
the French government to bring together various people from France and LA to
share their disaster experiences and thoughts about recovery issues.  Some
of the highlights of the three days that I thought were noteworthy: (1) It's
not just the US government and its citizens that are re-active rather than
proactive to disasters; (2) Seattle has  full time city professional staff
for disaster recovery year round. Currently, Seattle has four presidential
disasters they are recovering from right now and they recognize that there
is a difference between a staff trained and experienced in emergency
operations (preparing for  the disaster and rescue) and recovery operations
(FEMA, rebuilding the community, rebuilding infrastructure, etc.) so they
have both offices in place all the time; (3)  Every location in the world
has some disaster risk. Seattle has volcanic eruptions, forest fires,
tsunamis, earthquakes, wind storms, snowstorms, floods; (4)  The skills and
talents and experience that one has to get elected to a government office do
not usually include the skills and talents and experience needed to lead
disaster recovery and work with FEMA; (5) if civilization approached
disasters as a fact of life (bad things will happen if you stay in one place
long enough) by making a commitment to fund and staff local professional
disaster recovery, results would be more effective and efficient when the
disaster strikes; (6) Louisiana better get all the federal money it can
because New York has discovered that Long Island and Manhattan are very
vulnerable to storm surges and California has discovered that its levees are
insufficient-both are areas with millions of people and billions of capital
that will compete very soon for federal dollars for flood protection
programs that will rival what LA needs, and you know LA won't have the
benefit/cost ratio of NY or CA. Deborah Keller