Holding a Successful Post-Disaster Town Hall Meeting
Best Practices for Holding a Town Hall Meeting
A post-disaster town hall meeting is one of the first and most important opportunities for local leaders – like mayors, chief elected officials, city and town managers, county administrators and emergency managers – to update the community on the status of recovery, and set the tone for the entire recovery process. Emotions will be running high; community members will demand answers on when they can get back into their homes and when their lives will return to normal. Providing the reassurance your community should receive in a post-disaster town hall meeting requires careful planning and coordination both internally and with external state and federal representatives.
Regardless of the post-disaster scenario, localities should hold a town hall meeting no later than a week to two weeks after rescue efforts are complete; after this time FEMA will have set up their disaster centers and started accepting applications. Holding the town hall meeting before this time prevents problems that can arise when FEMA representatives begin communicating with property owners prior to coordinating their message with that of the locality’s.
“One of our most important successes was orchestrating a town hall meeting in the weeks after our rescue efforts were complete,” says Suzonne Cowart, director of finance for the City of Central, which suffered from catastrophic flooding in August 2016. “We decided to hold the town hall meeting to disseminate as much information as we could to the citizens to help them deal with their individual situations.”
And for communities participating in HUD’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program, it is a legal requirement to hold a public hearing, typically in the form of a town hall meeting.
Post-disaster town hall meetings can be focused on a single topic or a range of topics, from insurance, FEMA and CDBG-DR applications to restoring infrastructure and debris removal. An essential element of a successful meeting is simply having representatives who can answer community members’ questions, and these can cover a wide scope of both specific and general concerns.
“Questions ranged from FEMA mobile housing units, to FEMA grants and assistance and various information – some of it was even tax related,” recalls Cowart. “A lot of residents had questions about getting a mobile housing unit on their property, and whether or not they could have them in a flood zone.”
It’s important to know the limits of your locality’s knowledge when it comes to certain components of disaster recovery, such as FEMA reimbursement or flood insurance, and to call on representatives from external agencies to provide their expertise at the town hall meeting. Typical presenters include:
- A mayor, chair, chief elected official, city or town manager or county administrator will open the meeting and give the initial update.
- The incident commander, typically the emergency manager, gives an update detailing recovery efforts being made to provide resources to the community, along with the status and timeline of disaster recovery and recovery efforts being made.
- A FEMA and/or HUD representative provide property owners with detailed information on where, how and what they need to bring to apply for assistance. Both FEMA and HUD will have a representative designated to serve as their communications point of contact.
- Depending on the situation, a representative from your regional state emergency management agency will give an update on the technical expertise being provided by the state. The state often provides localities with needed equipment, such as generators or mobile phones, and will give an update on what is currently being provided and their plans for future assistance.
Leading up to and throughout the post-disaster town hall meeting, it’s crucial that you keep communication, collaboration and cooperation at the forefront of your interactions with these stakeholders – even when tension rises, don’t lose sight of the fact that you all are working towards the same goal.
Preparing for a Town Hall Meeting
Before the town hall meeting, top level-local officials should work with the FEMA and HUD representatives who will be presenting at the meeting to ensure their message is aligned with the locality’s priorities and disaster recovery approach. Hold a tabletop exercise for local leaders and emergency management to give feedback to FEMA, HUD and other state and federal representatives. The locality’s message should come first and foremost; local officials know their constituents, and the community is more apt to follow the direction of their local officials. FEMA and HUD representatives should be encouraged to take on a supportive, not adversarial, role in the town hall meeting.
“Make sure that the public information officer or a local leader speaks with any FEMA or HUD representatives in advance to ensure their message will support the locality’s approach to recovery,” says Amanda Moody, director of economic development for the City of Central. “External representatives should not be allowed to communicate with constituents in the town hall meeting before this has been done.”
Because no two disasters are alike, you may also need to coordinate with a representative from the Small Business Association (SBA), National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), or from the state department of public works or transportation if something like debris removal or state road closures are at issue. In Central, for instance, the post-disaster town hall meeting included representatives from FEMA, SBA and the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management (GOHSEP).
Regardless of who presents at the town hall meeting, the overall message should be proactive, not reactive. Show community members that the locality has addressed key points of the disaster recovery process and has specific plans in place to rebuild the community.
Notifying the Community
Top level local officials should work with incident command’s designated public information officer to notify the community on the time, location, and agencies that will present at the meeting, in addition to which representatives will be available to answer individual questions at the conclusion of the town hall meeting. You can notify the community through the local media and social media – even without power residents may still be able to access social media notifications on their smart phones. If power is not restored prior to the town hall meeting, you may also need to rely on social media or other live streaming platforms to stream the meeting to the community.
