The Long Way Back from Disaster
If, as disaster relief staff are known to say, every disaster is different, they still have much in common, throughlines that appear after floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires do their devastating work. Their toll is most often measured in dollars and lives or properties lost, but there is a psychic cost that is more difficult, if not impossible, to quantify.
When the weather or fire recedes, the human calamity begins, and the recovery can take years, as individuals and communities stitch their homes and lives back together.
The scope of the disaster is compounded by so many factors. Whether people have somewhere to go afterward and a healthy way to deal with the trauma. Whether people have insurance and whether they own their homes. Whether they can prove they own them. Whether it happens in the city, the suburbs, or a rural area.
What makes a recovery complete? Why does it take so long? And who decides when it’s over? The disaster staff of Catholic Charities agencies across the country and in several territories deal routinely with these questions, and with the extended aftermath of disasters. They show up, they stay on, and they accompany, both as first responders and as community members, for as long as it takes.
More than Case Management
“I think we’re better now at recognizing why somebody is staying with us longer,” says Maggie Rogers, executive director of Catholic Charities Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida. Her staff is increasingly on the lookout for the psychological crises that may result from surviving a disaster, and today they employ mental health counselors, in addition to case managers, to assist in recovery.
During the one-two punch of Hurricanes Helene and Milton in October 2024, when more than 7,000 homes were destroyed in Pasco County alone, the agency closed its six homeless shelters, totaling more than 1,000 beds, because of the danger of flooding. All of those people had to be sheltered elsewhere, plus those who didn’t or couldn’t evacuate and ended up fleeing their homes.
Paul was one of the latter. Seventy-five years old when Helene barreled into his first-floor apartment, he’d only ever experienced minimal storm damage in 40 years. This time, he awoke to a river of water and sewage in his apartment. Paul briefly dove into the flood to free his 16-year-old dog Rowdy, who was trapped in his crate. A retired medical research photographer and antique book collector, he lost everything, except the dog. Paul was not a client of Catholic Charities before the storm hit, but he became one, and for much longer than anticipated.
He found refuge at Pasco Hope Shelter until the agency set him up with an apartment in a rehabbed five-unit building; it soon became apparent that Paul was afraid to move on, though, even after he began paying rent on the new apartment. Rogers says staff lovingly reminded him that he’d still be with Catholic Charities—they own the building, after all. They moved two of his new shelter friends, fellow seniors Judy and Rose, into the same building, which eased the transition for all three.
“Catholic Charities does incredible work to help people like me who are desperate and despairing,” Paul told a gathering of agency supporters a year after the storm. “They give us hope by giving us help!"
Paul’s experience—the fear of going back, the paralysis that may keep a survivor from moving forward—is not uncommon, Rogers says.
“...we recognize that they’re not going to have the answers tomorrow and they’re not going to know what they want to do with their life tomorrow...”
“As a responder, you’re making sure they have access to food and a shower and laundry, and they can talk to somebody and feel safe and comforted,” she says, noting that it’s sometimes weeks before a survivor can return to their neighborhood to see their home, if it’s even still there. Then they have to start making hard decisions about what to do next—stay, go, rebuild, move on? That doesn’t happen quickly and is part of the reason recovery can take so long, well past the attention span of a standard news cycle.
“Having done this a few times, we recognize that they’re not going to have the answers tomorrow and they’re not going to know what they want to do with their life tomorrow,” Rogers says. “And that’s okay. That’s okay.”
Responding Locally
“It’s a matter of community organization, getting people together and bringing them all to the table.”
Emotional trauma knows no geographic boundaries, as Jane Crady can tell you.
A former juvenile drug and alcohol counselor, Crady has worked with Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Indianapolis since 2008 as their coordinator of disaster preparedness & response. She covers the entire state—all five dioceses, including many rural areas—and is the agency’s only dedicated disaster staffer.
In many rural communities, she says, options of where to go post-disaster are limited. There are likely fewer shelters than in a more urban area, such as St. Petersburg, which results in many people either doubling up with others or staying in a home that may not be safely habitable.
“Who’s your hospitality?” asks Crady. “They go to friends and family, and that creates the next disaster, because of child abuse and domestic violence and drug and alcohol problems and everything else.”
Those secondary effects make it imperative, Crady says, that Catholic Charities and other agencies begin recovery work as soon as possible.
“You got to catch them before they scatter,” she says of survivors. “That’s why it’s so important to get long-term recovery and disaster case managers (DCMs) up and running very quickly.”
They’re typically able to do that in Indiana because many of their weather events are what are called “low-attention disasters,” those that do not rise to the level of a FEMA disaster declaration. For instance, the state had 56 tornado touchdowns in the first half of 2025 alone, Crady says, but none were FEMA disasters.
So, rather than wait for the federal government’s process to kick in, they start their own, at the local level, with COADs—community organizations active in disaster—whose members Crady is active in training. Indiana has a particularly strong network of COADs, and Crady chairs the state VOAD (voluntary organizations active in disaster) group, which operates on the national level.
