Disaster Planning Outlook
May is Wildfire Awareness Month in the U.S., but wildfires are already in the news. Our hearts are with the people affected by the devastating wildfires that raged across parts of Texas and Oklahoma in March. To date, at least 500 homes have been destroyed, and entire communities are now in need of emergency shelter, safe drinking water, and food.
Tragically, catastrophic wildfires and the emergency Mass Care responses they trigger are becoming regular occurrences in the U.S. and Canada. This is why it’s imperative to learn as much as possible from each wildfire to create more informed emergency response and recovery plans.
We are currently working with emergency management teams in Oregon to learn from their experiences managing the unprecedented 2020 wildfires in Oregon. Their emergency food plans did not anticipate the scale of this disaster, which displaced more than 40,000 people. Our mission is to use the information we gain from such partnerships across the U.S. and Canada to help other states and regions become better prepared to respond to emergency food situations.
We were honored to present this work with our Oregon partners at the 2023 National Homeland Security Conference.
Client Spotlight
Our client, the Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization (RDPO), aims to strengthen disaster planning across the Portland Metropolitan Region in Oregon through collaboration with public, private and non-profit organizations. During the pandemic and Oregon’s disastrous 2020 wildfire season, the RDPO witnessed the incredible response in their region to address the multi-faceted food crises brought on by these disasters. The leaders at RDPO felt like they could leverage these efforts to strengthen emergency food planning for the future, but they needed a clearer picture of who was doing what. Our informed stakeholder mapping helped them better understand who needs to be at the planning table and identified potential new partnerships for collaboration.
Response & Recovery Leadership Questions
Leadership during a disaster is not as straightforward as you might think–especially given that we are talking about one of the three basic human needs. It depends on the scale of the disaster. And the structure of emergency management in the City, County and State governments. A lot of charitable organizations like the Red Cross and Food Banks are involved. The COVID pandemic highlighted not only the vulnerabilities of our food system, but also the lack of leadership in addressing emergency feeding. This lack of leadership is one of the critical vulnerabilities in food systems we have uncovered during our work with cities over the past nearly two decades.