If your jurisdiction already has live streaming equipment, ensure that it’s in place for the meeting. If not, Facebook’s live streaming feature is your best bet and can be implemented on short notice using just a smart phone. You can log into your jurisdiction’s Facebook account on the Facebook iOS or Android App and set the live stream up in just a few minutes. Step-by-step instructions are listed below, or check out this brief tutorial video on how to use Facebook’s live streaming feature. During disaster planning, you may also want to consider subscribing to a live stream service or purchasing your own equipment to stream higher-quality video and embed the video on your locality’s website.
You can also rely on local organizations, such as neighborhood or homeowner associations, to help notify the community about the town hall meeting. You should build relationships with the leaders of these organizations prior to a disaster, and maintain an accurate list of contact information for each organization.
During the Meeting
During the town hall meeting, it is important for all speakers to be compassionate and honest; residents are looking for the “human touch” to reassure them that their lives will return to normal. Be certain to offer sympathy, but don’t make promises. Offer statements such as, “We are attempting to complete four houses a week, but we can’t guarantee that it will happen” to make sure you are setting reasonable expectations. And if you don’t have an answer, it is better to give an honest response of “I don’t know,” rather than to provide inaccurate information.
After the meeting concludes, the media will likely interview the top level local official or incident commander. This presents an important opportunity to ensure the message the media sends is representative of the local government’s recovery efforts and goals. A local representative should be the purveyor of information to the media; if not, the media will seek other, less reliable sources.
It’s also recommended that the top level local official who led the meeting work with incident command and the public information officer to send a weekly or bi-weekly update to keep the community up to speed on the status of recovery.
Click here to download a post-disaster town hall meeting agenda template, and here for press releases and agendas used by other localities.
Live Streaming from a Smart Phone
- Log into the Facebook App using your locality’s Facebook account information.
- Once on the home screen, tap, “What’s on your mind,” at the top of your News Feed.
- Next, click on “live stream” from the drop-down menu that appears. Your camera will open, but the video will not yet be streaming live.
- You can adjust who can view the video by clicking “only me.” A menu of privacy settings will then appear. You should click “public” to make it available to the largest amount of community members. Click “done” in the top right hand corner to return to the camera.
- You can also include a description of your video by clicking where it says “Describe your live video…” and simply typing your description. This is a good place to include that a FEMA and/or HUD representative will be speaking about the application process.
- You will then ensure your phone’s camera is facing in the right direction by clicking on the icon in the top right hand corner with two arrows.
- To begin streaming, hit the blue “Go Live” button in the bottom right hand corner. Note that while broadcasting, you can notify users to submit their questions by commenting on the video. The comments will appear at the bottom of the screen, and you can then read these questions to the presenters to have them address viewers’ concerns.
- When the meeting is over, click “Finish” to end the broadcast. The video will stay on your locality’s Facebook page as a video post, allowing the community to view the post after live stream ends.
Click here for a brief tutorial video on how to use Facebook’s live streaming future.
In August 2016, over seven trillion gallons of rain fell in a 48-hour period in the city of Central, Louisiana, swallowing the city – and most of southern Louisiana – in more than four feet of water, and in some places up to six feet. The City of Central, which is located at the confluence of the Amite and Comite rivers, was still recovering from flash flooding that had occurred earlier in the year when the August flooding occurred.
More than 5,000 homes in the city sustained “substantial damage,” meaning that the damage was estimated to cost 50 percent or more of the structure’s value to repair. In total, 25,000 of the 27,000 residents of Central were impacted by the flood. While homeowners took a big hit from the storm, fewer than 50 businesses in Central were damaged.
“If this happens again, we’ll have to rethink everything,” says Kathi Cowen, IBTS/Central’s Floodplain Manager and GIS Specialist. “We hope we won’t see something of this scale again in our lifetimes.”
At the time of the flood, 75 percent of Central was in the 100-year flood zone, where there is a 1 percent chance of flooding each year and residents are required to carry private flood insurance. Yet 90 percent of the houses and businesses in the city sustained flood damage as a result of the August 2016 flooding, extrapolating the costs of damage due to the nearly 2,000 homes that did not have and were not required to have flood insurance.
The flood was the fourth most costly and the largest since Hurricane Sandy. In total, the flood damaged 55,000 southern Louisiana homes, and had initial damage costs estimated at $8.7 billion.