Title:Resilience Roundtable, Episode 3: Lieutenant Emily Ussery and Jack Heide, AICP
در قسمت سوم از مجموعه پادکست APA میزگرد تاب آوری، میزبان ریچ راثز، AICP، با برنامه ریز جامعه جک هاید، AICP CFM، و ستوان امیلی اوسری، دکترا، در مورد تأثیر طوفان های ایرما و ماریا – دو پشت سر هم صحبت می کند. طوفان های رده ۵ – در جزایر ویرجین ایالات متحده در سال ۲۰۱۷٫ این دو درباره دلایل منحصر به فرد خود برای کار در منطقه، چگونگی ترکیب تخصص آنها به یک تلاش جامع تر برای بازیابی و درس هایی که از اولین تجربه واکنش و بازیابی خود در برابر بلایا گرفته اند صحبت می کنند. . امیلی یک اپیدمیولوژیست در شاخه فعالیت بدنی و سلامت مرکز ملی پیشگیری از بیماری های مزمن و ارتقای سلامت در مراکز کنترل و پیشگیری از بیماری ها (CDC) است. او همچنین ستوان سرویس بهداشت عمومی ایالات متحده است. جک به عنوان یک برنامه ریز برای آژانس مدیریت اضطراری فدرال (FEMA) در منطقه II کار می کند که نیوجرسی، نیویورک، مشترک المنافع پورتوریکو و جزایر ویرجین ایالات متحده را پوشش می دهد. درباره تاب‌آوری و دسترسی به منابع بازیابی بلایا بیشتر بیاموزید: https://www.planning.org/resilience/
به قسمت های دیگر پادکست APA گوش دهید: https://www.planning.org/podcasts/
عکس پایین سمت راست توسط کاربر flickr John Wiess (jweiss3): https://flic.kr/p/kMZu3x (برچسب‌ها به ترجمه t) طوفان ماریا
قسمتی از متن فیلم: Welcome to the American Planning Association podcast this episode continues our series that looks at how different communities prepared for and responded to natural hazards such as floods wildfires hurricanes and more I’ll have planners in these communities promoted resilience and their Hazard Mitigation to disaster recovery planning we’ll find out on this episode of
Resilience Roundtable brought to you in conjunction with the American Planning associations Ezard mitigation and disaster recovery planning division I’m your host rich Roth’s I’m a part-time senior hazard planner for Burton planning service of Columbus Ohio I’m also a proud member of the American Planning associations hazard mitigation and disaster recovery planning division
Our guests today are Jack Heidi AICP CFM and Emily uh sorry PhD Jack is a community planner with FEMA region two serving New Jersey New York Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands emily is an epidemiologist with the National Center for chronic disease prevention and health promotion at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention Jack and Emily welcome to the podcast thanks for having us yes thank you rich we’re glad to have you here get started can you each describe your current positions sure I can go first so I’m a lieutenant in the in the United States Public
Health Service assigned to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta Georgia here I work as an epidemiologist and the physical activity and health branch and we partner with national groups with states and local communities to really ensure that all Americans have opportunities to be physically active one of our priorities
Right now is creating activity friendly or walkable communities where people live work and play and I’m also an officer in the Public Health Service and so in that role I can be deployed to respond to public health emergencies I’m a community planner with FEMA Region two within the mitigation division out of
New York City I work with state local tribal and territorial governments to provide technical assistance training and plan review on Hazard Mitigation plans and the planning process within the region you can you tell us how you got into Hazard Mitigation a disaster recovery planning sure so I am an
Epidemiologist by training not a planner I have a Master of Public Health and a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Texas School of Public Health and I’ve been working at the CDC for the past three and a half years we occasionally interact with urban and transportation planners in my field
But the the US Virgin Islands hurricane response was my first experience with Hazard Mitigation and disaster recovery planning and I was asked to participate in that response because of my background promoting physical activity and working with communities and specifically the Virgin Islands and creating more walkable activity friendly
Communities I got my first experience as a kid actually in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez oil spill um where I got to see firsthand the the effects of an oil spill on the fishing community the economy and the environment up there and then later on my first experience of the natural
Disaster when I was in Afghanistan with the US Army serving in PEC tika province as the civil affairs officer there was a major flooding event that occurred and so I got my first real taste of natural disasters and flooding they’re very interesting something we usually don’t
See from that angle can you both give us an idea of your involvement in the hurricanes in the US Virgin Islands sure so in 2016 about a year before hurricanes Airman Maria hit the Virgin Islands I worked with the Virgin Islands Department of Health to conduct a walkability audit across the three
Islands in the territory and so at that time the Department of Health actually asked CDC to come help them work with them to collect data on built environment supports and barriers for physical activity this was a priority for the Department of Health then because there was a large prevalence of
Physical inactivity in the Virgin Islands and chronic diseases they were seeing were fairly prevalent as well and so we know you know the ways in which communities are designed can promote regular physical activity and improve health so through our walkability audit that we did in 2016 we found that
