Working To Build A Resilent Future

Chattanooga is no stranger to catastrophic weather events, from floods and fires to extreme heat and tornadoes—and these events don’t know city lines or ZIP codes ...

BY MAYOR ANDY BERKE

As recently as a few months ago, devastating tornadoes ripped through several neighborhoods along Missionary Ridge and in East Brainerd before crossing into Collegedale. Recovering from these disasters takes months of hard work and lots of collaboration across boundaries.

What can we do now to prepare for—and potentially prevent—future climate catastrophes?

During my 2019 State of the City address, I announced that we would move forward with a Regional Resiliency Plan to create a framework and response plan for disaster prevention, emergency responsiveness, and development in potential danger zones.

This plan will expand the City’s awareness of potential threats to regional systems, including utilities, transportation networks, waterways and natural resources resulting from ongoing changes to the climate, including storms, floods, and other catastrophic weather and naturally-occurring events.

As we build out that plan, we need your help. We’ve created a survey to allow residents to share your opinions and participate in the resilience

planning process. The information you provide will help us better understand your concerns and help us identify resilience actions that should help lessen the impact of future disruptive events, including the impacts of a changing climate, disaster events, eco nomic downturns and pandemics.

Please help us by completing the survey by this Friday, Sept. 4 (link on our website at chattanoogapulse.com).

We’ve worked hard to preserve and improve our scenic spaces over the last 50 years. Educating the public on the importance of resiliency, climate change, mitigating extreme weather, and disaster re sponsiveness will ensure generations will be able to enjoy Chattanooga’s beauty for decades to come.

With only a few months left until Election Day, I could use your help in another way: ensuring that our elections run smoothly and everyone’s vote is count

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to affect people in communities all across the country, we are facing a national shortage of poll workers. This shortage could result in closed polling places and long delays for elections this year.

You can help make sure we have safe, fair, and accessible elections for all voters—and you can get paid to do it! Click here to learn more and sign up to be a poll worker. Thanks in advance for stepping up to protect our democracy.

High school football games kicked off recent ly and this week, our public school students will all head back to their classrooms. This is happening just as we’re seeing a sharp uptick in COVID-19 cases among 11-20 year olds in our community. I hope ev ery child, teacher, staff member, and parent or caregiver will keep doing everything they possibly can to keep each other safe from this deadly virus.

Wear a mask. Maintain social distancing. Wash your hands. Help us stop the spread of the virus now so we can get back to normal soon.