Friday, November 9, 2018 Zoom Call Notes

In Attendance: Jan Booher (UU Justice Florida), Crystal Johnson (Community Forum Foundation, Inc.), Shirley Burns (local Pan-Hellenic Council Friendship Missionary Baptist Church), Dr. Darryl Clare (Community Forum Foundation, Inc.), Joan Marshall (All Faiths Unitarian Congregation of Ft. Myers Climate Action Team), Holley Rauen (UU Church of Ft. Myers), Gary Robbins (UU Church of Ft. Myers), Dr. Lewis Robinson (All Faiths Unitarian Congregation of Ft. Myers Climate Action Team), Pastor Velma Black Smith (Apostolic Church of God)

Resources Mentioned During the Call:

• Resilience Hubs White Paper  This is an aspirational description of Resilience Hubs. The guidance with check lists will be out in November. That information should be useful in discussions with city and county officials.

• Community Driven Climate Resilience Planning This resource features Dr. Michael D. McDonald’s work with We Act for Environmental Justice in Manhattan on page 17. This a community driven planning process that Dr. McDonald is using in the Florida Disaster Resilience Initiative.

• Citizen Science PowerPoint that I presented October 31, 2018 at the Initiaitive on Coastal Adaptation and Resilience at USFSP regarding geospatial data collection related to hurricanes. This is about community projects involving field data collection using apps on phones, and simple training that takes a few hours and helps communities map their environmental health data to help them make decisions.

Funding that would require partnering with municipal or county government. They would become sub-grantees on state grant applications.

• Funds for Pre-Disaster MitigationDHS-18-MT-047-000-99This is a link to an RFP from the Department of Homeland Security for pre-disaster mitigation. The Pre-Disaster Mitigation program strengthens national preparedness and resilience and supports the mitigation mission area through Strategic Goal #1 Building a Culture of Preparedness, Objectives 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 of the 2018 – 2022 FEMA Strategic Plan.Note that the work we are doing fits under objective 1.3 Help People Prepare for Disasters.

• Funds for Flood Mitigation AssistanceDHS-18-MT-029-000-99I am including this because you have said that there weren’t any shelters in Dunbar, possibly because the schools were in the flood zone. It would make sense to see if the city or county could be a subgrantee to get a suitable shelter retrofitted so it could be used.

Updates:

Regarding a GIS initiative, participation and curriculum

Dr. Darryl Clare (Community Connection Services & Community Forum Foundation) initiated a conversation with Anise from Dunbar High School’s STEM Program. Anise was very interested in a possible GIS dimension to the Resilience Youth Volunteer Corps that Dr. Clare proposed. They discussed the potential of involving STEM students in mapping out where people with particular needs are located, where Lee County has Points of Distribution (PODS), and other things where location is important to know. Dr. Clare said that there is interest from ESRI; a geodatabase management and GIS software company.

Getting 50 participants from the Dunbar Community is a priority, as is putting together a curriculum that would identify people with needs, familiarize people with running PODS in Lee County, CPR training, and food handling training.

Regarding participation of other groups

Holley Rauen (UUCFM and Waterkeepers): Injury Prevention Coalition (IPC) of Lee County includes EOC, Safe Streets, etc. Many of the organization members are resources that could help us with our project. I noticed that they now have a Speakers  Bureau. I have been encouraged to attend again as a citizen at large.  Crystal and I agreed to go together and meet everyone and see who could be resources and partners for us... but they don't meet again till January.  I will reach out to the partners that I still know... take a look at their website. We could be part of this group.

I’ve been working with WaterKeepers. A number of people have been working with us.John Cassani (Calusa Water Keepers) is interested and supportive of this endeavor. They can help with issues like Billy’s Creek.

Paul Hawkin came because the Climate Action Fund was created. If this project succeeds, we could work on an RFP.

Jenelle Grant is president of the Grace Project. She works with victims of domestic violence, and she works with people in the middle of crises. She works with pressure points and ways to help people calm themselves in the midst of a crisis. She is interested in this project.

Regarding reaching out to churches about involvement:

Crystal Johnson (Community Forum Foundation): Still trying to connect with the churches, but has not been able to, and is not sure how to go about it. Attended a meeting with Paul Hawkins, and spoke about cooperating with Paul Hawkins on Drawdown.

Shirley Burns (local Pan-Hellenic Council, Friendship Missionary Baptist Church) Has not been able to provide assistance to Crystal because Pastor Glover had a triple bypass and is still hospitalized. Feels strongly that we will not have difficulty getting 50 participants.

Holley (UUCFM and Waterkeepers): After the last meeting there was a plan to meet with Crystal Johnson and Rev. Allison Farnum. Holley has been going to the LIFE meetings, but there was no room to introduce this project into the conversation.

Joan Marshall (All Faiths Unitarian Congregation of Ft. Myers Climate Action Team): Rev. CJ McGregor (All Faiths minister) is willing to be involved.

Pastor Black Smith (Apostolic Church of God): There is a clergy response team headed by Pastor Givens. They will allow this group to speak to them about our project. There are 5 churches in the Baptist Association. There is also a separate clerical group that only allows male leadership to attend.  

Dr. Lewis Robinson (All Faiths Unitarian Congregation of Ft. Myers Climate Action Team): Is willing to take on general communications, getting information out to the general public and to other groups. This would involve getting local newspaper coverage.

This stimulated a discussion:

Joan Marshall (All Faiths Unitarian Congregation of Ft. Myers Climate Action Team) felt it was premature, and that current communications should be within the community.

Holley Rauen (UU Church of Ft. Myers): Many environmental groups active in the community should be notified.

Crystal Johnson (Community Forum Foundation, Inc.): Would like to have a flyer notification included in the community press that reaches all the residents in Dunbar, but doesn’t know the cost.

