Recovery means the coordinated efforts and processes to bring about the immediate, medium and long term holistic regeneration and enhancement of a community following an impacting emergency event.

 

The recovery process after this type of event is about supporting people to rebuild their lives and restore their emotional, social, economic and physical well-being. It is more than simply building back the infrastructure.

The impact of a natural or man-made emergency event always leaves something to be fixed.  How well we recover from an event will mostly depend on how well we have prepared ourselves.

 

Recovery should:

• Support cultural and physical well-being of individuals and communities
• Minimise the escalation of the consequences of the disaster
• Reduce future exposure to hazards and their associate risks – i.e. build resilience
• Take opportunities to regenerate and enhance communities in ways that will meet future needs.

 

So, let's get started

Effective recovery requires preparation

To help you understand, prepare, respond to and RECOVER from any emergency there are four key phases that must be understood for robust planning.

Reduction	This is where there is a risk or hazard but with forward thinking, planning and implementation this is either mitigated completely or reduced to the best that it can be.
Readiness	Developing plans to prepare and recover from an impacting event supports those around us and gives clarity during this anxious and stressful time. Resourcing those plans with supplies, equipment, services, and then training, familiarising people or those mostly affected on how those plans will be implemented will bring this phase together. If you are reading this and starting your planning, you are in the Readiness phase.
Response	This is when the impacting event has occurred or is happening and those previously prepared plans and resources, including your business continuity plan, are now put into action. Psychosocial effects (stress/anxiety) on people are also reduced when there has been a good planning process developed prior to the event and then activated during the response and recovery phase. It may be a severe impact, but people see hope as they now have something tangible (a plan) to work their way through and support their recovery History and experience have repeatedly identified that once this response phase has commenced it is too late to start planning for the emergency
Recovery	Starts at Reduction in the planning stage and looks forward at everything with all staff and/or the community and stakeholders involved. To build you plan during the Readiness phase (preparedness) your thinking should consider…. what the environment (your home, your business - all aspects) looks like before the impact (i.e., you need a picture of what you want to get back to) what is likely to change during the impact (how could each hazard effect your home/ business) what will the important needs be after the event. (This is where those who will be with you can assist in your thinking and planning) It won’t be possible always to pluck money out of a bottomless barrel to make the perfect world, but it will be possible to understanding what will be necessary in the recovery from an event so that the various views and expectation levels are understood and managed.

 

Firstly, there are two main types of planning that should be considered

Emergency Planning to prepare your home and business to get through an impacting event….

• If you haven’t started or prepared for an emergency at home, you can Click Here for information on getting prepared. 
• It is important that things are safe and organised at home first before spending time focusing on your business continuity plan and recovery.

Many businesses will have undertaken Business Continuity Planning.

However, if that is not you, it is timely that you look at this process, access the resources to support this and then sit down and prepare with all those who will be involved or effected by it. This will support and minimise the effect on you, your staff and the organisation. It also means that you will be in a much more viable position as you start to come out of the impact and, recover from it.

If you have these two plans in place or in preparation, at home or at work, you and your family and team are on the path to being better prepared to recover from an impacting event.

Our Hazards

To assist in the understanding of what could impact us here in the Waitomo District……

A study was undertaken by the Waikato Regional Council in 2017 and produced a report of what the likely hazards and their possible consequences could be and impact us. A summary of this report is displayed as a chart Waitomo Hazards Matrix (DOCX 40 KB) (DOCX 40 KB)…There are four categories of severity, with those hazards grouped together.

Use this as a guide of what your planning should be to address any or all of these. Your organisation may also have other specific type risks that will be necessary to plan for.

You have the background…….now!

If you are not sure in which direction to start check out these online resources that will help explain some of the areas you should be considering in your planning.

• How resilient is your business? 
  Resilient Organisations -this website has great Resources available, and you can use the checklist to assess your organisation’s resilience 
• Business continuity plan template
  Templates can be found here or here (DOCX 66 KB) (DOCX 66 KB) – there are many sites on google that have free business continuity planning templates available to download or personalise to suit you.
  When you have selected a template that you think would be best suited to your business, print it off and sit down with your staff and go through it with them to get their input. You may be surprised what comes out of those discussions. Follow the prompts and guides that will help your thinking to find solutions but remember it is your plan so personalise it to your business and for the ease of understanding of all those who will work with it.

 

Some other useful links

 

The National Disaster Resilience Strategy

Released by the New Zealand Government to raise awareness across all communities that we need to be prepared and build in resilience before it is needed. From lessons learnt from recent larger impacting events around the country it has highlighted the fact that communities and organisations need to come together and plan on how they will recover from these event types. In the next couple of years we will see a large emphasis on this.

 

Waikato Region Recovery Plan

Under the requirements of the Civil Defense Emergency Management Act 2002 the Waikato Region has produced a Recovery Plan that supports pre, during and post emergency recovery components that require councils and communities to plan together.

 

How private companies can reshape results and plan for a COVID-19 recovery

This highlights four actions an organisation can take now to help in their recovery

 

The Business Continuity Institute
This site offers other good information to assist your planning process. 

 

 

A business continuity plan should be prepared by all of those who will be involved in making it work. This is especially so for those that will be operating under the stressors of that impacting emergency event.