Features like sidewalks street lighting such the public transit and walkable destinations near home we’re we’re pretty uncommon across the territory and so we use those data we worked with the Department of Health to identify some potential action steps that they could do to improve walkability across the
Territory and then the data also helped the Department of Health kind of highlight some of these issues that they were seeing a few months before the hurricanes the Department of Health and CDC convened a workshop with different agencies and and community groups in the territory to really to raise awareness
Of how the built environment can influence health and then to develop action plans for building more walkable spaces across the territory I would think that a lot of our listeners don’t have an idea of how big the islands are the topography there could you go into
That a little bit sure so the Virgin Islands are comprised of three separate islands st. Croix st. John and st. Thomas they’re about or before the hurricanes are about a hundred thousand residents I believe across the territory st. Thomas is probably the most densely populated st. Croix is the biggest land
Area and then st. John is comprised mostly of National Park but there are some residents also on st. John st. Thomas is a fairly mountainous and so say John so there’s a lot of deep slopes there’d a lot of development on hillsides st. Croix is a lot flatter but
There is some steep slopes there as well but it’s a fairly Saint John and st. Thomas in particular fairly mountainous terrains and when it comes to my background with the US Virgin Islands prior to the storms it’s not as not as grand as Emily’s I I visited thank Froy
Actually three weeks before the hurricanes and I was the first time I’d ever been to the territories we have FEMA conducts an annual mitigation consultation with all their state’s tribes and territories and so we were down there doing that three weeks before otherwise I had very little knowledge or experience of the territory
Prior to these two storm events but at least having been there earlier you had a good picture of before and after then absolutely would both of you or one of you cared to give us an overview of the disaster and their impacts on the communities there so in the span of two
Weeks in September of 2017 hurricanes Irma and Maria hits the three US Virgin Islands and these are two category 5 hurricanes back to that the storms destroyed the communication systems the power grid they left you know thousands of residents without power without communications and all of the major hospitals and critical care centers
Suffered damage and were closed after the Hurricanes and so many patients had to be evacuated to the US mainland to receive care I believe about half of all housing was damaged with low to middle income households especially affected and the storms also had a had a major
Impact on the local economy which relies heavily on tourism I would just add that the the two storms unlike a lot of the storms we saw in 2017 that people are familiar with like hurricanes Harvey or even 2018 with like hurricane Florence on these two storms were really largely
Wind driven with minimal flooding impacts on the islands there was a lot more flooding impacts in Puerto Rico from these storms at Florida from Maria as well but there was very minimal and it just the storms resulted in several billion dollars of damage and I know that as an emergency management agency
In the country we tend to get more focused on the flooding and this just shows you how the hurricanes can be solely like wind driven and do just as much damage if not more in some ways although again using Puerto Rico as an example except for right after the
Hurricanes I don’t remember seeing a lot of TV coverage of the Virg nylund’s but it sounds like the lot of the damage was similar to Puerto Rico even though Porto Rico it did have flood damage also that’s very true there was a lot of similarities between the two
There’s a lot of differences as well but the US Virgin Islands kind of dropped out of the the media if you will following Maria hit making impact on Puerto Rico it sounds similar to Hurricane Katrina you heard a lot of about New Orleans and not a whole lot about the other communities Mississippi
And Alabama and such so can you go into what your roles were in there during the recovery period and and how the two of you worked together sure so I deployed to the Virgin Islands for a month during February and March of this year to support that was supporting
The health and social services recovery support function so I was on the health side working as the environmental health coordinator and since the Department of Health was focusing on improving community design and the built environment before the hurricanes this became an area of focus during the
Recovery process as well and so my role was really to convene our local partners there who had an interest in health and in the built environment and then I worked with them to identify recovery projects and strategies for rebuilding the infrastructure that would also have long-term health benefits for residents
And so a lot of what my role was talking to decision-makers about how healthy community design principles are related to Hazard Mitigation and disaster recovery and then helping partners incorporate some of those principles into their long-term recovery plans I also helped to connect our local partners with the different federal
