Long Plain First Nation's still not fully recovered from the July 20th tornado that hit the community last year. Chief Dennis Meeches was at a disaster management conference in Winnpeg yesterday, and provides an update.

"It happened on the evening of July 20th, and the community responded very quickly," says Meeches. "We had our staff set up a command centre at the Spirit Lodge. In the first few days, we evacuated close to 800 people from Long Plain and placed them in hotels in Portage la Prairie and Winnipeg. Just for being able to respond to the emergency, I have to give our staff a lot of credit, as well as for working with INAC (Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada) and Red Cross the following day just to begin full recovery effort on the response to the tornado."

Part of recovery presentation in WinnipegHe continues, "We've always had a fairly strong communication system in Long Plain First Nation. Social media did a fairly good job with people notifying people. We also have our local radio station. We have a weekly radio program that I do. Since the tornado, I've been providing periodic updates on the recovery effort on homes and commercial buildings, and evacuees, that kind of thing. We also had town hall meetings on a regular basis with the evacuees just to know where things are at in terms of their recovery and when they might be going home."

Meeches notes they've updated their emergency response plan since then and made efforts to provide better cell coverage for the reserve. Several companies have been contacted, and Meeches explains it's quite expensive to expand cell coverage, and they have a tentative agreement with MTS.

He notes the Spirit Lodge has played a big role in the efforts. "Spirit Lodge has quite a unique building design and considered a safe place -- a tornado shelter. It's a community centre, but also the design of the building makes people at ease in terms of being designed in such a way so as to withstand high winds."

He adds three evacuees are still away from home, and he hopes they can be brought back before the next July 20th, but two may still have to remain away from their homes.

"With Long Plain First Nation, this is my first experience working with the Red Cross," adds Meeches. "I think they did a tremendous job -- just their organizational skills and their ability to respond to natural disasters. They have, of course, a very good track record throughout the entire community."

Meeches notes revenue apart from streams of funding from the government has been crucial.

"With Long Plain First Nation, we're fortunate to have many successful businesses," explains Meeches. "They've contributed in a lot of ways to our recovery effort. INAC did a very good job in working with us, but if we didn't have the strength we did through our businesses, we wouldn't have been able to provide the recovery effort that we did when the storm hit. It took about six weeks before we received INAC funding. I can't say enough about INAC in being able to provide services to Long Plain First Nation. In some ways, I guess, we've gained some recognition in terms of our recovery efforts. That's why we were invited to a conference in Winnipeg to let people know the Long Plain story of our natural disaster and being able to recover and do it in a very proactive way in partnership with INAC and Red Cross, and a lot of the other service organizations that stepped up to help us."