Resources

Communicating with individuals and businesses applying for recovery assistance throughout the application process is crucial in keeping applicants informed and ensuring their CDBG-DR award is spent correctly. The CDBG-DR Action Plan should outline how often and at what stages of the process case managers are required to communicate with applicants. Ideally, each applicant will be… Read more

During recovery administration, oversight involves analyzing current activities and anticipating future ones. Program oversight ensures that CDBG-DR recovery programs comply with all federal rules and leads to improvements that enhance programmatic efficiency, effectiveness and documented results.

A CDBG-DR Action Plan serves as the master guidance document for the CDBG-DR program, describing the grantee’s unmet needs analysis, strategic priorities, and its plan for allocating funds to housing, economic development, infrastructure, and services programs. Grantees can also draft amendments to the Plan to address evolving recovery needs, and can request waivers from HUD to… Read more

Citizens displaced by a natural disaster often turn to local governments first. Accordingly, localities must have a detailed approach for how and where to set up temporary shelters. They also need plans for communicating shelter details to the public and for transportation to shelter locations.

Life safety is the highest priority during the response phase following a disaster. The emergency operations center (EOC) will direct local health and safety departments throughout the entire process, dispatching emergency medical services (EMS) to assist citizens as soon as it is safe to do so.

Localities must typically perform an initial damage assessment before they receive resources and assistance from state and federal agencies and other relief organizations. During the assessment, the emergency management team conducts a preliminary onsite evaluation of the damage. This includes the extent of damage and repair and replacement estimates.

Immediately following a disaster, localities focus on restoring and replacing critical infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, water and utilities and healthcare facilities. The sooner these basic needs are met, the sooner the community will feel that it is returning to normal, even if the long-term recovery process will not be complete for months or… Read more

During disaster response, emergency management departments need to let the public know about any emergency alerts, evacuations, and details about emergency assistance and relief efforts. Yet natural disasters often disrupt standard communication channels, which can make effective communication very difficult.

During a disaster, localities need to know who their stakeholders are and how they will help. Likewise, stakeholders need to know what is expected of them during a disaster. The disaster communications plan should include a prioritized list of all stakeholders, as well as all protocols for communicating with each stakeholder group.

A locality’s incident command system directs the rescue effort when a natural disaster strikes. The emergency operations center (EOC) is responsible for coordinating and supporting incident command, and monitoring and directing rescue needs.