Agencies who are administering recovery funding such as FEMA and Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD and then helping them understand what kind of projects might be eligible for the different federal programs and so that’s how I met jack who at the time was administering the or helping with the hazard mitigation grant
Program and Jack was or is a great advocate for really taking a broader approach to hazard mitigation and and considering things like walkability and health as important components of resilience in a community Jack could you go into how you work together in your role during the recovery period so I was
Deployed to the USVI for nearly a year as the mitigation advisor to the federal disaster recovery coordinator and for those listeners who don’t know who that is that is the FDR C who is responsible for Susilo tating disaster recovery coordination and collaboration between federal and territorial governments the private sector and voluntary and
Faith-based and community organizations the role involves bringing together a team of federal agencies much like Emily and the CDC to lead complex challenges of the disaster leveraging all the available federal resources to support the territory and its recovery efforts and the FDR C leads the six recovery support functions or RSS as they’re
Known which include housing infrastructure economics Health and Human Services natural and cultural resources and Community Planning capacity building and each of those rsfsr led by various federal agencies as the mitigation advisor I was charged with helping the FDR C and all the RSS to understand the numerous FEMA Hazard
Mitigation assistance programs the NFIP and other mitigation programs that would be at the disposal of these federal agencies and the territory and I also served as sort of the technical adviser for mitigation best practices and so I spend a lot of time working across all the RSF on trying to help them
Understand how we could help build back the community you make us see I’m more Raziel and and working across all the sectors um you know we tend to get focused on a couple of sectors within FEMA’s response even though a lot of federal agencies come to the table you know we’re really
Good with working out rights with HUD and the Army Corps and we have fantastic relationships with these groups but some of the other federal agencies or sectors it’s not that they’re getting left behind they’re just nobodies a lot of people haven’t take the time to consider
The how all the sectors can be helping themselves towards mitigation and recovery and so that’s why I got linked up with like Emily’s talk about walkability and healthy environments within the recovery and even within mitigation itself so I spent a close to a year working across about 20 different
Federal agencies trying to help them understand mitigation and trying to understand their programs so that we could effectively work together and really make a more resilient community does the US Virgin Islands have a strong planning background you know outside of the emergency management department they have several types of plans in place
They have like a waste management plan they they have I did a lot of research right after the storm and I pulled up about 40 different types of plans the level of their effectiveness or actual implementation is probably debatable there’s some really great plans and there’s some plans that they’ve created
That they were done and then they weren’t implemented for possibly political reasons or technical feasibility or funding I think one of the more interesting – in the EOC is they’ve actually had a loss of 70s that they have to have a comprehensive plan Land Use Plan and they’ve completed one
Probably three or four times in their history but they’ve never actually adopted one so then they’ve never had a land-use plan interesting and obviously that could really affect their recovery yes and it is something we are working on with the territory right now with a partnership between FEMA and the Army
Corps working on getting them grant money to actually develop and implement a land-use plan I do have to say it’s probably similar to what we see on the mainland so it couldn’t criticize him over it because we see the same things here also yeah absolutely we
See plans developed all the time by any number of jurisdictions and some of the most modern cities in the world that are never implemented for whatever reason right could you explain how the two of you actually worked together so the way we are connected is I was trying to make
Connections with the Health and Human Services recovery support function on through the the lead of the Emily wasn’t believed that one of the people came in to help support and you know we started talking about various efforts that were going on and I was working with a colleague from the community planning capacity-building
Sima side who we were both talking about the idea of how could we get a PA involved and through that we discovered that the USVI walkability Institute which Emily talked about she was a part of um was already doing work with a PA and so we linked up with them and we
Started discussing what was possible within FEMA and you know the CDC and walkability and the stuff that was going on in the territory and we started talking about various issues and we kind of landed on a particular project and we’ll talk more about this a little
