Business Disaster Assistance and Recovery Forum

Lessons Learned About Long-term Recovery

March 15, 2007
U.S. Chamber of Commerce

BCLC's forum took a look at the lessons learned in recent disaster recovery efforts. Generally, immediate relief goes well, participants agreed, but the pace of community recovery is frustrating.

The trouble might be that, as a country, we haven't learned the right lessons about disaster recovery and we're still making the same mistakes that were made decades ago.

On top of that, long-term recovery needs are not often part of initial disaster damage assessments.

Forum participants identified two areas that could improve future long-term recovery efforts: community resilience and local cross-sector coordination.

Long-term recovery hinges on the ability of the local business community to restore normal operations, employ local residents, serve local customers, and pay taxes to the local government.

And, public-private partnerships at the community level are needed to define coordination protocol and find ways to streamline and improve response.

For the last six months, BCLC and its disaster response working group have been developing the concept of a national-level funding organization whose purpose would be to assist communities in disaster management and coordination.

The proposal for this fund will continue to evolve as additional stakeholders participate in the concept stage. If you are interested in reviewing the initial proposal, download it here. If you have feedback, email BCLC.

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