What is Community Action doing to Prepare Low-Income Communities for Disasters?

FACA Project Preparedness Project

Submitted for
Community Action Partnership Community Land Security Funding Opportunity

Project Narrative

Florida Association for Community Action (FACA), Inc. has designed this project to meet the emergency preparedness needs of Florida 's low-income families and communities in the event of a natural or man-made disaster or emergency. It is very well documented that many low-income Floridians are outside of the mainstream of understanding their need for emergency preparedness to ready them for potential disasters of all kinds. This segment of Florida 's citizens is the most vulnerable and most susceptible to not being prepared for potential disasters.

It is well known that low-income citizens are not prepared for natural and terrorist-related disasters as chronicled by the media in the wake of hurricane Katrina. This project includes a number of action steps that will help FACA to bring homeland security and emergency preparedness to low-income communities in Florida .

Florida is situated between the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Gulf of Mexico on the West and it is therefore very vulnerable to both hurricanes and man-made disasters. Over the last three years, Florida has experienced six different hurricanes, thereby necessitating FACA to formulate this project. Since emergency management personnel do not fully appreciate, acknowledge or understand the difficulties of finding and communicating directly with low-income people in their communities, it behooves FACA to mobilize the statewide Community Action Network and propose Project Preparedness.

Objective 1: FACA will facilitate four (4) regional meetings to promote and encourage local dialogues among community action agencies, community leaders and emergency management personnel to organize emergency preparedness and response teams in low-income communities. Training to be provided by state and local emergency preparedness and public safety professionals.

Objective 2: FACA will assist local CAAs with informing low-income communities about the local, state and national homeland security efforts through public service announcements, local outreach and providing preparedness information for direct mailings..

Objective 3: FACA will assist the thirty (30) CAAs with the development of local resource centers and resource directories to be accessible within the sixty-five (65) counties supported to connect the low-income communities to local government offices for emergency preparedness and post emergency services.

Objective 4: FACA will assist local Community Action Agencies to become actively involved in the work of local emergency planning processes to facilitate effective relationships between emergency preparedness professionals and low-income communities.

Objective 5: FACA will assist the thirty (30) Community Action Agencies which support sixty-five (65) of the sixty-seven (67) counties in Florida with the development of local Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Plans.

Objective 6: FACA will compile and post Disaster Preparedness & Recovery Plan information developed by CAAs for each county specifically designed to target the low-income communities to the FACA Website. This will provide statewide accessibility to current information by CAAs and the low-income communities.

Community Land Security Agency Questionaire

Related Links:

Florida Community Emergency Response Teams
Florida County Emergency Management Offices
Volunteer Florida Disaster Response and Recovery
Florida Division of Emergency Management
Family Disaster Preparedness

FEMA's Mitigation Best Practices Portfolio

Find out how communities and individual homeowners around the country prevent or reduce the impact from disasters with FEMA's Mitigation Best Practices Portfolio . With the Best Practices Portfolio, you can search for examples of activities, projects, and potential funding sources that communities and individuals have implemented to protect both people and property. You can also subscribe to Best Practices e-mail updates for news of new mitigation best practices as they are added to the portfolio.

Have a recent disaster-prevention success story of your own? You can also submit your Best Practice idea to the portfolio and help spread the word of how important, effective, and life-saving mitigation can be.

Best Practices e-mail updates

Lee County LTRC Guidelines 2007 (pdf)

Lee County Long Term Recovery Disaster Plan