Long-Term Recovery Efforts in the City of Boulder
The Takeaways
A pre-disaster recovery plan is helpful to quickly meet the changing needs of the community following a disaster.
Set clear expectations for residents.
Provide additional mental health support and referral assistance for staff and on-site mental health professionals.
The Case Study
The City of Boulder fostered partnerships with several local and regional organizations in the aftermath of the 2013 floods to support long-term community recovery efforts. Boulder defined flood recovery as the process of establishing a community-based, post-disaster vision to focus on plans and projects to address damages sustained from the flood and to aid in the community's recovery from the disaster. The City’s sustainability framework and resilience principles were applied to maximize long-term recovery efforts and enable the community to effectively respond and adapt to future challenges.
There were five key objectives that Boulder created for Near-term Recovery and Long-term Resilience:
Help people get assistance.
Restore and enhance infrastructure.
Assist business recovery.
Pursue and focus resources to support recovery efforts.
Learn together and plan for the future.
Boulder created partnerships to help with the recovery process and building resilience. These areas were:
Clean-Up Efforts: A partnership with Western Disposal, a private waste and recycling company, providing the significant capacity to support clean-up efforts including the disposal of appliances and electronics that needed to occur before rebuilding could happen. The City worked with the company to set up 21 centralized waste disposal sites (including more than 200 disposal containers) throughout the city. The additional coordination with Western Disposal and the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM) was used to accept electronic waste with no charge to residents.
Housing Rehabilitation: The City partnered with Habitat for Humanity to implement and fund housing rehabilitation. The partnership between the NGO and the city’s housing division worked to find housing solutions for low- and middle-income flood victims who required additional home repairs even after exhausting all financial resources (including flood insurance and FEMA assistance).
Human Services: The City partnered with Boulder County and the Long-Term Flood Recovery Group (LTFRG – a county-based recovery organization) to provide case management assistance to impacted city residents. This included setting up five walk-in recovery assistance centers and a flood recovery hotline. The organization organized and/or coordinated an equivalent of over $3.4 million worth of volunteer hours that the city was able to leverage in part to cover local match requirements of FEMA disaster assistance.
Economic Recovery: To support long-term economic recovery, the City worked with businesses, business associations, and similar key partners to connect affected businesses with resources. This included the co-hosting of a business flood recovery workshop with the Small Business Development Center and coordinating calls for assistance from businesses within the City of Boulder with the Boulder Chamber and Small Business Development Center.
Partnership lessons learned from this event, which were captured in an after-action report, included:
Determine how to leverage partnerships to provide support as soon as possible to those in need.
Partner with local associations and groups to better communicate with businesses before, during, and after a disaster.
Collaborate with regional partners to better communicate the availability of grants and support that are available to impacted businesses.
Coordinate with groups that are bringing in donations and services to support disaster victims (such as the LTFRG) and quickly match resources with the greatest need.