By Dan Harwood, Mayor, Malden

As a Whitman County mayor, I am reaching out to my peers across the county to share some of the things we have learned in the aftermath of the Babb Road fire (and steps the town’s government should have taken prior to this disastrous event). I also cannot stress enough the importance of providing immediate and ongoing mental health care for residents and members of town government after a catastrophic event. If even one of the items listed in the attached document helps another community avoid some of the difficulties we have encountered in the past year, my time spent writing them down will have been well worth it.

I also want to encourage you to take one more step toward ensuring the safety of your town, especially given the current situation (drought conditions, record- breaking heat waves, early onset of fire season, frequent windstorms, and not enough trained firefighting personnel in most areas). Ask the landowners at the edge of your town limits to consider plowing a wide fire break around the community now, and commit to keeping it clear of vegetation from June through September. The Babb Road fire moved with such speed, from the time it started until it roared through Malden and Pine City, that there was no time to effectively do anything to defend the towns. This may spare you and your townspeople the terror experienced by the residents of Malden and Pine City on September 7, 2020, and the physical, mental, emotional, and financial struggles they have repeatedly endured on a weekly, if not daily, basis since.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the destruction of Malden and Pine City, it is my hope that by sharing some of our lessons learned, we can in some way help other communities.

Rural town government disaster preparedness

To do NOW … BEFORE the disaster

• Figure out in advance how to quickly warn residents of a town-wide emergency without using your public warning system, as a power outage may render it useless.
• Make certain all town records, ordinances, policies, etc., are backed up safely off-site and quickly accessible if you cannot enter your town offices or if they have been destroyed.
• Collect, in advance, current contact information for residents—phone number and/or email—so the town can reach people even if they are not currently living in town if their dwelling was destroyed. Develop a way to have residents update this information annually.
• Designate an area of your website for emergency communications with residents so that when the need arises, they know in advance where to go for information. Then, post information there on a regular basis.
• Make sure town water and septic systems are secure, and develop city codes to make sure residential well caps (if applicable) are required and up to code to prevent contamination.
• Build/modify municipal structures with an eye toward fire resilience and ease of defense for firefighters, and develop or modify city codes to do the same for residential and commercial buildings.

To do AFTER the disaster

• Set up multiple ways to communicate with residents to accommodate anyone with a disability or poor/no internet or computer access.
• Set up a system to quickly and efficiently have residents complete and return right-of-entry forms for property cleanup. When residents scatter, not having signed forms will stall your cleanup, and therefore your rebuilding efforts, for possibly the entire town, or it will prevent people from receiving government-provided debris cleaning and removal services at no cost.
• There are different kinds of FEMA disaster declarations: Individual Assistance and Public Assistance. Know what each one means as far as what kind of aid the town and its residents are eligible to receive, and especially note the differences.

Designate an area of your website for emergency communications with residents so that when the need arises, they know in advance where to go for information. Then, post information there on a regular basis.

Be careful about disturbing too much soil during cleanup, and know what kind of building activity is restricted by NEPA and SEPA evaluations, as these will need to be done in order to receive certain grant funding from the state or federal governments for rebuilding infrastructure and municipal facilities.

Starting the day after the disaster, make mental health care a priority—not only for your residents, but also for yourself, your staff, and councilmembers, as you will have many difficult, emotionally draining days ahead. See “Survivor Strategies,” at left, for more.

Malden Mayor Dan Harwood composed this open letter, including the two-part disaster preparedness action plan, to his county peers on July 13, 2021. Cityvision reprints a lightly modified version here for the benefit of small towns across the state and elsewhere.

For more information: maldenwa.org