“It’s a matter of community organization, getting people together and bringing them all to the table,” says Crady, whose long experience and affiliation with Catholic Charities helps make that happen.
“You think you’ve seen it all, and I have learned something new on every single disaster I’ve ever worked on.”
Once the operation shifts to long-term recovery, Crady, as state VOAD chair, steps in to help hire and train disaster case managers, who come from the communities affected, although they cannot themselves, or anyone they are related to, have been directly affected. It’s a two-day training, similar to the one DCMs receive at trainings sponsored by CCUSA’s Disaster Response Team.
Crady, who thinks of retiring but is happiest when she’s working, has one goal: “My hope is to work myself out of a job by having people be self-sufficient.”
For many folks in the rural areas she serves, self-sufficiency is a point of pride, but it can be a hindrance in seeking assistance to rebuild. Their remoteness can also prevent people from learning about help until after the recovery money—which is typically associated with a specific disaster—is all spent.
She recounts a story of a mobile home that was cut in half when a tree fell on it. The husband was disabled, and neighbors put tarps up to protect the inside as best they could. With the kitchen and living room at one end and the bedroom at the other, the couple was living in the former until Crady organized local volunteers to construct a bridge between the two halves, allowing the owners to move back and forth again.
“I can tell you crazy stories all over the place,” she says, including one about a whole town in southern Indiana sinking into old mine shafts. “It’s called subsidence. You think you’ve seen it all, and I have learned something new on every single disaster I’ve ever worked on.”
Stabilizing Communities
In less than 24 hours this past August, three wind-driven fires swept through huge swaths of Spokane, destroying more than 600 structures and forcing the evacuation of nearly 70,000 people. This is not business as usual for the city or for Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington (CCEW), but it is indicative of the dangers of drought and climate change, and how even urban areas are increasingly at risk of fires once thought to threaten primarily wild lands.
The staff at CCEW sprang into action, distributing blankets, groceries, and diapers; putting evacuees up in hotels and Airbnbs; gathering school supplies for students; and beginning case management.
Scott Cooper, CCEW’s vice president of mission, has handled wildfires in the past, although the size and scope of this disaster dwarfs anything the agency has seen in recent memory. While he and his colleagues are in first-response mode now, they know from past experience that recovery is long, slow work, a daily grind of responding to neighbors in a region where urban and rural coexist closely, and where all needs are not immediately apparent.
For instance, CCEW has strong relationships with rural parishes, but because the churches tend to be small and not staffed full-time, Cooper says they have to get creative to reach people in need. In partnership with the parishes, they work with local foodbanks or community action agencies, providing potential clients “access to resources in a way that makes sense in that community,” he says.
Cooper’s background is not disaster work; he’s learned it of necessity. CCEW doesn’t have an active seat with the local long-term recovery group (or LTRG, comparable to a COAD in Indiana), but he keeps apprised of the work they do, which is more of the first-response variety. That’s not his agency’s usual focus, although they are doing it now.
“...by doing as much as we can to lift up individual households, we are then also restoring and rebuilding the community.”
Instead, CCEW typically serves at what he calls “the unmet needs roundtable.” This may entail sending pallets of water to an evacuation center or supplying gift cards and gas cards to a local pastor in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. That way, he says, “when somebody knocks on your door, parishioner or not, you’ve got something in your hand” to give them.
The disaster-related money CCEW gets, usually from local donors and grant funds, is not enough to rebuild homes, so they leave that to agencies with the expertise and whose funding may be more time-sensitive and disaster-specific.
“Others are better equipped to swoop in in the immediate aftermath,” Cooper says. “But we’re here long-term. And we know that recovery and rebuilding is a three- to four-year process.”
Cooper says CCEW usually comes in later to buy things like well pumps, solar batteries, generators, water systems, gutters, driveway gravel, refrigerators, or furniture—necessities a person who’s lost everything might not have the funds to pay for after rebuilding their home.
These may seem like small things, but in meeting those needs, Cooper believes, the agency is doing more than helping just one family at a time recover from disaster, no matter how small or how great—or, in this case, colossal.
“You could make the argument, I suppose, that by doing as much as we can to lift up individual households, we are then also restoring and rebuilding the community,” he says. “Because we’re keeping the community as stable as possible and perhaps seeing people not leaving as a result.”
A Holistic Response
“We had to learn our limitations. Katrina was everything for everybody all the time — we can do it all!”
“We consider ourselves the poster children for what not to do,” says Nancy Loftus, disaster response program director at Catholic Charities of South Mississippi. She’s only partly joking. “We learned the hard way.”
Loftus and Jennifer Williams, the diocesan director, have worked together for more than 26 years and finish each other’s sentences as they describe standing up a disaster program, with no background or experience, after Hurricane Katrina wiped out the Gulf Coast in 2005.