Later but so we started just talking to each other and seeing talking about their program talking about FEMA programs and seeing that you know we could actually complement each other if we just started to work through something so a lot of our work was just talking through the work that each of us
Do to make sure that there weren’t like overlaps and duplication of benefits but that we could actually complement one another and so we talked about walkability and these walkability in the built environment working groups that the HSS folks helped set up yeah when I arrived in the Virgin Islands
Some of our local partners there were working on developing proposals for the hazard mitigation grant programs that Jack was working on and administering and helping the the territory sort of understand and so I was working with some of our connections and the Department of Health and the Department
Of Public Works they had some projects that they had wanted to accomplish before the Hurricanes that now seemed like they could be potential projects to to do in the recovery so for example there was one area around a hospital that had experienced flooding and some of the streets were washed out around
There and so they needed to be rebuilt but they had already before the Hurricanes had planned to put in a walking trail in this area and so we talked to Jack to see if maybe we could kind of combine those needs and come up with one one project where they could
Both implement some some stormwater improvements in that area but also build in some some long-term improvements for the community that would add a walking path for people who worked at the at the hospital and safer connections with the retail area that’s across the street adding transit in that area for all the
People who use who use that area surrounding the hospital and so that’s just an example of kind of some shared areas of interest that we identified and how I work directly with Jack since you had mentioned the hospital was the hospital able to operate throughout the Hurricanes so when I was there the
Hospital was not operating the it sustained a lot of damage during the storm and so it wasn’t operating at full capacity the hospitals had a lot of roof damage and when the hurricane rain came in it ended up damaging a lot of the equipment a lot of the expensive medical
Equipment that was on the upper storeys of the hospital and this occurred on both the major hospitals in st. Thomas and st. Croix on but there’s a lot of money going into the territory right now and I don’t know Emily I don’t know if you know they keep
Going back and forth of how they’re going to deal with the hospital situation I know that they’ve debated completely replacing them I know they’ve debated just retrofitting the hospitals that exist now I know that a solution is going to happen and it will get fixed to be ready for the next future storm
Events but right now I don’t know that they’ve come to a conclusive decision of whether it’s a complete replacement or just retrofit something to follow in the future then did the Virgin Islands have a recovery plan or an annex to the response plan um the Virgin Islands did
Not have its own response or recovery plan however FEMA prior to or my Maria had been working very closely with the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico for that matter on developing a response and recovery plan so is a FEMA territory joint effort so both the territory and FEMA were part
Of the plan and it was being worked through when Emma hit st. Thomas and st. John and brushed along Puerto Rico because it didn’t make a direct hit on Polly go on but then when Maria came by 12 days later the whole scenario in the devastation for the plan kind of threw
The plan out the window and they kind of had to wing it from there not that they’re not trained professionals but the plan didn’t account for two storm events in less than a two-week period kind of a double punch exactly there were some other products though uh there
Was a product I have to mention that was actually done in 1989 after Hurricane Hugo which I don’t remember I think it was like a cat 3 that hit the US Virgin Islands but the building Science Division of FEMA out of headquarters actually came in and did a better homes
Guide which was a technical guide detailing engineering and architectural details for building more resilient homes in the territory especially to hurricanes and after her Maria hit FEMA sent in a mitigation assessment team to actually see of the mitigation work that had been done in the territory what held up what didn’t
What went well won’t with that and it was actually shown that all the homes built using this better home guide all of them survived with little to no damage which is incredible to see you know a 1989 document I was actually at several fairs and festivals that FEMA
Set up tables in the territory during post recovery and there is actually people bringing up their 1989 copy of this manual saying this saved the save my house and FEMA actually since then actually went in and is doing an update of that plan great it sounds similar to
What we saw with the hurricane Michael in the in the Florida Panhandle with the houses that were designed to the design standards that are now in place in the Miami area and you saw a house standing there and nothing around it because the surrounding houses have been destroyed
Exactly and this this update of the Better Homes guide is actually another great example of the work of collaboration we did with the Health and Human Services recovery support function because not only did the Building Sciences team from FEMA come in but we actually brought in the experts on
