[quote="April Doner"]
How cool! Thanks so much for sharing this Michelle. I think it would be great if you could share additional information here!
[/quote]
Absolutely, April. I've just attached our flyer.
Hi Everyone,
I am organising a pre-Christmas Zoom (like Skype) catch up to share stories, collate tools and work towards clarifying Elements in an ABCD framework for emergency planning and community-led resilience.
Several of us have been having conversations throughout the year and want to extend the invitation for others to join us. If you are interested in joining us let me know. Details will be emailed.
Cheers
Michelle
[quote="Angie K"]
Hi Everyone.
I have been actively involved in our county COAD for seven years. That stands for Community Organizations Active in Disaster and we work with our local Emergency Management Agency (EMA). We are linked to our state INVOAD (Indiana Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster) which is linked to NVOAD (National Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster) which is linked to Homeland Security. This is a structure already in place that is well organized and very much utilizes ABCD in our community. Not all counties have a COAD, but working with your local EMA to start one is a great way to work in the ABCD model and not reinvent a wheel that is already rolling. There are resources to help you do that.
We just had a 4-county hazmat exercise that was a "dress rehearsal" of sorts for what we would all be doing in the event of an actual emergency. This allowed us to work out bugs and roll out a new plan a few of us developed to fill the gap between the time a disaster happened and the time the Red Cross and other First Responders could get there. Most don't realize that gap can be as long as 2 hours or more. Our EMA director calls that YOYO time...You're On Your Own! In the 4 counties in the exercise, we were the only county that has a COAD and it made a HUGE difference. Out local head line front page above the fold was "Noble County COAD Shines at Disaster Training."
If you want more information, I am happy to direct you. This is truly the community taking care of one another and being prepared to act instead of REact.
[/quote]
Hi Angie,
Great to see you join the conversation. Thank you for sharing your experience.Can you tell us more about COAD? Are all COAD's community-led? I love the YOYO time description in Australia this time can be a lot longer that 2 hours sometimes as long as 2 or 3 days. Please feel free to share more information, stories, articles, videos etc that we can all learn from.
Cheers
Michelle
Hi Everyone,
I'm super excited to let you all know that myself, Jodi Sampson and Dee Brooks launched DEADLY ABCD in Sydney, Australia recently.
Deadly ABCD is an opportunity to create a development framework in collaboration with First Nation Indigenous Australian Indigenous communities, which supports the Federal Government's “Closing the Gap” and "Empowering Communities" initiatives. Discovering First Nation Australian Indigenous community strengths is a powerful and productive way for a community to realise a collective vision and focus on a brighter aspirational future.
We identified strong synergies between “Closing the Gap”, “Empowering Communities” and “Deadly ABCD”, and the fundamental principles of ABCD provides an engagement framework to produce a shared community vision. Deadly ABCD is based on culturally safe holistic approaches, active involvement, collaboration and valuing knowledge and culture.
If you want more information we'd love to share it with you.
Cheers
Michelle
Hi Everyone,
Here is a great Resilience Strategy that was shared with me recently when I was in the UK.
What else would you add for your community? What ABCD Tools would you include?
Let's keep the conversation going.
Cheers
Michelle
[quote="Jana Carp"]
I'm part of the small group that Michelle is referring to -- I worked for two years as a community engagement consultant in northern California for the Fire Learning Networks and introduced ABCD to that organization (a partnership between The Nature Conservancy, the US Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and other federal agencies).
Ian: Thanks for posting that JAPA article. City and regional planners (the journal's audience) can be very helpful partners. Those who focus on neighborhood and district planning often have the fine-grained sense of the community and a comprehensive appreciation for social (economic and cultural) diversity that supports wide participation.
Michelle: Where are you located? I would love to know more about your experience of complacency. Perhaps we could compare that to my experiences in rural areas where agency representatives thought people were complacent about fire. It was the opposite, but there was no way for them to know that without personal, out-of-the-box interaction. (E.g., "the community" not showing up for presentations or meetings was not an accurate indication of their interest in mitigation.)
Thanks for your thoughts - I'd like to hear more and to contribute to imagining what "community-led disaster preparation looks like".
[/quote]
Hi Jana,
Thanks for your contribution. I agree with your out-of-the-box interaction. Michelle Johnston lives about 45 minutes from me so plenty of opportunity to have a conversation.
Cheers
Michelle
[quote="Michelle Johnston"]
Hi, Im Michelle Johnston, a 3rd year Community Development Degree student. My passion is Emergency Management. I’m a Volunteer Firefighter and also care for my elderly ex mother in law (50 hours per week). I co-manage a fb page that promotes interoperability and collaboration between the emergency management services worldwide.
Im currently working on transforming information from the fb page into a knowledge library.
The biggest challenge I face is complacency mitigating fire risk.
Others could help with Ideas, knowledge and thoughts.
[/quote]
Hi Michelle
Great to see you here. I'd love for you to join our developing Community of Practice as I think by thinking differently about working with communities can reduce the level of complacency. I'm happy to catch up over a cuppa for a conversation at any time.
Cheers
Michelle
[quote="Ian Cunningham"]
Thanks for starting this thread Michelle. I'm not personally involved but also interested to hear what's happening in this space. I really enjoyed this journal article re: some work by FEMA in the USA. The file is attached and abstract is below.
Whole Community Resilience - An Asset-Based Approach to Enhancing Adaptive Capacity Before a Disruption
Robert C. Freitag, Daniel B. Abramson, Manish Chalana, and Maximilian Dixon 2015
Problem, research strategy, and findings: Conventional hazard mitigation and pre-disaster recovery planning processes typically begin with hazard scenarios that illustrate probable events and analyze their impacts on the built environment. The processes conclude with responses to the hypothetical disruption that focus on “hardening” buildings or structures or removing them from threatened areas. These approaches understate the importance of natural and social sources of adaptive capacity. Three “proof-ofprinciple” exercises designed to strengthen the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s Risk MAP (Risk Mapping, Assessment, and Planning) process in Washington State suggest how better to conduct hazard mitigation and recovery planning. Each begins with workshops where stakeholders identify built, natural, and social assets that contribute to human wellbeing (HWB) before introducing earthquake scenarios that affect HWB. Participants then identify assets that could facilitate adaptation to changed circumstances (a “new normal”). Participants discuss how these assets would achieve the goals of comprehensive community planning as well as hazard mitigation and recovery from disaster. Neighborhood- scale social organization emerges as an actually occurs can enlarge the menu of mitigation strategies. Planning for adaptation can also help communities achieve many non-risk-related objectives.
[/quote]
Thanks for sharing this article Ian - I really appreciate your contribution to the conversation
There is a small group of us across the globe exploring how ABCD can support Community Led Disaster Planning and we'd love to here your stories.
There are some great initiatives so let's connect up and share our learnings and see where it leads us.
Cheers
Michelle
Thanks for sharing Jana. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the work of Emergency Management Victoria here in Australia - checkout this link https://www.emv.vic.gov.au/how-we-help/community/community-based-emergency-management
Deadly ABCD Flyer v6.pdf - 2.3MB