Coordination in Disaster Recovery: Implications for Policy and Practice

• Main Author: Bundy, Sarah Jo
• Format: Others
• Published: North Dakota State University 2018
• Subjects: Emergency management.
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10365/27223

Disaster scholarship and recent disaster policy in the United States have suggested that coordination of efforts in the disaster recovery process will allow impacted jurisdictions to maximize positive recovery outcomes. Yet it remains unclear exactly who should be, or is, coordinating disaster recovery at the local level. This study explored the role of county elected officials in disaster recovery in an attempt to understand what role these elected officials currently play in the recovery process—particularly as related to the coordination of recovery efforts. During the initial data collection process, the researcher discovered that the role of county elected officials in disaster recovery appears to be consistent with their routine, day-to-day role in county government. No one person within the impacted counties was charged with a coordinator role in recovery. The researcher expanded the focus of the study to explore whether there were disaster conditions that necessitate overall coordination in order to best negotiate the recovery process and, if so, who was fulfilling that overall coordination role and what were they doing as part of it. Data was initially collected through 20 in-depth, telephone interviews with county elected officials in twelve states. Grounded theory was used to conceptualize the overall research design and analyze the data. Based on theoretical sampling, an additional 22 in-depth, telephone interviews were completed with a combination of county elected officials, emergency managers, designated recovery coordinators, and municipal mayors. The data showed that overall coordination in disaster recovery as implied by the literature and supported in federal policy did not appear to be currently happening—at least not at the county level. Coordination—to the extent that it was occurring in most jurisdictions—could best be described as in pockets and ad hoc. However, the study was unable to determine the extent to which this absence of coordination represents a problem in recovery. Based on the findings of this research, it would seem that there is a discrepancy between the literature-based idealization of coordination in recovery and the ad hoc coordination materializing in practice that needs to be addressed by both researchers and practitioners.