Overcoming disaster does not automatically ensure a community’s resilience in the future. However, if disaster preparedness is perceived as a never-ending task, a society may actually be able to exercise substantial communal resilience over an extended period of time.
At the ‘Communities in Transition‘ conference I attended in Jerusalem last week, Ruvie Rogel discussed societal resilience using the example of Biloxi, Mississippi.
This southern town was severely hit by Hurricane Camille in 1969, causing catastrophic damage to life and property.
Yet Biloxi not only bounced back to rebuilt its community, it did it again after Hurricane Katrina struck the Mississippi coast in 2005. Biloxi has now become the synonym for recovery in the context of disaster management in the south.
This is mainly due to the culture of preparedness shared by its inhabitants. This not only includes a common understanding that there are no ’safe times’, but also that every citizen needs to know and play an active role during a crisis and in its aftermath.
What can Israel learn from Biloxi’s experience?
