KELT Helping Local Communities Prepare for Coastal Storms
KELT's Project Manager, Ruth Indrick, is part of the leadership team for the Southern Midcoast Social Resilience Project. This project was designed to promote new connections and partnerships between emergency management, conservation, social service, and municipal sectors in the towns of Arrowsic, Bath, Brunswick, Georgetown, Harpswell, Phippsburg, West Bath, and Woolwich with the goal of increasing each municipality's resilience to storm events and other natural disasters. Better connected communities are better able to respond to impacts from natural disasters and serve residents whose circumstances make them more vulnerable to the impacts of disaster events.
The team at work. PC: Southern Midcoast Social Resilience Project
“Attention often goes to shoring up hard infrastructure...[without necessarily] thinking about the connections needed between people to make communities more resilient”
The effort started with a series of pilot meetings in 2019 and 2020. The pilot meetings identified that the sectors were all doing great work, but each was working in their own silo, with little crossover.
To create an opportunity for new connections to be built between the siloed groups, the leadership team developed an event that brought together representatives from emergency management, social service, municipalities, and conservation organizations that work in the region. These groups came together to discuss a hypothetical storm, focusing on preparing for, responding to, and recovering from the storm event as well as supporting vulnerable people in the region.
The facilitated event was held virtually on January 26th, and there were exciting conversations and connections! Now, the Project Team is diving into the information gathered at the event to create a report and resources that can help bolster social resilience in the region in the face of climate change.
The SMSRP was recently featured in the Maine Monitor's January 30th essay entitled "Dodging Disaster," by Marina Schauffler. Read an excerpt below!
“Attention often goes to shoring up hard infrastructure,” said Ruth Indrick, project manager at Kennebec Estuary Land Trust, which has helped organize this effort, without necessarily “thinking about the connections needed between people to make communities more resilient.”