Over the past few years, the disaster response process had become very “front-loaded” – focused on mobilizing resources for the emergency response and relief activities, while recovery was kind of an afterthought.

Next week on January 17, we are going to host a forum in San Diego to capture lessons learned from the San Diego wildfires.  Registration for this event is open.

We’ve developed a new playbook based on our goals of minimizing (a) the impact and (b) the duration of the disruption period due to the disaster.

Based on our new playbook we:

1. Conducted an economic impact assessment study with IEDC (thanks to the Office Depot Foundation) before the last wildfires were even out.
2. Connected the San Diego chamber to business leaders who had been through 9/11 and Katrina.
3. Established a “Help Desk” to help businesses and chambers in Southern California navigate the various disaster response bureaucracies.
4. Encouraged the San Diego chamber to develop a marketing campaign to raise awareness about how resilient and “open for business” the region was.

The 160+ local chambers of commerce in the region, the mayors, Governor Schwarzenegger, the emergency responders, the SBDCs all deserve enormous credit for the speedy recovery of the area.

Now we’re interested in next steps so that the wildfires of 2010 (for example) cause even less impact than the ones that just passed.