ABSTRACT
“Disaster recovery is the least understood aspect of emergency management among both scholars and practitioners,” noted hazards scholar Gavin Smith in Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery. 1 Some of our lack of understanding is due to the inherent qualities of the recovery process. It is not linear, does not occur within specific bounds of time or physicality, and is overall a messy process. Resilience promises, however, that despite the complications posed by this process, we can create positive changes in a community following a disaster event. To accomplish these changes on a local level requires commitment to the adaptive process of resilience. This process is exemplified by four attributes: improvisation, coordination, engagement of the community, and endurance. This chapter traces these qualities through a case study of one community’s recovery from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Also explored is the aspect of coordination, specifically how local administrative and political elites facilitate coordination to develop disaster resilience.
