EDD: Issues, Law, and Solutions: HURRICANE GUSTAV EMERGENCY RESOURCES

Monday, September 1, 2008

HURRICANE GUSTAV EMERGENCY RESOURCES

The federal and state governments bear primary responsibility for disaster recovery, but the response by FEMA to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita well frankly was grossly mismanaged and tragically inadequate. Hurricane Gustav hit the Gulf Coast today - the following non governmental relief agencies and community-based organizations -- with records of responsiveness and accountability -- are working on the ground now to provide disaster relief and assistance for Hurricane Gustav evacuees. Please visit their websites to find out how you can help with donations of emergency supplies and funds.

Catholic Charities USA's Disaster Response Team has been deployed to the Gulf Coast ahead of Hurricane Gustav, ramping up efforts to respond to the potentially devastating storm. Once on the ground, the team will be working with the local Catholic Charities agencies in the region to preposition community resources sites. After the storm, these sites will provide water, basic food essentials, clean up supplies, personal care kits, and other items to meet the communities' recovery needs. To contribute to Catholic Charities USA's response efforts: Call (800) 919-9338

Direct Relief International, which provides humanitarian medical relief, is sending additional relief materials to complement its pre-positioned hurricane preparedness materials distributed in high-risk areas. In the three years since Katrina and Rita, Direct Relief has supported safety-net clinics and community health centers along the Gulf Coast with $47 million in medical material aid and $4.6 million in cash assistance. Direct Relief is communicating frequently with healthcare partners treating people affected by Gustav to deliver the most effective aid possible, both in the U.S. and in the Caribbean.

Hands on New Orleans is working with local and state agencies to prepare and ensure for a coordinated immediate response. Donations of funds to operate a volunteer reception center and to deploy an early responder team to meet immediate needs are necessary at this time; click here. To donate goods or products click here.

The Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation (LDRF), is expediting funding to local agencies along the Gulf Coast to help with the mandatory evacuation ahead of Hurricane Gustav. Already, LDRF has helped the Lafayette Restoration Center move seniors and people with special needs out of New Orleans and to safety, and there are many more local organizations LDRF is providing emergency assistance to. You can help. Visit the LDRF website to find out how: to donate, click here.

Operation USA, an international disaster relief agency, is partnering with established networks of community health clinics which are working around the clock to anticipate needs resulting from a major storm with 15-30 foot storm surges necessitating the possible evacuation of millions of people. Operation USA is appealing to individuals, foundations and companies for money and appropriate relief supplies to enable it to respond effectively when Hurricane Gustav makes landfall.

Southern Baptist Disaster Relief (SBDR) requests for feeding capacity has now doubled from 310,000 meals per day to more than 600,000 as the Gulf Coast braces for the possibility of a Category 4 Gustav. Some 113 of 115 Southern Baptist Disaster Relief feeding units have been put on alert to mobilize along the Gulf Coast states a day or two in the wake of hurricane landfall. Several larger shelters are at ready in Texas where four Texas Baptist Men Disaster Relief feeding units have deployed. Other sites will be determined as landfall nears.

World Vision, an international Christian relief and development agency, has readied emergency supplies in Picayune, Mississippi, with several truckloads of additional goods on standby in Dallas, Los Angeles and other U.S. locations. The organization's domestic disaster response teams are also on full alert today, with expert staff prepared to deploy from around the country early next week should Hurricane Gustav prove destructive.

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Sedona Principles 2nd ed.

1. Electronically stored information is potentially discoverable under Fed. R. Civ. P. 34 or its state equivalents. Organizations must properly preserve electronically stored information that can reasonably be anticipated to be relevant to litigation.
2. When balancing the cost, burden, and need for electronically stored information, courts and parties should apply the proportionality standard embodied in Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C) and its state equivalents, which require consideration of the technological feasibility and realistic costs of preserving, retrieving, reviewing, and producing electronically stored information, as well as the nature of the litigation and the amount in controversy.
3. Parties should confer early in discovery regarding the preservation and production of electronically stored information when these matters are at issue in the litigation and seek to agree on the scope of each party’s rights and responsibilities.
4. Discovery requests for electronically stored information should be as clear as possible, while responses and objections to discovery should disclose the scope and limits of the production.
5. The obligation to preserve electronically stored information requires reasonable and good faith efforts to retain information that may be relevant to pending or threatened litigation. However, it is unreasonable to expect parties to take every conceivable step to preserve all potentially relevant electronically stored information.
6. Responding parties are best situated to evaluate the procedures, methodologies, and technologies appropriate for preserving and producing their own electronically stored information.
7. The requesting party has the burden on a motion to compel to show that the responding party’s steps to preserve and produce relevant electronically stored information were inadequate.
8. The primary source of electronically stored information for production should be active data and information. Resort to disaster recovery backup tapes and other sources of electronically stored information that are not reasonably accessible requires the requesting party to demonstrate need and relevance that outweigh the costs and burdens of retrieving and processing the electronically stored information from such sources, including the disruption of business and information management activities.
9. Absent a showing of special need and relevance, a responding party should not be required to preserve, review, or produce deleted, shadowed, fragmented, or residual electronically stored information.
10. A responding party should follow reasonable procedures to protect privileges and objections in connection with the production of electronically stored information.
11. A responding party may satisfy its good faith obligation to preserve and produce relevant electronically stored information by using electronic tools and processes, such as data sampling, searching, or the use of selection criteria, to identify data reasonably likely to contain relevant information.
12. Absent party agreement or court order specifying the form or forms of production, production should be made in the form or forms in which the information is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form, taking into account the need to produce reasonably accessible metadata that will enable the receiving party to have the same ability to access, search, and display the information as the producing party where appropriate or necessary in light of the nature of the information and the needs of the case.
13. Absent a specific objection, party agreement or court order, the reasonable costs of retrieving and reviewing electronically stored information should be borne by the responding party, unless the information sought is not reasonably available to the responding party in the ordinary course of business. If the information sought is not reasonably available to the responding party in the ordinary course of business, then, absent special circumstances, the costs of retrieving and reviewing such electronic information may be shared by or shifted to the requesting party.
14. Sanctions, including spoliation ﬁndings, should be considered by the court only if it finds that there was a clear duty to preserve, a culpable failure to preserve and produce relevant electronically stored information, and a reasonable probability that the loss of the evidence has materially prejudiced the adverse party.
Copyright © 2007 The Sedona Conference®. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted courtesy of The Sedona Conference®.
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