Planning for Resilience Before a Hurricane, Fire or Flood

With wildfire season upon us, and expectations for more hurricanes, floods, and tornados in the coming months, it’s time to think about whether you have the supports you need to experience resilience. I know this from experience. When Hurricane Fiona toppled trees like bowling pins and ripped roofs off houses, communities across the Maritimes responded with the kind of collective goodwill that is a legacy of fishing communities that have now grown into metropolises. There is much to learn from history about what makes us resilient. It’s not just about individual grit. That won’t get you a new roof or take down a stand of trees that are precariously leaning next to your garage. For survival, and the sense of well-being it brings, we need our community as much as we need a positive outlook on life and coping strategies that help us avoid blaming ourselves for mishaps we couldn’t prevent.

I’ve learned a lot in my travels and through my research about resilience after a disaster. The communities that survive best are those that invested in building relationships long before the first raindrop fell or fire started. They tend to be more tolerant of differences, happy to welcome anyone who wants to join in, and willing to accept that different folks have different talents to offer.

They also offer people spaces to meet. I love dog parks, mostly because they offer dog owners a common space to chat. The same goes for children’s play equipment, places of worship, and local ethnic organizations and their halls. But let’s not forget community consultations when developers put in new subdivisions. It’s through these community efforts that people can advocate for sidewalks (which break down social isolation), pickleball courts, and a space to hold communal dinners. There are plenty of other ways we brace our community for the next big unknown. Sports leagues, green spaces, fishing derbies, and choirs do their bit when it comes to making us feel like we belong and our neighbor’s well-being (even if we don’t know their name) is our responsibility. Add a homeless shelter, a volunteer fire department, social services and police you can trust, and you might just have in place the infrastructure you need to survive a hurricane, tornado, flood or wildfire.

Indeed, these buffers against disaster also prevent us from experiencing trauma, which we now understand is far from inevitable. George Bonanno, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University, prefers the phrase ‘potentially traumatizing events’ when describing how we experience the catastrophes that are becoming more and more frequent as the climate emergency persists. These events needn’t be lingering sources of disorder when we have the supports around us to quite literally weather a storm. Add a healthy dose of social justice to any community and the outcome is likely to be a faster recovery that might even result in a more closely-knit community rather than a community traumatized for years.

Unfortunately, we have too many examples of failed recoveries. New Orleans and the decades-long effort to recover from Hurricane Katrina is emblematic of what can go wrong when people aren’t treated fairly and communities are marred by racism and structural disadvantage. Scattering people and destroying community cohesion does not create the conditions required for an emotional or physical recovery. While many in my region will have to relocate further inland after Fiona threw boulders the size of small cars on their front lawns and flooded residences, one hopes those people are able to re-establish a little of the community that they lost. It’s no coincidence that people who get forcibly displaced, whether Ukrainians fleeing war, or Californians whose homes have burned down, look to find others with a shared history and identity to tell their stories and reminisce. Diaspora of the displaced is a hedge against trauma, even if no mental health care provider is there while we drink coffee with those with whom we share a common past.