Gonzales, LA April, 2009

Recovery Resource Fair

FEMA partnered with the state of Louisiana to help agencies find alternative ways to fund recovery and rebuilding. Over the course of 4 days, more than 800 presenters and attendees took part in the event.

Bill Vogel, Acting Deputy Director
FEMA's Louisiana Transitional Recovery
Office

Today we're partnered with the state of Louisiana and all of their agencies to have what we call a Resource Fair. The purpose of the Resource Fair is to be able to provide the municipalities, local governments, and officials with information about what it is that FEMA is able to do. And not only FEMA, but also all of the other federal and state agencies that are involved in the recovery.

Paul Rainwater, Executive Director
Louisiana Recovery Authority

It's a good opportunity for people to be creative about how they fund projects.

We did one in Houma, one in Lake Charles, one in Monroe, and now this is the last one in Ascension Parish. A good turn-out. A lot of folks, a good cross-section of law-enforcement, general administration folks from cities and municipalities. And the non-profits, as well.

Jeff Coates, Greater New Orleans Disaster
Recovery Partnership

It's been great, been very beneficial to listen to SBA, representatives from the SBA, the United Way, to hear what programs, what projects they have and where we can fit in.

Actually being able to sit down one on one with them, talk with them, I'm excited.

It's very useful being able to talk about where we are as a non-profit, and where they are and how we can actually work together to help Louisiana.

Paul Rainwater

It's extremely important that you have the strong working relationships up front, so that when it happens, you're not just getting to know someone the day of the event. So this is good. And you know the guys that are here, guys like Bill Vogel, are the same folks who do the response side. So, it's a good conversation.

Bill Vogel

In our business, the best thing we can do is build relationships. And if we're working side by side with all of our partners in whatever we do, we can always get through all of those little issues. Not everyone is always going to agree with everything, but as long as we're working closely with all of our partners, we'll be able to figure out how to get things fixed, we'll be able to figure out how to get that grant money flowing, we'll be able to make Louisiana better.