From Incident to Recovery: How SBP Training Is Strengthening Little Rock’s Resilience

On the afternoon of March 31, 2023, an EF3 tornado carved a 34-mile path through Little Rock, Arkansas, damaging thousands of structures in a matter of minutes. Madeline LeFèvre, a grants analyst for the city, was at a Whole Foods on the west side of town when it touched down. Staff put customers in the walk-in freezer. “I was like, okay, we’ll get in the freezer. I’m sure it’ll pass,” she recalls. It wasn’t until the next day that the full scale of the damage became clear.

Today, as Little Rock moves into a new phase of recovery — managing Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR)* funds and preparing for a major rebuild — Madeline came to SBP’s Incident to Recovery training course in Savannah, Georgia, looking for answers. 

Through SBP’s Advisory Services, the organization provides trusted experience and critical human capacity, helping communities build resilience before disasters and manage recovery efforts more effectively after. Within this work, training courses are designed to equip community leaders with the skills, knowledge, and capacity to navigate the recovery process and become more resilient in the face of future disasters.

The three-day course Madeline participated in guided participants through the full disaster recovery lifecycle — from initial response through long-term, federally funded recovery — helping organizations structure programs, align funding, and execute strategies that build lasting resilience. It is one of several rolling and on-demand training courses offered by SBP, all designed to equip local leaders with practical, actionable skills and help them become more prepared for the next disaster.

We caught up with Madeline after the course.                                                             

You’ve been working in grants for a while, but how did disaster recovery specifically become part of your work?

I joined the city’s grants division as an analyst and was eventually promoted to coordinator. I started doing more post-award management, mostly highway construction and alternative trails projects. Then I began working more closely with our grants manager on disaster recovery work coming through FEMA after our 2023 tornado. Before we even saw the FEMA money, I was helping organize volunteers to remove trees out of roadways so residents could get through. That was really my first introduction to disaster recovery. And now we’re moving into CDBG-DR, which is so much more money to manage. So in preparation for that, my manager recommended SBP’s training.

What was most valuable about the training for someone at your stage — already in the middle of recovery, but about to take on a much bigger workload?

With grants, you often learn about what you need to do after you get the award. You don’t have the time or bandwidth to learn before. You see the opportunity and you jump on it. So being more prepared on the front end, before we’re into the contracting stage — and not learning from experience only — is going to be extremely helpful. Seeing the full flow laid out, not just from award to completion, but how things are decided at the federal level on the front end, was really valuable. Especially for knowing what to expect next time.

You mentioned that you’ve already started sending your city attorneys to SBP courses as a result. Can you tell us about that?

We know we need to build houses and complete the projects we’ve outlined. But how is that really going to feel in practice? Our attorneys are going to be reviewing and executing the contracts with the vendors we select. They’ve attended some federal rules training with other organizations, but this CDBG-DR program is so specific — it has its own special rules. We want them to feel prepared. So enrolling in the SBP training is one step we’re already taking.

You wrote on LinkedIn that the disaster recovery community is full of people willing to share their knowledge. Did any particular conversation stand out?

There were two attendees — I believe from North or South Carolina — who were managing disaster funds at the state level. They had a wealth of expertise and were completely open about it. They’d say, “The first time this happened, we didn’t do these things right in our contract, and here’s how that impacted residents having homes to live in.” Seeing that lived experience, and everyone being willing to share — “I learned this through a mistake, please don’t do what I did” — I thought it was incredibly kind that people were being that vulnerable.

What would you want people who haven’t been through a major disaster to understand about what recovery actually requires?

People would be amazed at how much paperwork there is. Having documentation of your municipality’s assets before a disaster is equally important as documenting the damage after. You need to be able to show FEMA: this is what we had, this is what it looked like, here’s what it looks like now — help us get back to where we were. That stuck with me during the training, because it’s something we try to do, but it’s easy to let it slip when you’re juggling everything else.

If you could bring one thing from this training back to your whole team, what would it be?

Preparedness. Most cities have an emergency department, but none of us were prepared for the level of disaster we experienced. Our tornado was in 2023, and I feel like I’ve just gained more skills in the past month to deal with it, three years after the fact. If I had encountered this training before, we would have known so much more. The number one thing for me is that the people in that room know how to prepare because of what they went through the first time. That experience is invaluable.

To enroll in these training courses, go to SBP’s Resource Hub. To request the Incident to Recovery Course be brought to your community, please contact [email protected].

*CDBG-DR grant funds help rebuild disaster-impacted areas and provide crucial seed money to start the long-term recovery process. These flexible grants help communities recover from Presidentially declared disasters, especially in low-income areas.