Healthy building materials for the built environment and they from HHS and the CDC who helped incorporate healthy building materials that would help in mitigation and recovery so not only do we have these more resilient structures just to uphold to an actual disaster but now they’re fill they’re going to be
Built with materials that can withstand the After Effects of you know rain water getting in and possible flooding and stuff like that I know pa is encouraging communities to adopt recovery plans pre-disaster and it sounds like FEMA is doing the same thing as far as they can without requirements
In the published in the Federal Register yes did the Virgin Islands have a an approved mitigation plan yes the US Virgin Islands had a approved of mitigation plans from 2014 and they have a pretty solid history of obtaining various forms of hazard mitigation assistance mostly pre-disaster mitigation grants in support of their
Plan and good mitigation projects they’ve completed pre ernamaria they completed a lot of undergrounding of electrical utilities wind retrofits of critical infrastructure and some home acquisition projects as well and many of the mitigation actions found in the 2014 plan are being pursued as grants under the hazard mitigation grant program post
Disaster great so they’re obviously able to use both pots of money to further Hazard Mitigation yes they have a pretty solid background on it and it’s been good to see and look some of that stuff in the mitigation assessment team showed how the the places where they did mitigation for like electrical utility
Under grounding those places once the power came back and those were back up in the matter of days or weeks which wasn’t seen in other parts of the territory and even going farther to what we saw in Puerto Rico with power out but in some places over a year more yes
Governor Mapp had a fairly progressive uh timeline for restoring power and he was able to meet it his his hope was to have by Christmas 2017 90 percent of power restored to eligible customers within the territory and I believe that was met and a hundred percent was met
Fairly soon after that so the territory had power with in a matter of months which we know Puerto Rico took a matter of almost almost a year to give our listeners an idea of how long that was when did the Hurricanes actually hit um hurricane
Irma hit st. Todd did a direct hit I’m saying Thomas and st. John on September 4th and then st. Croix was hit by Hurricane Maria on September 16th so about in three and a half months they had power yes now the big question what went according to plans and what didn’t
Go up according to plans so like I mentioned earlier FEMA was following the plans they developed pretty closely with the territory and then Maria came twelve days later and it kind of threw all the plans out of whack so we were following the plan pretty closely um but probably one of the biggest
Problems with the plan is it relied heavily on if the US Virgin Islands got hit getting support from Puerto Rico and if Puerto Rico got hit getting support from the US Virgin Islands and so the plan did not account for both getting hit by cat5 hurricanes in a two week
Period and a lot of this information and the the what went right and what went wrong can actually be found in the FEMA released an after-action review for the Caribbean and what happened so none of this is a secret but I think and that Hazard Mitigation plan you know part of
Its development is actually to be eligible for hazard mitigation grant funding and a lot of the things that the territory realized were risks that they face were things that happened in erm Emilia like some minor flooding in areas a lot of the wind damage that occurred
And so not only did they have a good success of pdms but they had a long list of projects they’ve been wanting to do for a long time which are now a large majority of them will be able to be funded so the hazard mitigation plan kind of went according to what actually
Happened in Herman when the Hurricanes hit both the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico what was the next fallback area for hospitals to move people to before they could be moved to the mainland when I’m ahead a lot of people were evacuated to Puerto Rico and then when Maria hit and that Puerto Rico
Is no longer an option a lot of people were then evacuated to Miami or Atlanta Georgia so the other Caribbean islands weren’t of much use to them at least as far as evacuation a lot of the other surrounding Caribbean islands were also hit by these storm events so they they
Weren’t an option anyways but and I’m not sure about this but I don’t think the way the federal government responds allows us to evacuate to a neighboring country yeah from my perspective I do know many patients were evacuated directly to Florida and Atlanta how long of a trip is that from the Virgin
Islands or Puerto Rico to say Miami the trip from st. Croix to Miami is approximately two and a half hours now what one thing are you really proud of from the recovery period so I’m proud and excited about the update to the territory’s Hazard Mitigation plan which
Is going to be completed by the University of the Virgin Islands and the plan will have four overarching concepts that will be incorporated throughout the entire plan which is resilience sustainability climate adaptation and cultural awareness and I know the cultural awareness is something new probably we’ve never seen in much of any