Pastor Black Smith (Apostolic Church of God): Write a letter of intent, get the flyer photo ready, and maybe Community Press would be willing to spread the information.

Crystal asked if the flyer was ready to go to the Community Press, and Dr. Clare said he thought so, but would like to get it out to everyone for comment. He will email the flyer to Jan. Jan will get it out to everyone, and give a day or two for response.

Dr. Lewis Robinson (All Faiths Unitarian Congregation of Ft. Myers Climate Action Team): The project needs broader positive press.

All agree, and feel that the broader press initiative should start after the community is on board.

Crystal wants the collaboration within the community to be established before there is broader press. Jan suggests that having a list of community collaborators together for press to interview would be helpful.

Jan Booher (UU Justice Florida): Some observations and information about the experience of working in the Florida panhandle with the North Florida Disaster Resilience Initiative in response to Hurricane Michael, where there had not been any preparedness work getting people connected on a Resilience System:

• Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola (UUCP) was not damaged, and Pensacola was west of the impact zone. Unitarian Universalist Church of Tallahassee was in an area that was minimally impacted, but there were many areas near it that were. The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Bay County in Panama City sustained considerable damage. 90 trees that were about 70 ft tall snapped and came down. Two small out buildings were pierced by fallen trees, the front entrance is impassable, and the rear portico/drive through was lifted and shifted on the support columns. Every member of the Fellowship had either car damage or damage to their home or both. Several members, and some board members, lost their homes. Communications were extremely difficult, with different people only being able to communicate on a single platform (ie. only email, only text, only Facebook, etc.). I met with the leadership that was able to assemble, and relayed information from the UU Southern Region, The UUA Disaster Relief Fund, and the UU College of Social Justice about UUA resources available to help congregations with disaster relief.

• Communications were out. The area has an enormous number of trees. The roots of trees destroyed communications cables and the tree canopies were entangled in the power lines. Road clearing crews further chopped up the communications lines. Verizon supplied most of the area, and was down.  

• Interesting contributions of the North Florida Disaster Resilience Initiative in the panhandle include:

• The Third Wave Volunteers medical Search and Rescue Team, which arrived on day 1. In addition to removal of bodies from the disaster zone, this team worked to provide information about the people in shelters, so it could be reconciled with lists of the missing or assumed dead.

• Food Security Work Group: Distribution of 200,000 lbs of food. Bill Caplinger (UU Church of Pensacola) found out from Brian Hanson (returning citizen sponsored by UUCP, who became a driver for Tyson Foods) that Tyson Foods Meals that Matter program was bringing frozen chicken to the Walmart Supercenter in Callaway. Jan Booher (UUJF) ran a Facebook Event and boosted it to get the word out and worked through church networks to try to find freezer space and food pantries that could take frozen chicken in volume. No one had the needed capacity, and most people who had communication did not have power or the ability to cook in volume. Jan contacted BBQ Disaster Aid to see if they needed chicken as well as Loaves and Fishes that was feeding about 1,000 meals a day in Bristol. Tyson Foods needed more chicken to move through local channels than was possible in the time frame of 4 or 5 days with that sort of participation, and most communications were still down. Albert Gomez (NFL Disaster Resilience Initiative) connected with Carter Johnson (Johnson Brothers Wholesale Foods), who leased an enormous generator so Tyson Foods could deliver all remaining chicken to Johnson Brothers rather than driving it out of the region. Albert arranged for thousands of chicken BBQ meals to be served at Daffin Park and at both campuses of Palo Alto Church of Christ. Rex Harrison (Elder at Palo Alto Church of Christ) and Carter Johnson (Palo Alto Church member) continue to cook chicken meals and deliver them to people in the projects and in the very low income areas, where trailers and homes are extremely damaged, and people can't afford to leave.

• Legal Work Group: The Miami Legal Work Group cooperated with Legal Services of North Florida to localize the legal rights and resources brochure that they had been working on in Miami. The Panama City Legal Services was damaged, but people could call other branches outside of that area once they had communications.

• Housing Safety Work Group: Data gathering about the condition of housing, referring people evicted from apartments to legal services.

• Student Normalcy Work Group: Extension agents working with 4H clubs and others to get Healing Arts Kits to students in the disaster zone, provide children’s books, working on getting athletic equipment donated, and a storytelling initiative for kids who were affected by Hurricanes Irma and Harvey to speak with the kids in the Hurricane Michael disaster zone.

• Communications: Installation of GATR cell phone signal boosters at EOCs to help with communications.

• Data collection: apps used in Hurricane Michael disaster zone are at the end of this Citizen Science PowerPoint

My experiences in the panhandle lead me to believe that:

• It makes sense for us to get ham radios and get licensed to use them. They can be used as walkie talkies at short distances. If the towers are up, they can communicate over long distances. We have radios in the budget

• Anything we can do to get people to download WhatsApp before a disaster could help people, because it is usually up when traditional text and phone are not working.

• Food handling is very important. Many churches provide meals after disasters, but they must meet public health standards or they are shut down. The food has to be properly stored and transported.

• The CERT program is excellent. It is worth the effort to see if Dunbar could have a Youth CERT training. Here is a link to Teen CERT: Launching & Maintaining the Program. Two things taught in CERT training that help to stay oriented in a chaotic disaster zone are learning what the writing search and rescue teams leave on the buildings means, and basics of the Incident Command System.

Action Items:

Jan - Send invitation emails to Dr. Darryl Clare & to Dr. Lewis Robinson to register on the West Florida Resilience System.

Dr. Clare - send Jan the current flyer version to distribute to all for comment.

Next Zoom Call: Wednesday, November 28, 2018 10am