CCROA helps businesses leverage assets for disaster response | 09.21.2007 | 09:51:05 | Views: 6745 | ID: September 21 '07: Congressional Quarterly reported several pilot programs developed and organized by the Corporate Crisis Response Officers Association - a partner with the National Congress for Secure Communities - which are using existing relationships between businesses to help federal, state and local governments respond to disasters. Chairman of the National Advisory Board and former Undersecretary for Border and Transporation Security at the Department of Homeland Security, Asa Hutchinson, told the Washington paper, "I think one of the biggest lessons from the Hurricane Katrina disaster is that the private sector has to be more engaged early on in disaster preparedness and response." Using pilot programs in several cities around the country, CCROA seeks to "organize local businesses and large corporations for crises ahead of time," CQ reported. "The response association's end goal is to produce a National Blueprint for Secure Communities, an online and evolving compilation of community best practices and examples of public-private partnerships that aim to strengthen government response to crises." The National Congress, which will codify and define those primary best practices will convene in Washington D.C. on December 17 and 18. Former DHS Undersecretary for Preparedness and Emergency Response George Foresman and an advisory member to CCROA told CQ, "I think DHS has made reasonable progress in its efforts to create a strategic framework by which the public and private sectors could be interoperable and could have a level of interdependency." "But those well-intentioned efforts in Washington don't necessarily understand the challenges that we face in the private sector," Foresman continued. "[CCROA] really provides an avenue where those that are going to be affected the most can develop a framework that is going to be critical.
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