Document: Community Economic Recovery Guidebook - Safeguarding Your Economy from Disaster

This Guide is designed for:

• Economic Development Organizations
• Civic Leaders & Elected Officials and
• Chambers of Commerce & Business Support Groups

These core stakeholders are flanked by small business owners who could be affected by disaster and by emergency managers who provide preparedness and response leadership for the community. Coordination between them is essential for stabilization and preservation of the local economy after a natural disaster.

Without an economic recovery strategy, a disaster incident can cause a micro-recession which could negatively affect your community for years. Steps taken by local leaders in the first critical weeks can make a significant difference in offsetting this detrimental side effect of an already unfortunate situation. Provided here is a framework of discussion for local business and community leaders to develop an economic recovery strategy for their own community. This manual connects disaster management functions with economic principles to identify key issues and suggested actions before and after disaster.

For ease in applying this information to each phase of the disaster timeline, information is divided into four core functions that need to be addressed. These four core functions are:

Building Relationships: Identifies key stakeholders and demonstrates how they work together in each phase.

Communicating: Provides mechanisms for key stakeholders to communicate and coordinate other efforts in the community before, during and after a disaster.

Financing: Identifies sources of funding or innovative financing for disasters.

Planning & Logistics: Describes a plan, identifying resources and anticipating how they will change in each emergency phase.

How to use this guide

These color-coded sections are designed for use in guiding your community to economic stability before, during and after major disaster events such as floods, earthquakes and tornadoes. Each section correlates to a phase in the standard Emergency Management disaster cycle. As you move though the timeline, this booklet provides specific economic tips and insights for each phase.