Planning mechanism but the island culture is so important to who the people of the territory are and especially for bringing in tourism that we want to make sure that the plan is culturally relevant so the plan is going to be a sector based plan so there’s 13 sectors identified and they include
Standard sectors that you see in a lot of plans like housing critical infrastructure resources however it’s going to include a lot of things that probably have never seen in a Hazard Mitigation plan before like there’s an agricultural sector and the economic development and there’s going to be an arts and culture sector
And each sector will have its own working group who will determine the risk from hazards to their sectors and will develop mitigation strategies specific to their sector needs and finally the plan is going to be entirely online and interactive it will not be paper-based at all it won’t be the first
Online plan because New York State just got approval for their plan and it is the first online plan but it will probably be one of the second or maybe the third so I think this was my first response to a disaster but I think one one unique aspect was this focus on
Built environment and really the close collaboration between the Department of Health and Human Services FEMA and our local decision-makers in the Virgin Islands to really focus on the long-term health of residents and we’re thinking about rebuilding and from my perspective it’s been rewarding to see some of the these healthy community design
Principles included and some of the the different plans and reports that have been developed so far during the recovery planning process so as an example the governor’s task force report laid out his initiatives for the long-term recovery and some initiatives included to implement safe routes to schools to deploy recommendations for improving walkability
And also the kind of a specific recommendation that that was developed was to rebuild using roundabouts at intersections instead of traffic lights wherever possible so roundabouts have the added benefit of reducing vehicle speed so intersections are safer for pedestrians but post-disaster they don’t rely on on electricity so they still
Function right after a disaster so I think just seeing examples like that where the topics that Jack was working on and also from a health promotion perspective to see those initiatives incorporated into the plans has been rewarding for me we’ve also seen the the coalition or the
Work group that that I put together while I was there as developing a Complete Streets policy together with AARP and I think by doing things like this that will that will strengthen the infrastructure to include things like trails and sidewalks and parks and better public transportation for the peoples of Virgin Islands hopefully
They’ll have the opportunity to rebuild stronger and healthier also it’s been it’s been really nice to see some progress made on one of the projects that Jack and I worked on with our local partners which focused on that area around the hospital our partners in the Department of Health and Public Works
Have been collaborating to create a plan that will reduce flooding risk and then also provide those opportunities for active lifestyles for the nearby residents and so as we see that plan and that project kind of developed further it’s been really really exciting to see that progress were able to access USDOT
Funds for this also so I believe part of this project will involve d-o-t or at least there was some discussion of that when I was there because some of it was eligible it was already a plan that was on there there d-o-t plan before and so I believe they will be able to
Contribute to part of it especially the the transit stops that were being added in that area every little pot of money helps yes exactly the project will actually be largely relying on not only that has a negation grant funds but also a HUD and the cdbg-dr they’re going to be because they
Can be used together one of the few sources of federal funding that can be matched to one another so there’ll be a quite a combination of those two helping the entire project after disasters my experience is communities think of you know the one pot of money when
There’s a lot of other money available to accomplish what they want to accomplish in the recovery process so absolutely and that was part of my job as the mitigation advisor I spent a lot of time trying to understand not only my own pots of money but other federal
Agencies pots of money and we worked across a lot of federal agencies to make sure that what if one agency wasn’t picking up another agency could and matching sources of money where we could and even dividing up projects in ways that we could you know fully leverage all sources of federal funding sounds
Like you did a wonderful job on that earlier Jack you had mentioned assistance from APA what types of outside planning assistance did you receive and what kind of assistance do you think needs to be out there in the future so our partners in the u.s. be I received including the Department of
Public Works and Department of Housing and the hospitals they received a community planning assistance team support from APA to help conduct what we’re hoping will be a community shred or design and/or design around the hospital Road project and this is been a valuable resource as a planning capacity
