Almeda Fire Recovery News: Clean up, permits and emergency housing.
(Originally published in an email By Darby Ayers-Flood on March 14, 2021)
The Emergency Housing Task Force meets each week. Officials from the impacted jurisdictions gather to update and plan for Ash and Trash (debris clean up), as well as to report on the FEMA Housing Mission. We are seeing real progress, with less needed changes to the working plan. Here is some news.
Clean up: Tier one of the clean up plan is the mobile home parks. The plan recognized early that the highest population for rehousing could be effected by focusing on parks first. Of the 1499 mobile home spaces burned out in parks, just over 600 are cleaned. While it may appear that clean up is slow in the visible burn scar, one only needs to enter one of the 20 parks to find that clean up of the hardest hit population is moving quickly. Clean up is just not in the visible scar at this time. The other neighborhoods and the hwy area clean ups are in tier 2 and 3. ODOT has really found its stride in the clean up!
Housing Mission: demand for emergency housing is likely increasing as FEMA works on outreach for those who did not get approved in the first round of applications. Hotel room demand certainly has, as those who were in more temporary circumstances like in living rooms or other precarious solutions, are now moving into hotels in larger numbers. Shelter yes, but NO kitchens to prepare vital meals, no space. In early January we saw people served in hotels in the 500’s, in March people who are staying in hotels are now in the 800’s. People are running out of options and running out of time. Meanwhile, barriers and road blocks are presenting at nearly every site that FEMA deems viable or looks at as a contingency, back up site. We must do better as a community, plain and simple. WE must open our arms to welcome our families back home.
We can all look forward to an improved communication plan from several jurisdictions. Now that the ever moving target of recovery is stabilizing, the plans that are in progress are hitting a stride. I once again want to express profound gratitude to the jurisdictions for their help.
I also loved hearing the compliments from the County, about how professionally and quickly the rebuild permits out of Talent are rolling in. We were stuck and now we are not. On that note, I need to get going to attend the volunteer effort to review more permits.
Finally, as we are making headway, faster than other disasters, but we still have our families drifting. My wife Heather who is a teacher, reports to me that kids are doing school work in places like hotel rooms and cars. It isn’t right!!! WE need to fix this. WE the community need to support every effort that rescues people adrift.