Their response to that crisis started out small: food bank, baby supplies, financial assistance for power bills. With support from the bishop, as well as from CCUSA and Catholic Relief Services, they quadrupled their staff and contributed to the repair or rebuilding of 500 houses over six years. But the growth was not sustainable for a small agency that runs nine programs covering 17 counties and doesn’t deal with disasters all that often.
“We had to learn our limitations. Katrina was everything for everybody all the time — we can do it all!” Williams remembers, noting that today they wouldn’t attempt a home rebuild, say, but they can provide rental assistance to those who’ve lost their homes while other agencies tackle gutting or roof repair.
Questions about mental health struggles are among the first they ask any client, “regardless if it’s a disaster.”
The experience taught them a valuable lesson: that they could apply their strength as social workers—their case management skills—more broadly, whether to disaster clients, Covid-era clients, or those they see every day. Whereas once they might have addressed a basic needs request by helping a client pay down an electricity bill, now they do intake more holistically.
Their new homeless day center in Gulfport has expanded the possibilities of what they can do, both on a regular basis and in the event of disaster. A former Catholic high school gym, the building was destroyed by Katrina and sat moldering for almost 20 years. Then, in 2024, their bishop challenged them to get it up and running to provide homeless services—in six months.
So, much like in their response to Katrina in 2005, the staff rolled up their sleeves and got to it. The building had to be gutted and needed new electrical and lead paint abatement, but they did it. The Mercy Cross Day Center now also includes storage space for disaster supplies from CCUSA and other service agencies.
“We had no intention of providing anything but meals and some respite and clothes, and God just laughed at us,” says Williams. “Since we opened in May of 2024, we’ve walked with about 210 people that got off the street. They’re not homeless anymore. And they do it for themselves.”
That is to say, with a little help from their friends. The center offers showers, laundry facilities, cots for napping, and computers, as well as help getting the documents clients need—usually missing IDs, birth certificates, and Social Security cards—to integrate back into the world of stable housing, health care, and work. Just as importantly, there are visiting psychiatrists, two medical vans, and staff who can assist clients as they formulate a plan to get their lives back on track.
“It’s so layered. You’ve got to start working on that stuff before you can get housed, just like in a disaster,” says Loftus. “That was a hard lesson we learned from Katrina. We thought, we’ll just get them back in their house, and everything will be fine. But people imploded—child abuse, suicide, divorce, substance abuse.”
Now, questions about mental health struggles are among the first they ask any client, she says, “regardless if it’s a disaster.”
Safe from the Storm
The territory of Guam, the largest of the Mariana islands, is only about 200 square miles in area, or about the size of Chicago, with roughly 170,000 residents. It lies within the Pacific Typhoon Belt and as such is particularly vulnerable to storms, although prior to this year, Typhoon Mawar, in 2023, was the first to hit in about a generation. The northern part of the island was hit by Typhoon Bavi this past July, but it was mostly forested land that was impacted.
“We’re so blessed with the weather, the island tropical weather, it’s very easy for us to become complacent,” says Jared Ada, who coordinates the island’s domestic violence shelter, called “Alee,” a nautical term meaning “safe from the wind and storm.” He also works on storm preparedness. “It’s all about being able to act and execute rather than react and hope.”
His agency, Catholic Social Service/Catholic Charities Guam, provides food, water, and clothing to those displaced by storms. It also operates senior housing and affordable rentals, as well as the island’s only homeless shelter.
During a recent PIT (point-in-time) count, to determine the number of unhoused people on the island, Ada encountered a man who was living in his car across the street from his home. The house was a semi-concrete structure with a tin roof that had been blown off by wind and rain. He would go into the house to cook on a portable stove, but it was otherwise uninhabitable.
“What’s important to me is making sure that we’re respecting everyone’s dignity and doing the best we can with what we have. Sometimes more is not better.”
The man, a veteran, applied for FEMA relief with the help of his brother, who subsequently stole the money and disappeared. The betrayal shocked Ada, who says the island’s small size, predominantly Catholic faith, and extended family traditions mean neighbors tend to pull together in crises.
“Guam is so small, and our culture is built on respect and love and our faith,” he says, indicating that he helped report the fraud to FEMA, and that it wasn’t clear if the brother was still on the island. “When you live in a village, everyone knows each other. Everyone bonds together.”
Before and after storms, village mayors and parish priests are a great source of information for Ada and his team in terms of who needs what, including safe housing. That’s not always easy to discern from the outside, with some residents preferring to live in more makeshift structures.
“We call it the simple life, the perfect life,” he says. Many of his fellow islanders “live off the land. They ranch, they hunt, they fish. They own the property, so they’re not homeless, but they may not have concrete walls and French glass windows or an aircon unit.”
Understanding when the agency should step in with assistance can be a matter of some delicacy, then.
For some, “maybe the most important thing would be food or water, or even clothing and shoes. They’re okay with living out in the elements and not having to pay a power bill,” Ada says. “What’s important to me is making sure that we’re respecting everyone’s dignity and doing the best we can with what we have. Sometimes more is not better.”
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