April 4, 2008

Nashville--A roster of academic and government experts told leaders of America's major faith-based disaster response agencies that they need to push more for changes in how the federal government responds to disasters.

"If you don't speak to it, no one is going to speak to it," said Ken Curtain, a voluntary agency liaison with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "Congress is not an expert at disaster response. You are."

Pushing for greater assistance for renters coping with disaster, boosting funding for community-based disaster recovery agencies, and ensuring laws protect communities vulnerable to disasters are among the recommendations made at the 2008 Church World Service Domestic Disaster Response Forum.

The bi-annual gathering is the only event where faith-based disaster responders can connect and discuss ideas in-depth, CWS Associate Director for Training and Capacity Building Bob Arnold said.

"There are other chances for the disaster response community to network but this is designed for fleshing out ideas to an ultra-specific level," Arnold said.

This year's event, held in Nashville, focused on economic and justice issues following disaster. More than a dozen speakers from academia, politics, consulting organizations, and the disaster response world addressed issues such as green building, predatory lending, and how to deal with issues of race and class.

"Disaster ministry is huge," the Rev. Dr. George L. Abrams said. The United Methodist Church pastor recently left the pulpit to become the disaster response coordinator for UMC's Pacific Northwest Conference. "I'm looking for what that means on a practical level."

Many practical ideas brought forward at the Forum arose out of the calamity of Hurricane Katrina. The 2005 hurricane came up in every presentation of the conference, eliciting both good stories in how to help post-disaster as well as examples of egregious error.

"Our nation has not grasped the fact that the people who are most vulnerable are most at risk," Mark Merritt said. Merritt is a founding partner of James Lee Witt Associates and former FEMA executive, who urged Forum participants to advocate for greater federal funding for disaster preparedness.

"You could predict everything that happened in Katrina, it just happened on a larger scale," said Professor Brenda Phillips, who teaches emergency management at Oklahoma State University. "The problem with poor families being disproportionably affected, we all knew that was going to happen. I think the biggest lesson we have is to never let it happen again, to do something about the conditions that made it happen in the first place."

Media Contact: Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676; lcrosson@churchworldservice.org Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526; jdragin@gis.net