Supporting Parks and Recreation Recovery After Hurricane Helene

Tennessee’s Office of Outdoor Recreation is committed to helping public land management and outdoor recreation partners recover from the impacts of Hurricane Helene. This includes providing support and resources to ultimately prepare for reopening recreation lands and facilities as soon as reasonably possible. Parks and outdoor recreation are crucial to recovery and rebuilding a healthy community. A major benefit of parks and outdoor recreation is improving the quality of life in communities. This becomes increasingly important when a disaster takes quality of life to a low point.

Key Areas of Focus

• Supporting Urgent Needs: Targeting unaffected parks and public facilities for recovery operations and supporting urgent community needs.
• Recreation Recovery Coordination: Coordinating public parks and recreation recovery efforts across federal, state, and local agency partners.
• Recreation Recovery Planning: Helping local communities to include parks and outdoor recreation assets and services in disaster recovery plans.
• Rebuilding Parks and Outdoor Assets: Helping to rebuild community parks and other outdoor assets for long-term resiliency, including reassessing destroyed assets, developing master plans, and reestablishing park, river, and trail access.
• Reopening: Reopening facilities and access to outdoor recreation opportunities and programs to help people return to normalcy and support the community healing process.