Categories: Network Events
12.02.2014
The Network offers tools to help our community prepare for a range of disasters.
When superstorm Sandy hit New York City in 2012 many of our supportive housing community’s organizations, residences and tenants were deeply affected. In the summer of 2013, a group of Network members convened to discuss the community’s preparedness needs.
Soon after the roundtable discussion the New York City Housing and Neighborhood Recovery Donor’s Collaborative offered the Network the opportunity to develop a Supportive Housing Emergency Prep Initiative. The Network began a comprehensive year-long effort to help our community prepare for a range of disasters. We hired EAD Associates, a consulting firm devoted to emergency prep for special needs populations. EAD surveyed Network members and conducted in-depth interviews with the 12 organizations hardest hit by Sandy to determine what members wanted and needed in terms of assistance. They also interviewed our City and State government funders to determine agency expectations and protocols. This research informed the creation of two emergency plan templates – one organization-wide, the other for single site residences -- custom-designed for our supportive housing providers. It also informed three trainings.
The first training took place on November 12th. Every available seat was filled with 36 attendees from 20 Network member agencies who participated in a half-day walk-through of the templates at the NYC Office of Emergency Management. Rebecca Hansen, Annie Grunewald and Robert Wingate helped providers understand where to begin, how to prioritize, how to establish buy-in and ways to manage expectations around emergency management planning. Here's our blog post on the unveiling of the EP templates.
The second of the three trainings took place November 19th: EAD held a one-hour webinar focused on evacuation planning with 53 member organizations participating. EAD trained supportive housing providers on the potential types of evacuation (including planned evacuations vs. unplanned evacuations, on-site vs. off-site evacuations); covered issues regarding how to plan for, notify and physically undertake various kinds of evacuations; went over relocation scenarios; and discussed preparedness and drills. The webinar is now available via the For Members portion of the Network website.
The final training for this phase of the supportive housing emergency prep initiative takes place on December 10th and will focus on Communications Planning during an emergency.
The Network is grateful to its members for critical input during the development phase of this initiative and especially thrilled with the expertise of EAD in producing these helpful emergency planning templates.
We invite all members to access these resources and join an online peer-to-peer Emergency Prep forum (email wlongno@shnny.org for access to this and other specialty forums).