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Recovery funds to be used for disaster planning

By Alyssa Donovan
February 15, 2013 Updated Feb 15, 2013 at 11:07 PM CDT

PEORIA, Ill.-- Peoria and Woodford counties are receiving the last of their recovery funds from Hurricane Ike.

The $500,000 grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development will be used for disaster relief planning.

Executive Director of the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission Terry Kohlbuss said the funds will go to community and neighborhood planning, disaster planning with businesses and a floodplain management plan for Woodford county.

There will also be a guidebook based off of the tornado that hit Elmwood in 2010.

Kohlbuss said, "There were some valuable lessons learned in Elmwood. So we were going to do a guidebook that sort of documents those lessons learned. So the next time a community like Elmwood has a disaster they can go to that guidebook and go through the recovery process a little bit easier."

Peoria County Assistant County Administrator for Economic Development Mark Rothert said, "They've done a lot of great things with their downtown in rebuilding their community and we can use them as an example for what they did right in a new plan for other smaller communities. I think it's a great model we can look to."

More than $6 million will go to 55 communities throughout Illinois for disaster relief planning.

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