Form your pre-disaster recovery planning team.
Pre-disaster recovery planning requires a multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral team with local and regional resilience and disaster recovery expertise. As such:
- The size and composition of the team will vary by the community; in some places, a small team that includes core staff members will be sufficient. In others, the team might include a more diverse group of members from across local government and other key stakeholders.
- Utilize a wide variety of external partners at the county, state, and federal government and non-governmental organizations who will be essential to your recovery should a disaster occur.
- The pre-disaster recovery team should be led by a recovery plan coordinator, likely a local government staff person with experience managing multi-departmental planning processes (i.e., town administrator, city manager, emergency manager, and/or planning director). This person(s) should be able to commit the time necessary to organize the team and serve as its primary point of contact.
Note that the pre-disaster recovery planning team is not the same as the post-disaster recovery planning team that your community will form in the event of a disaster, although there will likely be overlap.
For more information on forming a planning team, see Step 1, Activity 2 of the Community Readiness and Resilience Toolkit and use the planning team tab in the Pre-disaster Planning Workbook.