The past teaches us much about the present and even the future whether we learn from it or not. Whether discussing the Kobe earthquake or the Katrina disaster in New Orleans, the catastrophic nature of the Haiti earthquake or the slow and treacherous nature of a single season of deadly heat, disasters are on the minds of humans everywhere.
One of the lessons learned from major disasters concerns displacement. Simply put, survivors who are immediately in need of housing and sustenance after a disaster are torn from their neighborhoods, have more than likely permanently lost their jobs or ways of making a living, and are separated from their familiar neighbors and neighborhoods. Many may been in poverty that will be worsened after the disaster. Or, many will enter poverty after generations of professional and economic stability.
Such displacement can lead to major depressions and even suicides, the permanent loss of businesses and specialty jobs, and permanent severance from families and communities. In highly impoverished areas, children may be adopted to other countries and permanently severed from their extended families. The owner of a neighborhood business may have to retrain and to start from the bottom in a new field of work. Generational residents of an area may leave and never return to home.
As a result, both the oldest and the newest concept in post disaster response and recovery is to plan, plan and to plan some more. As the experiences of each disaster provide new information, new challenges and new experience, planning allows for analysis and improvement of resources, practices and priorities.
One of the most pressing issues, housing and sustenance in place, calls for the most rapid and effective means to get people under shelter and to keep them from having to undergo long term displacement. The American concern lies in coordination between local, state, regional and national agencies and government functions. The Katrina disaster illustrated what horror can occur when there is no such coordination of effort in the planning or execution stages. The Haitian and tsunami disasters illustrated what happens when there is little or no hardening against natural disasters and when the disaster is catastrophic.
A great lesson learned was that those who are assumed to be of inferior social standing and status prove to be highly capable of organizing efforts, remaining in control, taking care of themselves and of initiating their own immediate rescue and evacuations, but do not have the resources to leave the area.
This made the poor immediate and post disaster response/recovery in the most resource laden country in the world far more distressing in the Katrina and Galveston situations than the self sufficiency and resourcefulness that was demonstrated in such impoverished areas as Haiti, the tsunami zones and rural Iran.
As a result, it is likely that education and local resource programs lead to individualized self sufficiency in the immediate response. Local organization and localized response might require as much or more money and attention in relation to the resources that are given to the giant, greatly funded regional and national disaster response functions.
In other words, smaller, more regionally managed and distributed resources, including immediate response and rescue personnel and equipment might be called for. Such regional and local programs account for the unique nature of disasters and the unique nature of the people and localized communities in the region.
Post disaster recovery efforts are being hard pressed to begin demolition, removal of debris and reconstruction of housing and commercial areas that provide jobs. In some cases, funding is complicated, or the devastation is complete, as with the Galveston region debris field. In some cases, the resources are poorly managed, as with the formaldehyde laden house trailers of post Katrina notoriety. In other cases, there are more foreign or new workers doing the reconstruction work and establishing themselves as permanent residents than there are original residents.
In any disaster, the processes involved in post disaster debris removal, demolition and reconstruction is unique to each area and to each disaster. But innovative ways to engage contractors, to get financing and funding, and to deal with conflicting human, localized, regional and national requirements and standards will always be called for.
“Such processes should be rich in data, imagination, communication and participation” 1 This is a central precept to modern disaster response and reconstruction planning, as business owners, all residents, whether still in place or relocated, must be included in discussions. The old fashioned “top down” systems are not adequate for healthy and successful recovery, but sadly are still the predominant way of doing things.
1. Robert B. Olshansky, “Planning After Hurricane Katrina”, Journal of the American Planning Association, Spring 2006
“Chambers County Ike Debris Cleanup”
