Economic Recovery

There are many other aspects of recovery besides reconstruction of infrastructure and buildings. Economic recovery is vital because strong local economic conditions can help residents recover more quickly than weak economic conditions. Environmental recovery is fundamental because the natural environment provides essential ecosystem services, so recovery cannot be complete without a healthy environment. Social and psychological recovery is also important. Peoples' social lives are disrupted by disaster, and many people suffer from psychological issues in post-disaster situations. The combination of infrastructure, building, economic, environmental, and social recovery demands input from many stakeholders; the government cannot determine recovery strategies alone. 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 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 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 disaster is big enough, as in the cases of Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy – national economies, at least in the short- to medium-term.

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. Tsunami, 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 health care 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.

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Figure 11.16: Damage to a Fishing Port after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.
Credit: By Michael L. Bak [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

As noted earlier, economic recovery from disaster is crucial. Although the recovery of infrastructure and public services involves relatively few stakeholders, economic recovery involves many people from many walks of life. Evidence suggests that the most successful recoveries are those that involve collaboration between the public and private sectors. An important aspect of this collaboration is the need for governments to recognize the characteristics of small businesses and design policies that favor them in order to jump-start recovery of the local economy. For instance, governments can develop mechanisms that enable local businesses to carry out recovery projects easily and quickly, with a minimum of red tape. In addition, as early in the recovery process as practicable, local government can replace and (when economically feasible) upgrade infrastructure that supports local business activities.