TNVOAD disaster update conference call – June 15, 2011
Lilly Velazquez (FEMA) – Reported that there are two disasters broken down as follows: 1974 (East TN) they’ve had 7,162 applicants, 57 max grants (meaning they received the maximum from FEMA they had a total loss). Also, in 1974 they had 3,729 applicants that are owners, of those, 3,116 have no insurance. They have 108 applicants have special needs. 1979 (West TN) has had 4,467 applicants and 49 max grants. She is still working on the break down for 1979 since she just received their information.
In Hamilton County, they already had a long term recovery committee in place, so they are just reorganizing. In Bradley County is doing a wonderful job by getting their long term recovery committee already in place and working with future trainees. In Rhea County they are reorganizing their long term recovery. Yesterday, Greene County formalized their long term recovery. Shelby County has formalized their long term recovery. Everything seems to be going into place.
East TN
Rhonda Chaffin (NE TNVOAD/Second Harvest Foodbank) – Spoke with Bill Brown he said there will be a long term recovery meeting on Tuesday at the First Baptist Church in Greeneville at 10:00. Anyone can attend that meeting to discuss the long term recovery. There are still opportunities to volunteer, they have a number of volunteers that are working on the weekends. They’re still calling for water and Gatorade from their organization.
Middle TN
No report.
West TN
Loretta Hurt (Mid-South VOAD) – Just finished their second long term recovery committee meeting in Shelby county. She is thankful for the leadership from the FEMA VALs and the deputy director of the local EMA that was present and the chair person and the vice-chair person are in place and lead that meeting. Gloria Loftin came from Nashville Red Cross she did a great job explaining CAN (Coordinated Assistance Network) and why everyone needs to participate in that as we move through the case management work. The emergency operation center is still activated in Shelby County, but she thinks they are currently at a level 2. They had their last scheduled briefing yesterday, the briefings will now be on an as needed basis. The most exciting thing going on coming from the governmental response under ESF 14 is that Encore is on the ground and Dave Henderson, Encore representative, lined up a meeting with Shelby County EMA code enforcement, University of Memphis GIS mapping project took him on a tour of some of the impacted areas. In Shelby County all of the volunteers must go through an ID badge process, as the contractors must do. This week Encore has processed 50 volunteers. The rest of the mucking teams, maybe10-12 organizations; Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians along with some corporations and community organizations are all being placed under Encores umbrella because Encore has the experience and knows the parameters which they must work within. Already this week they have been working on 8 homes on clean up and deconstructing. They have between 40-50 single family dwellings, the remaining homes were in trailer parks and have learned today that they will be condemned; water was above the trailer park roofs.
Fred Dettwiller stated that it seems we’re moving into long term recovery. We will not have a conference call next week (June 22), but we will have one on June 29th and that will be our final conference call for this series of events.