Recovering from a Disaster

Customer solutions
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“

I was really frustrated with all the paperwork and having to prove I needed help.

I told the case worker, 'I’ve already lost everything; haven’t I shown you enough to show you I’m deserving? Do you not trust what I’m saying?'

— Hurricane Survivor

After receiving funds from FEMA, a son and daughter start work to rebuild their father’s home damaged by Hurricane Maria. They are starting the process by salvaging what they can until contractors, who are in high demand, can begin building a stronger concrete home.

FEMA/K.C. Wilsey

Where we are

An increasing number of Americans face natural disasters each year, yet they often lack the support necessary to fully recover.

When a natural disaster hits, survivors face the painful task of putting the pieces of their lives back together. They must care for basic needs and keep businesses going while enduring stress and trauma. On top of this, people must manage multiple bureaucratic processes with competing guidance, a confusing and frustrating journey at a moment when people expect government to show up and help.

Ten years ago, FEMA managed an average of 108 disasters a year. Today, that number is 311 disasters a year.¹ More than 20M individuals and families survive a Federally recognized disaster every year.

¹ Source: FEMA

Challenge

How might we provide a less frustrating and more dignified recovery experience for disaster survivors?

Our approach

To start, we listened to people’s stories.

The Life Experience research team spoke with people nationwide about this moment in their lives and where the government process could have been simpler and more helpful. The listening sessions captured honest conversations about peoples' experiences, candid feedback on what could have worked better, and what really made a difference for them. Their stories have been combined and are represented here through illustrations. The quotes are real, but names have been changed.

Cristina

Nursing Assistant

Hurricane survivor

Mobile home owner

Jordan

Nonprofit administrator

Tornado survivor

Renter

Linda

Childcare Center Owner

Wildfire survivor

Home owner

Cristina

Nursing Assistant

Hurricane survivor

Mobile home owner

Surviving a disaster:

Cristina, her husband Carlos, and their two-year-old daughter, Sofia, are forced to evacuate their mobile home when they learn about a hurricane approaching the area. Once the storm passes, they return to find devastating damage and have no idea what to do next.

Navigating the assistance process: Cristina begins applying for government assistance to repair her home so that it is safe to live in. She is confused and overwhelmed by the amount of paperwork required by multiple government agencies and feels pained by having to repeatedly describe the storm’s damage and her family’s loss.

Rebuilding and coping with ongoing trauma: Cristina eventually receives some money to fix her home but it’s not enough. To make the necessary repairs, she and Carlos take out a loan that they don’t know how they will ever repay. The stress of their new debt and worry about future storms is exhausting.

“I just sort of remember sitting down and filling out a bunch of forms. [It was] confusing because we weren’t sure what the point of it was, we didn’t know what we were getting, but they told us to sign up for this stuff, so we did.”

Pain Point

Burdensome application process

Survivors apply for help and request services from multiple agencies and aid organizations—a repetitive, tiresome, and often re-traumatizing process that takes time and attention away from other recovery tasks.

Jordan

Nonprofit administrator

Tornado survivor

Renter

Surviving a disaster:

Jordan and his fiancé Mark survive their apartment building getting destroyed by a tornado but lose most of their possessions. It's confusing to tease out what his renter's insurance will and will not cover. Jordan is fearful for his future.

Searching for assistance: Jordan struggles to understand what assistance he is eligible for. He waits in a long line at a Disaster Recovery Center and is told to apply for certain assistance but later finds out he is ineligible because he is a renter, not a homeowner. By digging through lots of information online, he eventually figures out what makes sense for him to apply for.

Rebuilding and coping with ongoing trauma: Jordan and Mark eventually receive some assistance, but it doesn't cover their costs. This situation is especially tough because the only apartment they can find is more expensive than the one that was destroyed. With everything that has happened, they must put their plans for a wedding and dream of buying a home on hold.

“I [a renter] was told I had to apply for an SBA loan if we wanted to be reimbursed for lost property. FEMA told us we had to be denied by SBA first. When I called for help, I was told ‘We’re just customer service, we don’t really know.’”

Pain Point

Inconsistent information

Many survivors find government websites, printed materials, and interactions with agency field staff inconsistent or uncoordinated. The quality of recovery information varies depending on the staff person or communication channel that a survivor encounters.

