Medical Lake Mayor Terri Cooper recalls that a little more than a month after the Gray and Oregon Road fires destroyed hundreds of homes in 2023, the relief agencies that were so helpful getting people food, clothes, gift cards and other immediate help had all wrapped up their temporary work.
“I was like, ‘Where’d everybody go?’” Cooper says. “But by design, they’re there about six weeks, so you can get your case management and start that intermediate to long-term recovery piece, helping people through those processes of rebuilding and recovering and getting their lives back.”
It’s why she and others ended up founding the Spokane Region Long Term Recovery Group. (The name was selected to specifically enable FEMA funding to flow to the nonprofit.)…