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Disaster Recovery Is Not a Shake-and-Bake Process

Recovery from many events takes years, not months.

See this story about a flood event in West Virginia, Patience Wears Thin 25 Months After Deadly Flood.

Unfortunately, this is a story that is too common for how long disaster recovery can take. There is $150M available and after two years, less than 1 percent% has been allocated to homeowners and rebuilding. Slow starts and inefficiencies are typical in these types of rebuilding efforts. The only people with a sense of urgency in the matter are the people who lost their homes.

Now with some national attention on the slowness, maybe more progress will be made. If/when you have your major disaster, the response will come and go — but it is the rebuilding and reconstruction of your community that will dictate how resilient you really are. 

Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.