27th Oct 2007
The Post-Disaster Wrapup
Once a disaster is starting to wind down, there comes the inevitable let down for the media. Everything turns from “OMG horrible things are happening” to “What else can we milk out of this?” And honestly, there is a little bit of a let down for the rest of us as well. The adrenaline stops pumping, we are free to think more seriously about what happened–and suddenly, we almost wish it would go back to the mind-numbing excitement.
But for every story about bureaucracy in in-action and rising death tolls, there are human interest stories that help give us a personal connection but more importantly, move the question from “Why?” to “What have we learned from this?” and “Am I the only one who is going through this?”
For one thing, we’ve learned that volunteerism can be an important factor in helping a community deal with grief. It’s a natural reaction to want to do something rather than sitting around feeling powerless. This time around, the opportunities for volunteerism led to a lot of creativity and perhaps even a little bit more understanding of the importance of distraction.
We’ve also learned that the feeling of powerlessness extends in all directions and that we have the means to provide comfort through technology. Just as on 9/11, when cell phone technology came to the forefront, technology is helping people far away and not-so-far-away keep abreast of the situation. And during Hurricane Katrina, we saw that the loss of technology did serious damage to our ability to deal with the situation.
Post-disaster let down is actually a very normal reaction. Read more about how to deal with it here and here.
-GhostGirl