Is really limited in the USVI and many of their proposed projects would not have been possible without the assistance but APA was able to expedite the review process and put together a team of planners with expertise in green infrastructure or walkable design and Public Health and the C pad is currently
Working with our partners to help them create the design that meets the community’s needs and contributes to the long-term resilience of that area and st. thomas’s all so the C pad actually completed their initial site visit in September and is working on putting that larger team together and hopefully
They’re going to be coming back to st. Thomas in January or February and the stakeholders and everyone involved in this project from the governor Dow has been very excited about the C Pat and what it what it hopes to bring to the territory as far as what planning assistance could use in the
Future the USVI could use a lot of planning assistance across the board as we discussed earlier they don’t have a strong at least traditional land use planning background and there are actually a few handful of professionally trained planners in the territory but by and large none of them are actually
Doing land-use planning so they can use a lot of planning efforts and FEMA and other federal agencies and even nonprofits have been providing assistance where available but they need a lot of assistance are you going to encourage them you know post-disaster obviously to request sea paths for other
Planning ideas in the future yes they they were encouraged the territory made several applications to the American Planning Association and under there disaster relief funding that they made available the planning assistance grants that they made available post the 2017 disaster season however I believe the other two applications they submitted
One for st. John and st. Croix were not accepted by APA so they do have this one for st. Thomas but I I hope that they will continue to keep applying first cpad and other forms of assistance when it comes to planning I let a Sipan team
Two years after a disaster occurred to help a community in Tennessee so APA is available to have teams that just right after the disaster but other times in the future so hopefully they will get a Sipan team from APA yes absolutely and I should say that FEMA’s community planning a capacity-building group who
Deploys post-disaster have did help I believe they’re all completed now did help each island st. John st. Thomas Croy working with faith-based organizations and nonprofits and a few foundations did help each island develop their very own recovery plan that was outside of the territorial government but working with the territorial
Government so the locals in each of those islands have understood the need to do this and are pushing ahead done finally what do you know now that you wish you had known before these events happened now’s the time for your wish list yeah absolutely so I did mention
This was my first experience supporting a hurricane recovery so I learned so much during that one month that I was on the ground just about the federal recovery framework and the different agencies involved in the process and a lot of that happened while I was on the
Ground in the Virgin Islands because I think that you know I don’t think I could have learned it necessarily without experiencing it as well as I did and so I think for me since I was only there for one month I had a limited time
To kind of be face to face with a lot of our partners and so I wish that I could have arrived you know with a better understanding of the different moving parts but I now feel like the the knowledge that I gained during that time in the Virgin Islands was so helpful and
I developed a lot of new professional networks with people like Jack and others from HUD and other other groups so I really you know I hope that I’ll have the opportunity to share that expertise with other communities who who are either preparing for or recovering for a disaster in the future and
Especially you know my branch here at the CDC and the physical activity and health branch specifically are thinking about ways that that we might be able to support communities in developing different strategies and plans for moving forward to promoting more activity friendly communities in the recovery kind of context I think
Like a major disaster to turn you from a rookie into an old hand quickly exactly okay Jack what do you wish you knew before um I wish I had known a lot more about the USVI itself and the way they operate their culture there’s internal workings or politics because
They are a u.s. territory and so they are American citizens and they are a part of America but they operate a lot different than almost anywhere in the US mainland of what we are traditionally used to especially when it comes to things like how we approach land use
Planning and so it was like a complete game changers going down there and almost everything about it is run different it looks different it feels different that being said that just goes to show that when you’re responding to emergencies he never know what you’re
Gonna be faced with and if I had known a bunch of these things before I had gone down there I would have approached a lot of our works in a different way I would have aimed for the same type of things we’ve done and we are doing but I would
Have approached in a completely different way and then another big thing I wish I had spent more time learning all the different things various federal agencies bring to the table in a disaster environment or even in a peacetime environment all the different funding sources and all the different technical assistance and all the
