Once in a while there is a positive story about recovery after a major natural disaster. See this one re Jersey Shore Rebuilding After H. Sandy.
An important factor here is the economic conditions prior to the disaster, however.
Latinos rebuilt New Orleans after Katrina. Who will rebuild Houston? One of the salient features of New Orleans’ revival after Hurricane Katrina was an historic influx of Latino workers. In the Trump era, things may be different.
From Emergency Management Magazine: A Tale of Two Recoveries: Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy; How the social contexts in Mississippi and New Jersey affected recovery.
The authors provide some useful observations and analysis about the recovery process. Be sure to read the whole article.
See also this commentary by blogger Eric Holdeman on the concept of a “recovery concierge.”
Check out this site for information about a long-awaited recovery report from the American Planning Association. The title is Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation; 205 pp. You can download it or order a hard copy.
Note: this is a really important document. It has been in the works for years and it was written by several national experts. Also, the APA website has a number of supporting and supplement files related to the report.
The Diva now has a hard copy and thinks it is an excellent basic reference for all concerned with recovery. And she recommends it for a textbook for recovery courses and training programs.
Lots of news this week about efforts to deal with coastal development matters in NY and Boston. Also. an article about CT efforts.
From the Rockefeller Foundation, 6 Winners Announced for Rebuild By Design Competition, for coastal development projects.
From the City of Boston, their local efforts at planning for sea level rise and mitigation. See their Natural Hazard Mitigation website where all of the Technical Studies are listed on the right hand side of the page. Staff at the Boston OEM have attempted to integrate Natural Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation planning because of the city’s location on the Atlantic. The plan was approved by the State and is now pending FEMA review.
Christchurch, NZ is a major city in a first-world nation. And NZ has mandated earthquake insurance. We in the U.S. have a lot to learn from the recovery from two major earthquakes, which devastated the city’s central business district just a few years ago. Here are two current articles about their recovery experience:
For details on a novel way to gain reconstruction workers and benefit the unemployed see: New Zealand offers unemployed cash to move to quake ravaged city. Some details from the article:
Unemployed New Zealanders are being offered cash by the government to move to the earthquake-damaged city of Christchurch and join in the rebuilding effort. The government announced Tuesday it would pay welfare recipients 3,000 New Zealand dollars to move to the city if they found any kind of full-time work there.
Christchurch has been slowly rebuilding after a 2011 quake killed 185 people and destroyed much of the city’s downtown. * * * Minister Paula Bennett said the city’s reconstruction is creating thousands of jobs but some unemployed people don’t have the resources to move to Christchurch. She said the money will help pay for moving expenses, accommodation, tools and other equipment. “There is demand not only in construction, but in hospitality, retail and many other industries too,” she said in a statement.
Thanks to Pierre Picard for the URL.
Christchurch has been recovering from a massive earthquake in 2011. Here are a couple of articles about how victims and those working to help them have been faring in the nearly four years since then.
Thanks to Ian McLean for providing the citation.
Thanks to Joseph Martin for finding this report, since it was not easy to locate the direct URL. Although it addresses international disaster experiences, this report covers a lot of important topics that should be useful for domestic use as well. And it goes over the reasons why recovery is different from response.
See Mind the Gap! Post-disaster reconstruction and the transition from humanitarian relief. Produced by RICS by the Mx Lock Centre at the Univty of Westminster (UK). June 2006. The report is 105 pages, but their is a summary of the recommendation in the front part of the report.
Be sure to check out the RICS website for additional related reports.
The Diva has an article about the Sandy Rebuilding Task Force Report in the latest issue of Emergency Management Magazine. The digital version of the Nov. 2013 issue, is devoted to the topic of rebuilding after a disaster. My article, titled Sandy Task Force Issues Recommendations for Long-Term Recovery, is on pages 23-26. The hard copy version will probably be out in another week or so.
As also, I welcome feedback.
From the Christian Science Monitor, an excellent account of the very difficult questions that individuals and public officials face in the aftermath of disaster. See After the Flood CO Making Tough Decisions. Some excerpts follow:
The state of Colorado faces an even larger task – restoring access to isolated ommunities. Some 200 miles of state highways and about 50 state-maintained
bridges have been severely damaged or wiped out, many in challenging mountain terrain. It’s a daunting undertaking that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and will involve competing goals of speed, economy, and disaster mitigation and planning.Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), who has said he wants to rebuild “stronger,” has set a Dec. 1 deadline for rebuilding as much as possible, before winter sets in. Overall, though, the process will take years.
No doubt many decisions will be tough, although there could be an upside.
Thanks to Chris Jones for the citation.
Recovery Diva 