COAD stands for Community Organizations Active in Disaster.  A COAD is an organization, based within a community or geographic area, that is composed of representatives from public, private and non-profit agencies. A COAD will enhance the community's ability to mitigate, prepare, respond and recover from disasters, ensuring that human needs inherent in a disaster situation are evaluated and addressed. Members attend meetings, trainings, and dedicate resources in times of disaster. The St. Charles County COAD is governed by a set of by-laws outlining procedures and governance (Click here to view bylaws).

Below are the notes from the January 5, 2023 COAD meeting.

INTRODUCTIONS
All in attendance introduced themselves to the group. Special thanks to Todd Barnes and Dottie Kastigar from Community Council for attending.

INFORMATION UPDATES:
-An "Information Update Sheet" was distributed to everyone in attendance to gather updated contact information for organizations active in the COAD. Emergency Management will use these sheets to update the COAD email distribution list and the mass notification tool to send notifications regarding EOC Activations to COAD members for situational awareness.
-Jani Albright expressed the dire need for an individual or a couple of individuals to step up and chair the COAD because it has been without any formal leadership since approximately 2019. A plea for volunteers was met with negative results.

FLASH FLOOD (DR-4665) UPDATES & UNMET NEEDS COMMITTEE UPDATES
St. Charles County Regional Emergency Management summarized the 4 addresses with unmet needs that we were made aware of by Americorps STL.

-Mike Pickerel, FEMA advised $2.6 million was approved for Case Management. He also advised that Element Church in Wentzville has volunteered to be the regional warehouse for donations to the LTRCs.
-Ben Perrin, Catholic Charities advised that Catholic Charities and Salvation Army will each be hiring (5) Case Managers and also construction managers. This will be a 19-month grant.
-Ben Perrin, Catholic Charities also proposed that St. Charles County could join with St. Louis County to form a single Long-Term Recovery Committee (LTRC). If St. Charles County COAD LTRC goes with this option, then the case managers only have to present at a single location. However, he also stressed that this was strictly an option and that we could certainly refuse this option and continue to hold our own separate LTRC meetings here. With regards to the timeline for hiring case managers, he guesstimates it will be mid-February to early March.
-Sue Schneider, COAD Vice-Chair supported the idea of combining our LTRC with St. Louis County due to lack of leadership for both the COAD and the Long-Term Recovery committee.
-Melissa Friel, SEMA spoke about the large discrepancy between the initial preliminary damage assessment numbers (~3,000 households) vs. the number of households that ultimately received FEMA Individual Assistance (~13,000). Additionally, approximately 23,000 applied for FEMA Assistance - which would indicate the possibility of a large number of households with unmet needs. The first steps in the Long-Term Recovery process will be to identify survivors that still have unmet needs. This will require a lot of public outreach in addition to compiling multiple lists from St. Charles County Community Development, United Way 211 Disaster Intakes, Coordinated Entry Disaster Intakes, MARC attendance lists, and list from FEMA.
-Toby Tucker, MO Baptist Disaster Relief was complimentary of the support his organization and the Samaritan's Purse organization received from all St. Charles County jurisdictions. Debris Management is always a struggle for them and they appreciated the timely instruction on how each jurisdiction was handling debris pickup and/or dumpsters.

NEXT MEETING DATES:
The following dates have been put forth to attempt to get the group meeting more regularly - but are subject to change with new leadership.
The meetings can be held at the Emergency Operations Center on the following dates/times:
Thursday, April 6, 2-3:30pm
Thursday, July 6, 2-3:30pm
Thursday, October 6, 2-3:30pm

The meeting adjourned without any volunteers to lead either the COAD or the Long-Term Recovery Committee, although Dottie Kastigar opined that perhaps the COAD would be a good fit under the leadership of the Continuum of Care. This option will be explored further unless leadership is found.

Click Here to view a presentation on Community Collaboration through a COAD