<aside> Recovery, the final phase of the Emergency Management cycle and perhaps the most overlooked phase during planning.
Losses take a long time to recover from – and the bigger the loss, the longer the recovery time. That’s true of personal losses and it’s true of community losses too. This can be the most time-consuming, and the most expensive, part of the cycle. But when it’s done right, a well-planned recovery effort can put your community in better shape than it was before.
Recovery actions are “Actions taken to repair and restore a community to a new normal.” The recovery phase is all those things you do AFTER AN EMERGENCY INCIDENT:
Recovery actions range from straightforward, one-time actions like holding incident debriefing sessions for members of the Emergency Team, to multifaceted, long-term projects like reconstruction of damaged or destroyed buildings. Whatever the action, it’s important that you do it at the right time, taking into account the urgency of the action and your overall recovery goals. And that takes planning.
Important recovery actions include:
The main purpose of a recovery plan is just what you’d expect – to facilitate the community’s quick and efficient recovery from the damage caused by the emergency incident. But recovery planning is also a perfect time to address future risks by evaluating what worked and what didn’t in previous parts of the EM cycle. Maybe some mitigation efforts didn’t reduce risk as much as the initial plan assumed they might. Maybe the incident revealed a lack of preparedness for certain types of risks. Maybe the response plan didn’t take into account factors that turned out to be important. Or maybe you’ll realize that some parts of your emergency program – fire awareness, say, worked so well that you want to expand it to more community members. Once you’ve got a good handle on what improvements or other modifications need to be made to make the community more resilient in the future, you can include those changes in your community Emergency Plan.