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In August, I posted on X (let’s leave that conversation for another time) a provocative comment, questioning whether recovery exists:

— mtthwhgn  (@mtthwhgn) August 21, 2024

My feeling is that emergency management currently approaches the post-disaster phase too simplistically. Reality is that this is often a complex, iterative process, without a defined (or definable?) end. This post is a companion to a podcast episode I was invited to join recently. This is the fourth episode of the JBA Climate Resilience podcast and focused on the post-incident period. In preparation for the recording, I was thinking about alternative ways to view the recovery process.

In Japan, there’s an artform known as kintsugi. This involves repairing broken pottery with a mixture of lacquer and gold powder. Rather than hiding the damage, kintsugi celebrates it – emphasising both the transformation and repair. Instead of cracks and scars being something which diminishes, the ‘flaws’ are made visible; an obvious, glistening sign of change, growth and memory.

Would it be possible to view the process of recovering from disaster in a similar way? Drawing something beautiful from the damage instead of a rush to return to a pre-disaster condition.

When does recovery end?

The six stages integrated emergency management cycle suggests that a recovery stage exists, and I don’t dispute that there is ‘before disaster’ and there is ‘after disaster’. But, reducing the complexity of this process to ‘recovery’ might hold us back doing it better.

The UK Government’s guidance explains that recovery is the “process of rebuilding, restoring and rehabilitating a community following an emergency”. They note that this phase ‘continues until the needs of those affected have been met’.

That sounds logical, but if you pull at that thread it begins to unravel.

Modern societies are grappling with challenges on a day-to-day basis. Food insecurity, fuel poverty, discrimination, inadequate housing, ageing infrastructure, cost of living crisis. People can find themselves ‘in need’ daily and in many complex ways. But the definition of recovery seems to mean to me that it can’t be completed until all of those systemic and chronic issues are addressed.

In the podcast, my fellow guest Evie Whatling said “measuring the success of recovery is hard because when does it end?”

Looking at recovery differently

The post incident language is biased towards the optimistic.

Phrases like bouncing forward, returning to normality or (*shudder*) ‘new normality’ are jarring. If you’ve lost your home to wildfire, a flood swept away the business that brings you your livelihood, or a friend or family member lost their life, there is no ‘going back’ or ‘normality’. Those phrases minimise our understanding of the harms experienced.

In an emergency, responders are often obvious; marked out by their flashing blue lights or hi-visibility jackets. If we can have responders, then perhaps we need to consider who the ‘recoverers’ are.

Perhaps recoverers might include functions such as:

• loss adjustors from insurance companies,
• teams involved in cleaning up and mending damage,
• healthcare staff who provide ongoing physical and wellbeing services,
• the finance staff who have to reallocate budgets from existing plans, and of course
• local community groups, organisations, leaders who hold communities together and their constituent members.

These recoverers are far less distinct. There’s no sirens. No protective equipment. Perhaps some can be identified by their sharp suits or clipboards, but often, they’ll look like everyone else.

Most responders (and I’d suggest a lot of recoverers) are not ‘of the place’ an incident happens. As a result, local knowledge about the place, how it’s communities function and what they need is limited, certainly initially. Generalisations and assumptions made might address some of the need for a short period, but are unlikely to meet the wide spectrum of need that inevitably exists.

I mentioned in the podcast, the brilliant work of Lori Peek and Alice Fothergill. Their project ‘Children of Katrina’ explored how children cope after disaster. They found three post-disaster trajectories which could inform the support people might need.

• A declining trajectory – where life is marked by ongoing shocks, setbacks, and instability.
• A finding-equilibrium trajectory – where access to resources and support (before and post disaster) can halt decline.
• And a fluctuating trajectory – where misalignment of interventions results in an unstable progression.

This could be one way of thinking in more detail about the recovery process. Another is found in the work of Hugh Deeming who proposed an additional ‘stabilisation’ phase as a transition between response and recovery. A definition of stabilisation is proposed as ‘the exercise of interim control following an incident in order to increase public safety, and to mitigate the risk of secondary impacts occurring’.

The definition is perhaps less explicitly connected to engaging directly with communities but I think that’s where kintsugi comes in…

Kintsugi and recovery

Like recovery, kintsugi process is slow, mindful, multi-stage process:

• The human impulse to fix the broken pot is strong. However, the first stage of the kintsugi practice invites you to notice the brokenness.
• Glue (or traditionally tree sap) is applied to reconnect the broken pieces. This evokes the bonds and relationships formed in communities during adversity and healing.
• Whilst the glue is wet, the pieces are held in place using tape. It takes time for the glue to set, which is perhaps equivalent to the proposed stabilisation phase, where subsequent activities can’t proceed until some equilibrium has been found.
• Next, excess glue might be removed using a file, smoothing away that which is no longer required. In my mind, this is similar to the steps of refining the often quite blunt initial responses, with something which better meets needs.
• And finally, gold powder is used to highlight the cracks and repair. Respecting the damage.

Perhaps if there’s one thing to take away from this, it’d be to acknowledge that ‘recovery’ is more nuanced that we sometimes assume. Spending more time considering it’s complexity could help recoverers to provide more effective post incident support.

You can take a listen to the episode here: