Uncovering the Real Recovery Challenge: What Emergency Management Must Do

Abstract Despite decades of genuine experience derived from major disasters, emergency exercises and expert reviews of crisis events in reports and after action summaries it seems we know far less about post disaster restoration and recovery than we should. This shortfall presents several challenges to public policy, governance and the practice of emergency management as the specific steps, requirements, connections, issues and interdependencies in resurrecting a severely damaged city goes far beyond cleanup and routine debris removal tasks. Approaches towards restoration and recovery differ between the USA and the UK but there is equal regard for deriving as much insight as possible from post disaster imperatives by deliberately exercising what is seldom examined – the raw details and demands of city and community recovery. One suggested avenue is to expand future emergency exercises by focusing on how better to understand and execute the variety of restoration and recovery activies needed and devote less energy to traditional emergency response measures. This would invite testing emergency management leaders and experts with demanding 'maximum of maximum' scenarios to analyze the depth, challenges and complexity involved.