Negocios preparados para tornados

Como informamos ayer, una docena de tornados azotaron el área norte de Texas, dejando una gran devastación, pero no sólo las viviendas fueron afectadas… Este debería ser un llamado de atención para los pequeños negocios en Tulsa

Length: ‎3:20

Keynote Speaker Tonya Sprenkle, Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce

Executive Director Tim Lovell, DRBC Chair David Hall, and U.S. Chamber Business Civic Leadership Center's Gerald McSwiggan at A Day Without Business

A Day Without Business, a business continuity seminar held by Tulsa Partners’ Disaster Resistant Business Council (DRBC), was held on March 15. See the weblink below to a Tulsa World article covering the event.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/site/articlepath.aspx?articleid=20120316_46_E4_Smallb124658

Synopsis of story: Small businesses are the backbone of America’s economy, and as such it’s imperative that their owners have a business continuity plan in case disaster strikes. This article was published on tulsaworld.com on 3/16/2012.

An album of photos of the event can be seen on our Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.344344215601803.69558.123448611024699&type=3

Special thanks to our year-long Platinum sponsors STATE FARM INSURANCE and TRC DISASTER SOLUTIONS,

Our year-long Gold sponsor ESPO Fire and Water Restoration,

Our event sponsor Williams,

And our other promotional sponsors and exhibitors who made this event such a success.

Ann Patton, our Founding Director, has sent a special message concerning the recently received “Tulsa Award” and the past, present and future role of Tulsa Partners in making Tulsa a disaster resistant and sustainable community. Included with her letter are the following attachments: a photo of people who attended the awards ceremony (also seen above), a copy of the award wording, a press release, and a Tulsa World editorial on the award. Also provided in a separate attachment is information on becoming a Tulsa Partner by joining an online Member’s Quilt. This Member’s Quilt recognizes individual donations to Tulsa Partners and was developed in collaboration with Ann Patton to honor her late aunt, Mae Maness.

Congratulations to you who have participated in making the Tulsa Award possible, and please consider Tulsa Partners in your end of year charitable giving. To donate online, check out the DONATE NOW link at the top of the page.

From the Desk of Ann Patton Re Tulsa Award

Make yourself known as a Tulsa Partner this year

Contact: Tim Lovell, Tulsa Partners, 918-403-9823

Tulsa disaster programs win national association’s top 2011 award

Tulsa is receiving a national award for its flood, tornado, and other disaster programs.

The award will be presented to Mayor Dewey Bartlett and City Council Chair G.T. Bynum and Tulsa Partners Board President Bob Roberts at the City Council meeting, 6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011, in the City Council chamber.

The “Tulsa Award” will honor the City and citizens of Tulsa for their community partnerships that created Tulsa’s hazard-management programs, said Edward A. Thomas, President of the Natural Hazard Mitigation Association. The NHMA award will honor Tulsa as the national model for community improvement in the disaster field, he said. NHMA is naming its highest award the “Tulsa Award,” for future recognition of outstanding communities.

“We wish to honor Tulsa for its remarkable transformation over several decades from a city of almost-perpetual disasters in the 1970s to a beacon of light now,” he said. “Tulsa was once a poster child for everything that is wrong and now has become the poster child for everything that is right in community betterment. We want to honor those who created this important model, which is of great value to the nation and the world.”

The Tulsa community partnership honored by the award includes Tulsa’s citizens, the City of Tulsa, and Tulsa Partners Inc., a nonprofit that exemplifies collaboration by its work to reduce disaster losses through public-private partnerships. The award honors the many dedicated volunteers, including grassroots citizens, first responders, nonprofits, businesses, political leaders, and government agencies, who have worked together since the 1970s to reduce the toll of floods, fires, tornadoes, winter storms, and other hazards.

“One benefit of this work is that Tulsa has not experienced a major flood for 25 years, although between 1970-1985 Tulsa County had nine federal flood disasters, the worst record in the nation to that time,” said Tim Lovell, Tulsa Partners executive director.

“This outstanding award recognizes hard work by scores of Tulsans over more than three decades,” said Ann Patton, founding director of Tulsa Partners and NHMA 2nd vice president, “and challenges us not only to continue but to redouble our efforts to keep Tulsa safe and sustainable.”

The NHMA’s annual business meeting is also planned for Dec. 9-10 in Tulsa.

Tulsa Partners Inc. is a local nonprofit that works through public-private partnerships to create disaster-resistant, sustainable communities. See TulsaPartners.org.

The Natural Hazard Mitigation Association is a nonprofit, national association that supports long-term, sustainable mitigation activities to reduce disaster losses and create resilient communities. See NHMA.info.

The Tulsa Metro workshop on November 17 is at the Glenpool Conference Center, 12205 South Yukon Avenue, Glenpool, OK.
Directions: Off of Hwy. 75 – Take 121st Street Exit. Turn West (toward Sapulpa). Go through two stop lights (very close together) and turn left on Yukon (1st street past Utica Park Clinic).

