Survivor centric strategies and nimble resilience in the recovery
process after a disaster
Joseph O. Prewitt
Diaz
This
commentary is to share a vision from the other side of a prism of disaster
recovery that up to now has been presented to the disaster affected people
after Hurricane Sandy. It is mid
June 2013, to this day the New York Times, the Daily News and other major
newspapers in the area are reporting in the hundreds of thousands people are
still living in temporary shelters. The U.S. Congress didn’t approve disaster
aid until January 28, 2013 (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/nyregion/congress-gives-final-approval-to-hurricane-sandy-aid.html?_r=0).
Disaster-affected people in New York and New Jersey, have
suffered lack of basic needs, severe weather, and support system that were not
familiar to them. In addition the attempt to offer assistance for secondary stressors
were foreign to them. A mismatch between the people and the way of life in
place versus the way the Federal Government has planned the recovery operations
has increased the insecurities, distrust and the fear of being uprooted from
their place.
The tug between the external organizations with pre-planned
programs to assist disaster affected people and the meaning that the disaster
affected people are giving to a changing strengths and meaning of place may be
serving as a block to the rebuilding of the places within neighborhoods and
communities (Noji, 2005). Place is important concept to understand how people
recover from a disaster in a large urban center since most research on place
has been conducted in urban centers (Giernyn, 2000).
Survivor centric consultation, decision making by the
disaster affected people in the re-establishment of place, the use if nimble
approaches to foster resilience through psychosocial support techniques
(Hobfoll et al. (2007); Prewitt Diaz, 2008b) to address the secondary stressors
are the basic strategies needed to resolve the grit lock to services in New
York and New Jersey.
Place is the perception in time and place of built and
natural space that is constructed through narratives, stories, and networks.
Historical, cultural, social, ecological and physicals attributes are torn and re-woven according to the
attitudes and feelings of people that find themselves in the eye of the storms,
the peripheral turbulence, or who have lost themselves in the winds of despair
(Sullivan, Schuster, Kuehn, Doble & Morais; 2009). Place includes leaving
and coming back, cultural identity with others in the place, family
connections, or this is the only place they know. There is nowhere to go, there
is no way out. The multigenerational families, that developed the place,
disbanded, the economy has collapsed. The only thing that remains is hope.
Having been displaced the night of Hurricane Sandy meant
that the disaster-affected person didn’t know where they were or what was their
place. To have no place means that disaster affected people were lost. There
may be a lot of nice people trying to keep you calm but deep inside you know
your place is gone. What are the next steps ponders the disaster-affected
person. There were no words of comfort that could alleviate the feeling of
being lost, disappearing, loosing connections, living in constant vigilance and
being driven and governed by fear.
Prewitt Diaz & Dayal (2008) found with there work in the
2004 tsunami, that the key to meaning of recovery is found in place. The
process of finding place is an inner and outer journey that fosters the
capacity to locate place, give it meaning, and solidify the sense of belonging.
Place holds the key to new beginnings. Place is the nature of a people joined together
by their past and present, joined together by their aspirations for the future.
The simplest explanation for what turns a group of people into a place is a
shared narrative. Place is both a story and a history (Prewitt Diaz & Dayal
2008).
A nimble vision of resilience permits that homeostasis
between built and natural environment in interaction with human beings may be
the pathway to re-establish place. Defining as an end goal enhancing resilience
provides an opportunity to disaster affected people to examine their place
through mapping in its entirety, identifying the important elements of the
place that enhance resilience.
Psychosocial support provides a space for disaster-affected
people to two specific phases (1) psychological first aid during the emergency
phase. Psychological first aid entails basic,
non-intrusive pragmatic care with a focus on listening but not forcing talk,
assessing needs and concerns, ensuring that basic needs are met, encouraging
social support from significant others and protecting from further harm (SPHERE
Manual, 2011, p. 335). and (2)
trains community workers to provide basic emotional and practical support to
the disaster affected people in addressing the challenges of secondary
stressors, by activating social networks, community trusted traditional
support, and supporting age appropriate centers (SPHERE, 2011, p. 334). The efforts of psychosocial support should be
community based in that international guidance suggests: (1) enable community
members including marginalized people to strengthen community self-help and
social support, (2) as part of early recovery, initiate plans to develop a
sustainable community by advocating for basic needs and activating community
networks to provide practical support (MHPSS, 2007; SPHERE 2011).
Psychosocial support facilitates the development of social
spaces that encourage and sustain a quality of interaction wherein people feel
they can touch, shape and be shaped by accessible conversation. These suggest a
combination of localness and proximity that helps people to stay in touch. In such
places, people feel a sense of voice that reverberates and creates resonance
with events and processes that affect their lives. These activities may reduce
the feelings of uprootedness, alienation and placelessness (Fullilove;1996).
CRSI (2011) suggests that there are four steps that the
community, place or neighborhood has to do to take charge of their own
destinies: (1) an understanding of the meaning of resilience for the disaster
affected people, (2) a practical measure of resilience in action, (3) simple
usable tools and process that will help the disaster affected people to move
forward and tangible benefit is that flow from their efforts. Resilience when
applied to disaster-affected people is nimble. It is the quality of places that
faces, moves, through and bounce back from difficulty, damage, or destructive
experience with a spirit that pursues and stays in touch with purposeful life.
This commentary describes how a psychosocial support approach
can enhance the communication between those that support a survivor centric
approach to recovery and the Government “fit all” methodologies. The paper
proposes a systematic approach using place, resilience, and psychosocial
support to achieve client centric solutions and develop nimble resilience.
Sources available upon request.
