Reflect and Prepare: from Disaster to Planning for the Future
On September 15 in remembrance of the one year anniversary of the Boles Fire the community is staging an event on that date, one year later. The day will focus on what happened one year ago, the state of the recovery today, and the lessons learned. The event will also kick off the Resilience Planning Process. “We had a major catastrophe and we are becoming whole again. Now it is time to plan for our future. With the help of the community and the community leaders we will have a Resilience Plan put in place. The goal is to rebuild as a stronger more resilient community” says Ron Stock.
What is Resilience?
Resilience describes the capacity of communities to function, so that the people living and working in and around the community – particularly the poor and vulnerable – survive and thrive no matter what stresses or shocks they encounter.
Resilience looks at all the possible disruptive events – both stresses (e.g. Drought) and shocks (e.g. Boles Fire) – that may occur but are not necessarily predictable. It inventories the community’s assets and identifies the less desirable aspects reducing the community resilience capacity.
In this planning process we will be looking at the community of Weed (the City and its surrounding communities) in a comprehensive way covering multiple systems, for example: Health and Well Being, Infrastructure and Environment, Economic and Social, and Leadership and Strategy.
Outreach
Resilience Planning can only be successful when the process engages a broad base of community members as well as expert stakeholders. To ensure success in this planning, the City of Weed has created a Resilience Team to facilitate the process. The 1st year anniversary kicks off the enrollment of the community’s participation in the creation of its resilience planning.
To allow for optimal community participation, the Resiliency Team is creating an informational website, www.resilience-weed.org, from this website you will be able to subscribe to social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and/or receive timely updates. A digital survey will be developed and widely distributed in order to collect data.
Rural Resilience
Resilience to date has focused on urban cities, metropolitan communities, with little to apply to rural communities. Weed gives us the opportunity to develop Resilience on a rural community level. An additional objective of this planning process is to develop tools that can be replicated in other rural California Communities. It is the Weed Community’s opportunity to develop a step by step process for other rural communities to enhance their resilience in this ever changing climate for disasters, shocks and stresses.
Event Information
The event is scheduled September 15th, 2015 from 10am to 2pm in the parking lot at 780 S Davis Ave, Weed, CA 96094 (old site of Great Northern Services and Library.)
If you would like more information about the Boles Fire 1st Anniversary event, or about Resilience Planning, please call (530) 925-9378 or send an email to info@resilience-weed.org