Your (future) disaster recovery

As crises both natural and manmade become more common, it’ll be helpful to know what your recovery will look like when institutions fail you like they failed Altadena and Lahaina.

It’s been months since the fire, and you’ve learned that “recovery” is a tidy word for a chaotic, grinding, and deeply frustrating process. What started as an acute crisis quickly became a drawn-out, all-consuming slog through a bureaucratic nightmare. What appears from the outside to be help from the inside is a never-ending maze.

You spend hours each day on hold, resending forms, chasing down people who either can’t or won’t help. One department blames another. Systems don’t sync. People don't call you back. You check websites that never seem to be updated. You rely on a confident answer one day, then the next discover it was a complete fabrication. Despite their failures, you're the one who needs to deal with the consequences.

You’re expected to act fast—submit this, sign that, meet every deadline. But when you need answers, the same urgency doesn’t apply. Delays stretch on. Updates vanish. There is no accountability. Your elected, well-paid public officials tell you that recovery is progressing better than expected. This might be the most seamless recovery in all of history. Your insurance pays you $0.40/dollar for your possessions and fights you even for that.

You can't think about rebuilding your actual house. You first have to worry about replacing a lifetime of stuff, one item at a time. Every object demands a decision: What brand? What model? Does it even still exist? Soon you realize: you’re not rebuilding your life. You’re staging a cheap imitation of it. The weight and meaning behind what was lost are irreplaceable, but you still need the basics anyway. Yet this is easier than remembering you're waiting to return to a home that will never be the same.

Support fades fast. In the beginning, there were recovery centers, donations, promises of speedy recovery. That generosity felt good—for the donors. The hope of seeing those donations fades by the day. You’re still here, waiting. Applying. Following up. Grieving quietly as friends move on and systems leave you behind.

But you survived the disaster, right?