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Linn program helping organizations plan for disasters
All-Hazards Emergency Plan Template aims to help groups prepare before disaster strikes
CEDAR RAPIDS — Linn County Sustainability is about halfway through a pilot program with the Linn County Emergency Management Agency and four community organizations to create an All-Hazards Emergency Plan Template — an effort to help community groups plan for disasters.
Since the 2020 derecho pummeled Linn County with hurricane-force winds, multiple community organizations have wanted to serve as “Points of Resiliency” for residents during times of disaster, but lacked emergency plans. That’s why the Sustainability Department is creating an emergency plan template.
“This emergency plan helps them create an emergency plan for themselves so they can eventually get to the point of being a resiliency point that the community can then lean on during disaster times,” Linn County Resiliency Coordinator Karen Kawala said.
Phase one of Linn County Sustainability’s pilot program started in September and will go into early 2024, culminating in the template being publicly shared during Earth Month in April. Linn County staff will use the feedback collected from phase one to update the template before making it available to all community organizations in the spring.
Wellington Heights Community Church, Teamsters Local 238, Prairiewoods Franciscan Spirituality Center and the Coggon Fire Department are involved in the pilot. These organizations will complete three planning phases and then share feedback on the process to staff. First, the groups complete the emergency plan template, then participate in disaster preparedness training and finally establish the organization as a Point of Resiliency.
Points of Resiliency are local community-managed facilities that support residents through the coordination, deployment and distribution of resources and services before, during and after economic and natural disasters. These hubs are intended to curb the effects of disasters by reducing the burden on local emergency response teams, promoting community cohesion and making community-centered institutions and programs more effective.
Sustainability Director Tamara Marcus said these organizations were chosen because they have different capacities and a willingness to help the community in times of crisis. For instance, Teamsters has a large physical space with its union hall and a large gas grill to keep people fed when there’s a power outage. Wellington Heights Community Church serves one of the more racially and socioeconomically diverse communities within Linn County.
Kawala said one of the things the organization can provide on the template, for example, is writing down the list of their employee contacts. This way, when a disaster hits, they are able to contact them at any point during the disaster to make sure they're safe.
“Disasters can happen anywhere, and no one is immune to their impacts. Many residents across Linn County have witnessed this firsthand, and what we have seen is how the community pulls together to help those who are most in need after a disaster,” Heather Tripp, Linn County Emergency Management Agency’s plans and exercise officer, previously said in a statement.
Jesse Case, the Teamsters Local 238 secretary/treasurer, said the organization has engaged in disaster relief efforts from the 2008 flood to the derecho. The organization has the capacity and logistics to facilitate disaster relief, but having the county coordinate efforts will help make it more efficient and eliminate redundancies, he said.
Many organizations step up in the private sector in times of crisis, so this program will hopefully help make community groups collectively more effective while encouraging more organizations to prepare themselves for an unexpected emergency.
Through the pilot program, Case said having things such as a list of emergency contacts, information on employees’ families and communicating to visitors on how to access exits and the storm shelter areas will prepare the Teamsters “to take that from an internal plan to an external plan to make those spaces available to community members.”
“It’s helped us take stock of the resources we have and help coordinate them,” Case said. “It helps us be proactive as opposed to reactive to disaster. A lot of times, we don’t think about it until after there’s a crisis. Thinking about efforts ahead of time before there’s a crisis will make us more efficient in times of need.”
Comments: (319) 398-8494; marissa.payne@thegazette.com
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