Disaster Resilience Resources

All communities have difficulty in preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters such as wildfires, floods, landslides, and earthquakes. Natural disaster events are happening more frequently, underscoring the importance of planning, preparedness and resiliency projects.

State law places primary responsibility for disaster planning and response on local communities. Rural communities face special challenges since their town governments are very small and may lack the ability to have specialized staff with training in disaster management. At the same time, rural residents are skilled, resilient and accustomed to working together to strengthen their community. These resources are intended to provide information about realistic actions that small towns can take to prepare and resources that are available to support rural communities in the event of disaster.

I don’t have time for emergency preparedness!

We understand the constraints facing mayors and clerks in small communities. You are being asked to address an impossibly wide range of issues affecting your community. Just keeping your town’s basic functions running is a big job. Bringing in resources to tackle big issues like aging infrastructure, building a new park, or preserving buildings on Main Street takes additional time and effort and can feel daunting. How can you pile on attention to emergency planning and resilience? Our goal here is to provide some very basic information about doable first steps to help your community increase your preparedness. Small steps can make a big difference. Please review the fact sheets below to get started.

Fact Sheets