Transition from response to recovery after the Lancaster, TX, tornado: An empirical description

Abstract

Disaster researchers and disaster managers have relied upon various depictions of disaster phases for their professional activities, but there has been little empirical examination of these phases. This paper looks at when response activities started and ended and when recovery efforts began following a tornado. The data indicate that the transition from response to recovery is not a discrete event; rather, soon after response activities were initiated within the community, recovery efforts were also started. Although disaster phases provide an effective way to organize data and actual events, they need much further empirical and theoretical examination if they are to be an important component of disaster research and disaster management.