We have received video messages from Deaf Link via the State Functional Needs Task Force and from The Federal Emergency Management Agency Office of Disability Integration and Coordination via CEPIN. These videos include special information for those who are deaf / hard of hearing or who speak Spanish. The FEMA message includes additional information about how these messages might be perceived if someone does not know that this is only a test and is deaf, blind, or doesn’t speak the English Language. We are providing links to those messages below. We are also placing them on the home page of the Tulsa Partners website.

Remember, don’t stress, it’s only a test!

· FEMA Administrator’s Video Message – In English with ASL and text (3 minutes and 30 seconds)

· FEMA Administrator’s Video Message – In Spanish with text (3 minutes and 30 seconds)

Deaf Link Video message- In English with ASL and text (30 seconds)

http://deaflink.com/video/eas/eng.html

Deaf Link Video message- In Spanish with ASL and Text (30 seconds) http://deaflink.com/video/eas/span.html

This photo was taken by Ann Patton at our Annual Business Meeting on Thursday. Attendee’s program affiliations (Disaster Resistant Business Council-DRBC, Language & Culture Bank-LCB, Millennium Center-MC) or Tulsa Partners board membership are in parentheses. Seated left to right are Sara Kelly with SpiritBank (DRBC), Diana Higgins with TSHA (LCB co-chair) and Sheryl Siddiqui of the Islamic Council of Oklahoma (LCB co-chair). Standing are Graham Brannin with City of Tulsa (Board, MC co-chair), Jason Stockinger with BOk (Board, DRBC), Floyd Schulte with PSO (Board), Terry McGee with McGee Enterprises (LCB), Kelly Deal with Oologah Talala EMS (Board Vice President), Mike Evanson with Evanson and Associates (Board Sec-Treas.), Robert Smith with Williams (Board, DRBC), David Hall with State Farm (Board, DRBC chair), Bob Roberts with Tulsa Public Schools (Board President, DRBC, LCB, MC), and staff members Penni Chandler and Executive Director Tim Lovell.

The annual business meeting was held at Williams Emergency Operations Center in the Williams/BOk Tower in downtown Tulsa. Special thanks to Robert Smith for hosting us. We added two new board members–Graham Brannin (in the photo) and Tom Bennett with KOTV News On 6, Jim Giles Safe Rooms and the National Storm Shelter Association. He was unable to attend because he was out of town at the annual meeting for the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH), one of our national partners. Graham and Tom replace Tedra Williams with the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa School of Community Medicine and Michelle Barnett with Enercon Services. Michelle has agreed to continue serving as co-chair for the Millennium Center Steering Committee with Graham Brannin.

In addition to oral reports by program chairs on our activities from the past year, Tim Lovell and Ann Patton gave an overview of a new initiative called NeighborNet. NeighborNet is being done in conjunction with the Natural Hazard Mitigation Association and will require the involvement of all three of Tulsa Partners’ programs to meet a “perfect storm” of changing demographics, increased severe weather events, and decreased public sector funding. There will be more to come on this initiative in the near future. Expect a printed version of our annual report to be placed online later this week.

Travis Meyer, News On 6

TULSA, Oklahoma — Flooding may be far from our minds in this drought, but 25 years ago parts of the Tulsa metro area were inundated with water from the Arkansas River.

In 1986, the remnants of Hurricane Paine moved into Oklahoma where they dumped nearly 2 feet of water upstream along the Cimarron and Arkansas rivers.

Ron Flanagan is a planning consultant who has been the sparkplug of Tulsa’s floodplain management program since 1974. He says the Army Corps of Engineers was forced to open Keystone Dam in 1986 in order to save it.

“We came to the realization that these levees and dams were not fool-proof and that they give people a false sense of security, and it made us re-evaluate our whole approach along the Arkansas River,” Flanagan said.

More than 1,800 structures were flooded, causing an estimated $63.5 million in damage in Tulsa County.

“These areas right along Riverside Drive were impacted, and on further down, 76th St. Apartments and stuff down there on Riverside Drive and then also Bixby and Jenks were also impacted,” Flanagan said.

The river also swamped parts of West Tulsa to the rooftops in an area known as Garden City.

At the height of the 1986 flood, 300,000 cubic feet per second of water swept through Tulsa.

Since the floods of the 1980s, Tulsa has spent $500 million to protect the city from future flooding.

Despite the recent drought, the city of Tulsa plans to spend another $500 million to get the remaining 12,000 homes in Tulsa out of floodplains.

“Tulsa went above and beyond all the minimum standards,” Flanagan said.

Ron says the city of Tulsa is now a model community for flood management. Part of the reason: the city takes future urbanization into account.

But we shouldn’t forget the 1986 flood because new problems now exist.

“That was just another wake-up call to remind us that we can’t be complacent. Our problem now is that we haven’t had a flood since 1986, and we are, as a community, getting very complacent again, and we are doing some very risky things that are coming back to haunt us,” Flanagan said.

Risky things like new development dangerously close to the river. Despite Tulsa’s outstanding flood management infrastructure, the experts say we shouldn’t let our guard down.