PrintThe Complex Nature of Community Recovery
There are many other aspects of recovery besides the reconstruction of infrastructure and buildings. Economic recovery is obviously vital because a strong local economy can help residents recover more quickly than a weak economy. At the same time, social and psychological recovery must be emphasized and not overlooked. Every aspect of peoples’ lives are disrupted by disaster, and many people suffer from psychological issues such as PTSD in post-disaster situations. The stress of the recovery process, including financial strain, separation of families, and other stressors can have very negative effects on a community.
Environmental recovery is also fundamental because the natural environment provides essential ecosystem services, so recovery cannot be complete without a healthy environment. Storm surge can cause severe environmental damage as many spills occur as a result, including overflows of sewerage treatment plants, oil and gas storage facilities, and wells, among others. After Katrina, whole neighborhoods near New Orleans were contaminated with petroleum from a refinery. These types of environmental impacts take a great deal of time to resolve. Additionally, agriculture and fisheries in an area impacted by a storm surge or tsunami can be devastated.
The combination of infrastructure, building, economic, environmental, and social recovery demands input from many stakeholders. For example, building recovery plans require input from local planning departments, homeowner associations, contractors, utility companies, and many others. As a result, it is important to adopt policies that identify stakeholders in building recovery – as well as in economic recovery, environmental recovery, and socio-psychological recovery – and ask them to join with government actors to participate in creating a post-disaster recovery plan during the mitigation phase of the emergency management cycle.
Expanding on these ideas about recovery, a hurricane-related disaster can have tremendous impacts on a local economy. For example, although Hurricane Charley in 2004 brought no significant storm surge, the storm’s category 4 winds severely affected the City of Punta Gorda, Florida. Many of the buildings in the downtown area were destroyed. The unemployment rate for the city rose 2.2 percent in the following month, and it took more than a year for the unemployment rate to return to pre-disaster levels. Thus, coastal disasters are huge drains on local economies and – if the scale of the disaster is big enough, as in the cases of Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy – on national economies, at least in the short- to medium-term (see case studies).
In the business sector, industries that are affected by a coastal disaster are often specific to the country and locality, but typically include at least some combination of tourism, health care, agriculture, fishing, and manufacturing. In 2020, Hurricane Laura ruined sugar cane and rice crops, killed hundreds of cattle, and sank fishing boats in southwest Louisiana. Farmers and fishermen have a long road to recovery after these types of impacts.
Tsunamis, hurricane storm surge, and other coastal hazards can destroy important tourist and health care infrastructure, including hotels, restaurants, and eldercare facilities. Recovery of the tourism and healthcare sectors is a priority for many coastal local governments. The health care sector is particularly important in many coastal communities of the southern United States, which have a high proportion of elderly residents that have retired from colder climates to warmer beach communities.