Recovery Information Sharing Project

Selected Resources re Disaster Recovery at the Community Level

This site is a central location for collecting and sharing citations and
links to worthwhile documents and other sources dealing with community recovery from major disasters. It is a work in progress -- new content is added continuously. (Each page is dated, so you can check on changes.)

For a quick overview of all categories of information included,
use the Site Map option at the top of this page.

News Note:

Testimony (May 14, 2009) by Larry Larson, Exec. Dir. of ASFPM, to the
House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure deals with
matters of attention to recovery and mitigation in the enabling legis-lation for FEMA/DHS. (Details on "Other Topics" page of this site.)

LincolnCountyJournal.com (April 28, 2009) FEMA Sends Long Term Community Recovery team to Lincoln County, (NE)

CQ Homeland Security (April 15, 2009). FEMA's Housing and Recovery Efforts Among Acting Director's Biggest Worries. Nancy Ward said one of the things keeping her up at night is recovery from disasters. The two elements identified in the article are public assistance and housing. [Note: I cannot post a link because this is a subscription service.]

New Documents:

Lui, Amy (Brookings). March 3, 2009. Fema's Gulf Coast Rebuilding Efforts: The Path Forward. Testimony to subcommittee of House Committee on Homeland Security. She provides an excellent
analysis of the intergovernmental relations component of recovery
and offers some original suggestions. One might argue with them,
but they are well worth considering.

GAO. Disaster Recovery: Past Experiences Offer Recovery
Lessons for Hurricanes Ike and Gustav and Future Disasters.
March 3, 2009. Testimony, 15pp.

Daniel Alesch et al. (2009) Managing for Long-Term Community Recovery in the Aftermath of Disaster. Paperback book, 200 pp. Available from PERI. Just released, a practical guide for community officials. Based on years of field work, this is a useful book.

Post-Hurricane Ike Studies:

City of Galveston, Recovery Plan. April 10, 2009, The local plan for recovery.

City of Galveston's Recovery Information website.

Two recent studies on the impact of Hurricane Ike: one done by the State of Tx and the other done by FEMA.
(As of 2/24/09)

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Natural Hazards Observer (Jan. 2009) Toward a National
Disaster Recovery Act of 2009. Excellent article by Ken
Topping, addressing a very important need.

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Recent:

FEMA. Hurricane Ike Impact Report. (Jan. 2009). This is the
"first-ever attempt to comprehensively compile the damage
assessment and impact information of federal, state, and local governments for use in the long-term recovery process."

GAO. Disaster Recovery; Past Experiences Offer Insights for Recovering from Hurricanes Ike and Gustav and Other Recent Natural Disasters.(Sept. 27, 2008). GAO-08-1120. 41pp. This
report is rather disappointing, in terms of offering insights and
guidance to public officials charged with recovery from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

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To contribute, comment, or ask questions, please write to the Project Manager.

This project was created and is managed by Claire B. Rubin, President of Claire B. Rubin & Associates.

Photo Credit: FEMA/DHS