What Happens Next: Metaphor in Disaster Recovery Policy

I. INTRODUCTIONIn the aftermath of a natural disaster, we routinely ask-and attempt to answer-What happened? And then we turn to What happens next? The first question we answer with facts, statistics, and narrative. The second question requires an answer that is less definite, more abstract. To understand the abstract-in this case, answering What happens next? after a natural disaster-we employ metaphor to describe and promote recovery efforts. Metaphor creates a perception of what the recovery will look like, how it will be accomplished, and what the ultimate result will be. By invoking a specific metaphor, government officials, media outlets, and citizens emphasize certain aspects of recovery over others,1 drawing attention to what they consider priorities or encouraging a specific attitude in the recovering community.This Comment will first provide an overview of metaphor and how it applies in the disaster recovery context. It will then consider two specific metaphors for disaster recovery-one historical and one contemporary-to examine how metaphor can both help and hinder disaster recovery. Finally, this Comment will discuss resilience, a term often used when discussing disaster recovery, but rarely recognized for what it is-a metaphor. This Comment argues that by acknowledging resilience as a metaphor, the varying definitions and perceptions of resilience will become more useful to understanding disaster recovery.II. THE NECESSARY METAPHOR: DISASTER AND RECOVERY AS REIFICATIONIn a world driven by science, technology, and the media, we answer the question What happened? with facts, statistics, and narratives, establishing the contours of a disaster. . Consider, for example, the image tracking of Hurricane Sandy by both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA, which gave us a detailed description of how the Superstorm began as a tropical wave off the coast of Africa on October 11, 2012, developed into a tropical depression moving across the Caribbean Sea by October 20, became Tropical Storm Sandy on October 22, and accelerated into Hurricane Sandy on October 24.2 As Hurricane Sandy made its way towards the east coast of the United States, it joined with a nor'easter storm, morphing into what some called a Frankenstorm.3 While NASA and NOAA tracked the pending disaster from afar, government at all levels-city, state, and federal- began to prepare. On October 28, 2012, President Obama signed emergency declarations for Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York, making federal funds and support available to state governments in anticipation of the hurricane making landfall the next day.4 When Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey on October 29, government officials, news stations, and social media were all able to report not just where, but how the Superstorm had arrived.5A natural disaster, however, is more than a hurricane or another catastrophe in nature; it is the catastrophe's interaction with and effect on human populations.6 To answer What happened? requires more than just knowing how the catastrophe arrived; it also requires an accounting of the catastrophe's effect on human populations. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, government, news media, and social media all rushed forward with answers, establishing the contours of the disaster. Across the Atlantic basin, there were at least 234 deaths caused by Sandy.7 In the United States, seventy-two people were killed directly-by floodwaters, falling trees, and other hurricane-related causes-and eighty-seven were killed indirectly, by the after-effects of the storm, including hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning.8 Sandy was the second-costliest hurricane in U.S. history, causing over $65 billion in damage.9 Although the storm ran along the East Coast and made landfall in New Jersey, Sandy ultimately affected twenty-four states with flooding, blizzards, strong winds, and resulting power outages. …