Empowering Resilient Communities

Just as “all disasters are local,” national disaster resilience can be best developed from the bottom up, starting with communities. Resilient communities must be the foundation of a national disaster resilience culture and another essential goal of a revitalized and effective Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Ultimately, it is a community’s responsibility to prepare for recovery. It must also be the community’s responsibility before an event to:

· understand specifically what constitutes recovery for that community;
· strategize and deliberately plan specific actions to achieve the recovery, and
· set expectations on how that recovery will be achieved and what the “new normal” will be following the disaster.

Disaster resilient communities would have the goal of rapidly returning to normal functioning after a disaster. They would do so using the full resilience continuum of prevent, protect, respond and recover appropriately within their context.

A nation of disaster resilient communities would meet this goal by working to protect, prevent and mitigate appropriate systems with a focus on eventual full recovery. They coordinate response to rapidly achieve recovery of normal community function and capacity and ensure that recovery is rapid, equitable, and leaves the community at least as strong as it was prior to the disaster.

Disaster resilient communities will have realistic expectations of outside assistance following a disaster based on comprehensive vulnerability and capability self-assessments and community developed plans and processes across the full resilience continuum.

Nationally, DHS must help nurture communities in developing their resilience; help train them in concepts, tools, practices which develop, support, and enhance disaster resilience, and work with communities and regions in exercising their resilient characteristics. In return, resilient communities enhance the power of national programs by inculcating realistic expectations and by applying local power in an effective and efficient way. This evolution harmonizes DHS’s roles and allows DHS to change from being solely a federal “control” agent (which it is sometimes seen as doing ineffectively) to become a facilitator of a rapid and effective return to normal community function (a role which will properly and successfully leverage the federal resources and might).

A number of surveys and studies reveal that the current federal hierarchical, response-centric approach has elevated the public’s expectations of federal responsibility and capability well beyond the nation’s needs —and the Federal government’s ability to deliver -- particularly in light of longer term trends such as the projected increased in climate variability. The nation would be better served to engage communities in a way that sets more realistic expectations and increases the incentives to become resilient at the local and regional level.