In mid-November 2021, an atmospheric river brought extraordinary rainfall to southern British Columbia. Floods, landslides and power outages cut off communities and displaced thousands of people. On 17 November, the Canadian Red Cross launched an appeal to support those affected.
Looking back, the response followed a pattern that anyone who studies disasters will recognise: an immediate outpouring of generosity, followed by the far quieter and longer work of recovery.
The first days and the long months
Emergency response captures our attention because it is urgent and visible. Recovery is neither. Yet it is in the months after a disaster — when insurance claims are pending, homes are being rebuilt and children are returning to disrupted schools — that community organisations do much of their most important work.
The organisations best able to help in those months were, almost invariably, those that already knew their communities before the water rose. Trust cannot be improvised in a crisis. It must already exist.
Preparedness as a form of care
For small nonprofits, disaster preparedness can seem like a luxury reserved for large agencies. I would argue the opposite. A few modest steps dramatically increase an organisation’s capacity to serve when emergencies strike:
- Keep contact lists current and accessible offline, so that volunteers and vulnerable clients can be reached.
- Store essential records in the cloud with reliable backups, so that a flooded office does not mean lost information.
- Agree in advance with partner organisations who will do what, so that coordination does not begin from zero.
- Know your most vulnerable community members, and how they will be checked on.
Generosity, well directed
The generosity Canadians show in disasters is one of the nation’s quiet strengths. Its effect is greatest when it flows to established organisations with local knowledge, and when it continues beyond the first headlines into the long season of rebuilding.
Water recedes. The need it leaves behind does not recede nearly as quickly, and neither should our attention.
This article is commentary and personal reflection, not news reporting. Facts and figures are drawn from the publicly available sources listed below; the views expressed are the author’s own.
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