PINE BLUFF -- Disaster preparedness and response experts gathered last week to share advice with Arkansas community and economic leaders.
The disaster recovery and economic resilience workshop, attended mostly by leaders from the Arkansas Delta, was held as the result of a partnership between the Delta Regional Authority and the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration as part of a two-day event that continued Friday at the Southeast Arkansas Economic Development District headquarters in downtown Pine Bluff.
The District of Columbia-based International Economic Development Council provided curriculum and content development.
Being prepared economically for a disaster and coordinating an economic recovery after a disaster were two main points of the workshop, said Chris Masingill, federal co-chairman of the Delta Regional Authority. The federal-state partnership promotes economic development in 252 counties and parishes across eight states, including Arkansas.
When a natural disaster strikes a community, first responders hit the ground running with an emphasis on public safety and health care, Masingill said.
Masingill and other speakers addressed hypothetics: What happens weeks, months and even years down the road? How are tax dollars generated when a town's only grocery store or strip mall -- the economic engine behind most of the town's revenue -- is still just an empty slab?
"We do a good job of preparing our elected officials to be first responders," Masingill said. "We're getting more sophisticated and better at training and preparation.
"We need to do more in preparing our elected officials, our community leaders, our business leaders, our economic developers, community developers ... in training on how to jump-start their economy, how to get their people back to work, how to save their businesses and how to get their economy going again [after a disaster]."
Economic recovery after a disaster should work on a parallel track with first-responder concerns, Masingill said.
"We need to make sure that we are preparing our chief local, elected officials and our business leaders at the local level on [whether] they are prepared for when a disaster hits from an economic standpoint and a business standpoint. If you're not prepared, what do you do then?"
One of the speakers, Howard Pierpont, spoke on being prepared and creating a shorter recovery time after a disaster. And the faster a community recovers, the more the effects of the disaster are diminished, said Pierpont, the chairman of the board of directors of the Colorado-based International Association for Disaster Preparedness and Response.
Pierpont was one of about a half-dozen economic-development and disaster-recovery experts who led discussions at the workshop.
Sitting in the audience at Thursday's session, DeWitt Mayor Ralph Relyea listened and jotted notes as Pierpont spoke.
Later, he said he would return to his Delta town and start formulating a plan with others on how DeWitt would respond economically to a disaster.
"I see I need to go do a lot of work," he said. "It's good to have these things so you can analyze where you are and where you need to go. My thought is to try to get something in place that can be ongoing."
The two-day workshop was one of a series of 32 Delta Regional Authority training sessions designed to assist elected officials and economic developers in strengthening business climates and building economically resilient communities.
The training kicked off in Jonesboro in mid-October with an economic-development workshop. The courses -- with half focused on economic development and half on disaster recovery and economic resilience -- continue through the end of the year in Mississippi, Louisiana, Illinois and Missouri. More workshops are being scheduled for 2016.
The workshops are still in their pilot stage, and officials will take audience feedback and tweak future programs, which might be rolled out on a national basis, Masingill said.
"I wanted to do it in my backyard -- in my home state of Arkansas -- because this is kind of our test run," he said.
"These two subject areas are critically important for our local communities, particularly our rural communities. The whole reason we are doing this is, this is about creating an environment for resiliency and providing additional education and training for our chief local officials on economic development."
In the afternoon, attendees heard from Lynn A. Knight, vice president of knowledge management and development with the International Economic Development Council.
Knight discussed the basics of crisis communication strategies during a natural or economic disaster.
In the hours and days after a disaster -- whether a tornado or a major industry closing -- questions will swirl, and rumors might fly, she said.
Communicating effectively during the crisis with a unified response helps recovery, Knight said.
"If you do communications well, it can go a long, long way in your recovery," Knight said.
Chicot County Judge Mack Ball, a self-proclaimed supporter of the Delta Regional Authority, said he learned a lot from the workshop, especially the discussion on crisis communication.
"Communications is the most important thing in any kind of situation, especially a disaster," he said.
Not all of Thursday's attendees were elected leaders or economic developers.
Faye Wilson attended both the economic development workshop in Jonesboro and the workshop last week. She is the director of the Citizen Action Committee in Humphrey, a small town on U.S. 79 between Stuttgart and Pine Bluff.
The committee is a connector between City Hall and residents, she said. She said she planned on using what she learned at the workshops when she returns to Humphrey.
"I really wanted to know what could I do as a citizen," she said, "and how to get other citizens involved. I want to bring that information back to my committee, so at least we'll have some module in place for a crisis."
State Desk on 11/02/2015