Table 3.

Themes and illustrative quotes relating to impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on disaster preparedness and response.

Theme	No. of Participants	Illustrative Quote
Difficulty providing assistance virtually	8	“Okay. The only thing I’d add is that we of course struggle to be able to meet in person, and so everything has been happening virtually, which I think for the most part has not impacted the effectiveness, but it has certainly, and this is true even in organizations not responding to COVID. You see generational differences or even different levels of comfort in conducting business virtually, so that’s been a new challenge” (Participant 16).
Difficulty implementing evacuation plans	6	“What has concerned us greatly is if there is an evacuation, where do people go and not so much how they get there. I think that has been addressed in many instances with the evacuation plan, but where do they go? When you look around the surrounding states, Texas along the Gulf Coast, most of them are increasing and surging in the pandemic. And so that doesn’t seem to be a safe place to go. And travel is also another challenge. And most of the evacuation we’ve been on buses, or if people are doing their own personal evacuations, even in cars, where do you go. If you have family members, that’s probably the best shot for you to go. And there’s no guarantee. We’ve also seen that family members in the pandemic and then the whole family is quarantined or sick” (Participant 1).
Difficulty enlisting volunteers to help with response and recovery	4	“You have to have volunteers to go in and gut these houses or rebuild or whatever. Our volunteers are totally, with COVID, you can’t get them. You can’t get the corporate groups like we did. We can’t get the convention groups that we did. We would just be totally dependent on a handful of locals who could do it, and my locals are out delivering for me” (Participant 23).
Difficulty for households to acquire resources needed in the event of disaster	3	“So, our jobs with income being challenged, then people don’t have the resources to get some of the things that are needed in preparation” (Participant 1).
Has forced organizations to place disaster planning activities on hold	3	“So, if COVID-19 has affected our ability to help the programs develop their own disaster recovery plans, it has just been because there’s been so much else that needed attention now. And so, it’s not that we’ve shelved it, it’s that it’s hard to get back to it. Because every time I think, “Oh, this week I can do X,” no. This week there are going to be other crisis to address” (Participant 20).
Difficulty providing food and supplies	3	“So, for [Hurricane] Isaac, we lost power somewhere … I lost power for six days, some people had it for nine, it takes a while to get power back on, but what is that going to look like to the folks that are being fed by these food banks? And they don’t have the resources to buy food for three to five days that they’re going to need to withstand an event, like hurricanes, like I said, like a smaller scale hurricane. So again, there are a lot of issues that COVID, not directly the COVID itself, but it’s the byproduct of COVID, that’s exposed a lot of challenges within our community.” (Participant 17).
Difficulty acquiring donor support for disaster-related activities	3	“We operate primarily through partnerships and fundraising efforts. So, everything that we do is really based on fundraising, and we do that by raising funds from companies and their employees doing work-based campaigns where the employee gives a percentage of their salary to the cause of their choice. So obviously with the economic impacts that are going to come out of this, I think we’re seeing a little of that now where donors that could pledge to give are no longer giving because of their economic situations. So, I think we’ll see a trickle-down effect from our larger companies who were, in the past, giving to very specific disaster but with COVID has affected everyone. Everyone’s going to be vying for resources” (Participant 8).
Shift in funding priorities for COVID response	2	“So yeah, the answer to that is absolutely because funding’s dried up. So in order to … what’s happened is, and this is, I think why you’re going to see mission creep for a lot of organizations, is because money is very specific towards COVID and then of course local funding, or local money, has also dried up. So, you could look at foundation money, is going to very … any foundation money is primarily looking at COVID. Any kind of business money from the private sector, well they don’t have any money so what COVID has done from a non-profit perspective has been the do or die kind of thing, so now everybody’s in the COVID business” (Participant 17).
Difficulty assisting community in preparing for disasters	1	“I don’t think we’ve specifically shared anything for hurricane preparedness right now. A lot of information that we are putting out, we’re basically just using social media, has been focused around COVID relief and just trying to maintain every day now. So just making sure we’re just repeating ourselves, as everyone else is, but I think it’s still necessary to do so, but a lot of the information we’re putting out just deals with COVID and getting through COVID” (Participant 6).
Led to a greater focus on equity in disaster preparedness	1	“Other than that, I think the larger lens on this is equity. That’s where looking at disaster responses and needs of the community, how we respond to them more equitably because we know that distribution of resources is not equal across all the spaces. People are impacted in different ways. So. we’ve undergone, as an organization, putting on an equity lens to everything that we do” (Participant 8).
Disaster fatigue	1	“One of the things that is making it harder for us to plan for and respond to hurricanes this season is that people are experiencing burnout. People are getting tired of having to deal with COVID. Wearing masks has only created divisiveness in our community. Trust in institutions is faltering. It is hard to imagine coming together to respond in the event a hurricane hits New Orleans because people will need to work together.” (C-LEARN Leadership Advisory Board member).