AUGUST 19 – SEPTEMBER 7, 2009
On Sunday August 9, 2009, flash flooding damaged over 400 homes in Gowanda, NY, and severely affected the surrounding counties. The volunteer presence was strong, however there was a strong need for coordination of volunteers and groups. In order to relieve this burden on local officials and support the on-going recovery efforts in place, HODR lent our expertise in volunteer coordination and project management to the flood recovery efforts.
The Impact of Coordination
Upon receiving the designation from Cattaraugus County Emergency Management and the Village of Gowanda to be the official coordinating agency for volunteers and voluntary agencies we quickly established an operations center at the New Gowanda Fire Hall known as the Tri-County Recovery Coordination Center (TCRCC). The TCRCC served as a flood recovery hub for residents, volunteers and assisting organizations.
The TCRCC hosted interagency coordination meetings that brought organizations together to more efficiently meet the community’s needs, referred flood-affected residents to recovery resources and launched a referral helpline, and plugged volunteers
into the efforts by supplying them with organized clean-up work. We also set up a volunteer and workflow database, tool bank and trained local groups in coordination.
FEMA Declaration
On September 2, 2009, after receiving calls from county and state emergency management personnel that additional damage and needs figures were imperative to support Cattaraugus County’s application for FEMA individual assistance (IA), the HODR coordination team stayed on the job well into the night compiling needs assessment information from our database system. HODR’s database and grasp of the community’s needs provided a view from the ground level that helped secure the IA declaration. Individual Assistance declarations open up potential SBA loans and FEMA grant money to qualified residents that were affected by disaster.
Transition & Teamwork
HODR worked with representatives from the United Methodist Committee of Relief (UMCOR) and Church World Services (CWS) to
help facilitate their efforts to form a Long Term Recovery Committee (LTRC) for the area, a community-based group that will address unmet needs during the long-term recovery phase post disaster.
HODR transitioned full-time operations of the TCRCC over a span of several days to the local Gowanda chapter of Love INC, a spin-off organization from World Vision, and the LTRC.
Click here for an article about the area’s long term efforts and how HODR’s work will have a lasting impact on the area’s recovery.
-The HODR Team
