The High Price of Not Planning For Disaster

In times of diminishing funding and strapped budgets, it may seem like good sense to postpone training. But when it comes to disaster preparedness, any money you invest now will pay off in the long run. Weather extremes may cause the next disaster on your reservation, pueblo or rancheria. Perhaps the disaster will be human-caused, or won't even be on your tribal land, but at a nearby power plant, international border or transportation route. It may affect your people, property and even your power and communications infrastructure. Identifying these risks now will help your tribe focus on how to address them successfully, should worst come to worst.

The expert Native trainers presenting our two-day course in February understand the challenges that tribal governments and organizations face, because we have lived in and served Indian Country our whole lives. We appreciate that you may be running operations on a shoestring, so we'll help you strategize how to work with all kinds of different partners to establish mutual aid agreements, develop preparedness grants or share resources. We have worked with American Indian and Alaska Natives from all over the country at the tribal and federal level, so we understand the intricacies of jurisdiction and due authority in every state.

If you are considering signing up for our Emergency Management and Public Safety for Tribal Officals course, but are hesitating because of the price, consider what some tribes struggled with last year, just from getting hit by Mother Nature:

• Flooding cost the pueblo of Santa Clara more than $11.2 million dollars
• Flooding from a single storm caused damage to structures throughout the Coleville Reservation
• Several eastern tribes sustained outages, flooding and damage to homes and property during Superstorm Sandy   
• A single wildfire on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation cost more than $3 million to fight; the tribe also spent $89,000 to fight a second fire
• The Crow Reservation spent $300,000 to fight two wildfires
• The Montana wildfires consumed homes, cattle and natural resources, including critical rangeland
• Drought dealt a crushing blow to the Pine Ridge Reservation as well as pueblos and reservations from California to Oklahoma; estimated losses to crops and livestock due to drought was $426 million in Oklahoma alone

The cost of disasters is often hard to calculate for years after the event, because sustained damage to the environment, watersheds, sacred sites and cultural institutions may take years to mitigate.  As Governor Walter Dasheno of Santa Clara Pueblo testified in 2011 to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs:

Never again in our lifetime will we see our traditional and treasured homeland and spiritual sanctuary, the Santa Clara Canyon, as we have known it. It will take generations for our community and lands to recover from the devastation of this fire. But this is our only homeland; it is the place we have been entrusted with since time immemorial. While we intend to devote the resources we can to the healing of our land and the protection of our community we do not have the resources to do it alone.

We're not going to stop the weather, but we can help you ensure that your tribe, pueblo or rancheria has the resources and the partners it needs to face the future with confidence, no matter what comes.