Different agencies within the agencies within the agencies is overwhelming and it becomes even so more overwhelming in a disaster and trying to understand all those things would have been in measurably more helpful than going in where you know I had never interacted with the CDC before or the US Public
Health Service I had you know I had big awareness of what they did but you find out that there’s so much like one agency has to offer and it just I can’t stress enough the amount of time of learning even if you’re a local government all the opportunities that do exist post
Disaster because it’s not just FEMA it’s or just the Army Corps it’s so much more dude either of you have a chance to compare notes with your colleagues that basically did the same job in Puerto Rico from from my perspective since my position was pretty specifically focused on you know the
Built environment I I don’t believe that I had a counterpart in Puerto Rico who was doing the same you know specific job or the specific focus that I was doing in the Virgin Islands and a large part of that was because in the the Virgin Islands they you know this was a
Priority before and especially CDC had worked with them before to kind of think through some of these strategies and ways that they wanted their communities to look and and we had not worked with the with Puerto Rico in the same the same capacity before and so I don’t
Believe that there was someone doing a similar position in Puerto Rico at the time well I was lucky in the the counterpart in Puerto Rico was actually my boss so the mitigation adviser for Puerto Rico was my was my boss back in the Legion and in fact we actually had
Monthly calls with all the mitigation advisers during the 2017 hurricane season so I talked with the mitigation advisors from Florida and the mitigation advisor from Texas quite frequently so we we were constantly comparing notes and quite honestly what we discovered is we were all dealing with very vastly
Different things all the time even though we dealt with the same federal agencies we were all dealing with Hurricane impacts every state and territory had its own focus and so whatever their focus was was what was eating up most of our time and what we were mostly focused on but all four of
Us were always focused on completely different things any opportunities for collaboration in the future between region 2 and CDC yeah so I think you know the just meeting Jack and getting to work with him so closely I think really strengthened the existing partnerships between both of our agencies and specifically between
FEMA and my branch of the CDC which is focused on community design and physical activity so I really hope that we will have the opportunity to stay in touch as I mentioned here my group is kind of you know discussing ways that we can support other communities in the future and I
Think just having jack as a resource you know all of his experience working in disaster recovery and has their mitigation would really be an important perspective on our work so I hope that I can tap him for knowledge in the future and also just wanted to point out that
Jack and I and one of our colleagues from the Virgin Islands Department of Public Works will be presenting on this work that we did at a piays national planning conference in April in San Francisco what other question would be is the Virgin Islands ready for the next one I
Don’t know if they’ll if they’re they’re particularly ready but they’re getting there you know they’re they’re doing a lot of undergrounding of their electrical systems and there’s been a renewed focus on preparedness and getting ready for the next storms and FEMA’s had a renewed focus on the Caribbean and preparing for the next
Storm so they may be ready but if they’re not they are working very hard to get there as soon as possible I’ll go to you Emily first where can we find you online and are there any resources you like our listeners to know about sure so if listeners are interested in learning
More about how CDC is working to promote physical activity and activity friendly communities in the US they can visit our web site at WWDC gov slash physical activity and listeners can also feel free to email me at e3 USS ery at CDC gov it’s anyone is interested in learning more about
FEMA mitigation programs they can always visit FEMA website and go to WC m’g of slash what – mitigation a great resource for discussing all the various types of mitigation programs and fundings that are out there in addition I always encourage people to reach out to their local communities or you know most
Importantly reach out to their state hazard mitigation officers and find out how they can get involved in hazard mitigation in their state or local community the every state and territory has a pointed hazard mitigation officer and if you want to reach me directly you can always reach me at john dot heidi at
FEMA dot DHS Guk’s thank you both of you for being in the podcast this was very enlightening thanks for having us yes thank you rich thanks for tuning in to another episode of the American Planning Association podcast for resources on hazard mitigation and disaster recovery visit planning dot org slash resilience to
Your past episodes of the APA podcast visit planning dot org slash podcast you can also subscribe to the podcast on itunes and stitcher have an idea for a podcast series send it to podcast at planning org You
ID: 3X-wh0riQf4
Time: 1546455612
Date: 2019-01-02 22:30:12
Duration: 00:51:38
