Newton County Community Matters, a coalition of faith-based and non-profit organizations serving the people of Newton County, met in regular session, Feb. 27, and continued its discussion of the community's roles in disaster response. Minutes of the meeting relate that discussion.
Janice Mann initiated the discussion at January's meeting of "Disaster 101 – A Presentation for Arkansas Communities (from a voluntary organization perspective)." Mann reminded attendees their role as community members and leaders is to prepare for, respond to, recover from and learn from a disaster.
Communities should prepare for disasters by planning, training, and equipping ahead. Groups, organizations and agencies should participate in response and recovery when disaster strikes. Training helps communities prepare for disaster and in turn those communities can help individuals and families to be prepared. Training helps us know how to respond when disaster strikes, Mann explained.
Mann is a member of the Arkansas Methodist disaster response ministry. Mann stated relief and response are very fluid in that information, needs, and resources change rapidly. Every attempt is made to utilize individual skills and talents, but this is sometimes impossible, and flexibility is a must. She asked everyone to be patient with those coordinating the response because there is a lot going on and things change rapidly, especially in the early phases.
A handout was shared listing some of the many different aspects of disaster response. Mann shared that when disaster strikes safety issues and urgent needs are addressed first. The local emergency manager should be notified as soon as possible by reporting to 911 dispatch. Next an initial assessment for the general scope of damage is helpful – how much help do we need? All of this is reported back to central command. Then each agency, organization, everyone involved initiate their disaster response plans.
Mann talked about the disasters after a disaster. Some things can do more harm than good. We try to educate as much as possible that inappropriate/unsolicited donations (clothes and bottled water are good examples) and unaffiliated, untrained, unsolicited self-deploying volunteers can all hinder efforts. Volunteers who want to help should affiliate with a known voluntary or faith-based disaster response organization, get necessary safety and response training, and only deploy with those groups rather than self-deploying.
Mann showed several slides that drove this point home by showing rooms full of donated clothing and donated water stacked head high. She mentioned the manpower needed to sort through and distribute all the clothes when that manpower could be meeting more immediate needs in a better way and how bottled water sits in warehouses for many months, sometimes years. There was also a slide of a line of unsolicited volunteers with no end and how difficult it is to manage them.