Linda

Childcare Center Owner

Wildfire survivor

Home owner

Surviving a disaster:

Linda is forced to evacuate her home because a wildfire is sweeping her area. She grabs just a few necessities from her house before escaping. The fire destroys her neighborhood, including her home and business.

Navigating the assistance process: Linda is torn between trying to sort out her personal loss and rebuilding her business. She applies for FEMA assistance for her home and an SBA loan for her business even though she worries about going into debt for a business that will struggle in this area now.

Rebuilding and coping with ongoing trauma: Linda eventually receives assistance for her home but is denied an SBA loan because of her low credit score. She makes the difficult decision to close the childcare center and lay off her employees.

“One of the hard parts of being a business owner is that everyone is struggling from a personal perspective, especially your employees. They had no power, they had to go find food. It was a survival thing.”

Pain Point

Lack of business-specific support

Some survivors find there is a lack of guidance and support focused solely on small business owners. Many loan-focused options have inconsistent eligibility requirements, or are hard to understand.

The team conducted interviews in-person, virtually, in English, and in Spanish. Participants included people from twelve states and territories who have experienced hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires and represented various backgrounds—including low-income renters and home owners, parents, the elderly, new immigrants, veterans, and people with disabilities.

The team spoke with:

43 survivors
22 frontline staff
16 government / nonprofit staff

Discovery insights

Framing for collective thinking about customer pain points

How might we support survivors by minimizing the burden of navigating multiple applications?

How might we better design our information, interactions, and services for people who have endured a traumatic experience and may have ongoing stress?

How might we improve and coordinate our communications about the full range of Federal programs for the general public and small business owners alike?

Design Phase

Designing customer-centered solutions

View progress on our milestones

In the 2024 design phase, the portfolio is running three pilot projects:

Building a trauma-informed care approach will continue working with agency representatives to refine and deliver pilot training modules for Federal staff who serve disaster survivors directly to develop their awareness of trauma-informed care principles to utilize while working on location with people seeking Federal services or assistance.
Calculating a more holistic burden estimate will work with Federal agency High Impact Service Providers (HISPs) to pilot the method and tool, and aims to continue burden assessments within disaster recovery.
Streamlining disaster assistance processes includes multiple workstreams, including updates to Disasterassistance.gov, cross-agency referrals and data sharing, and registration process for disaster assistance.

Collaborating agencies: DHS (FEMA), HHS (SAMHSA), HUD, SBA

Sources: Project Documentation

The project aims to develop and test standardized design guidelines for communications, training, and consultation materials to improve the government’s response and interaction with the public. The interactions include in-person and print, letters, emails, and websites.

The design work will include creating guidelines and resource materials through iterative development and testing with Federal agency staff. These guidelines include training materials to promote better trauma-informed communications and interactions between agencies and disaster survivors.

Project objectives

Help agency and front-line staff have the knowledge, skills, and support via workshops, consultations, and resources to use a trauma-informed approach that enables a more sensitive and effective responsive recovery experience for disaster survivors.

The improvements will help increase survivor comprehension of critical information they receive in times of crisis and their ability to engage with resources and programs available to support them.

Updates

Early in project development, the team learned that disaster recovery staff across agencies are committed to improving their skills in working with survivors. The team co-created three training modules focused on the basics of trauma-informed care; working with survivors; and taking care of oneself when recovering from a disaster. The team piloted in-person training modules in FEMA Region 2, created prototypes of three videos, and produced an accompanying guidebook.

In a site visit to a Disaster Recovery Center (DRC) in Vermont, the team learned first-hand from survivors about their challenges in obtaining Federal assistance. Survivors communicated that engaging with DRC staff helps overcome obstacles in the process. The team discovered that DRC staff are not trained in trauma-informed care or working with survivors, however. Federal staff also struggle to cope with the primary and secondary traumatic stress that may result from doing this work. The team believes that improvements in agencies’ work with disaster survivors will require agencies and front-line staff to integrate trauma-informed care principles and skills into their practices.

Milestones

Measures of success

Key outcomes:

The trauma-informed care project will result in increased survivor comprehension and level of engagement with assistance programs.

Design phase project measures:

Collaborating agencies: DHS (FEMA), SBA, HUD

Sources: Project Documentation

The project aims to calculate an end-to-end view and more informed estimate of the effort and cost required of disaster survivors and small business owners to apply for, maintain, and receive Federal disaster assistance benefits.

This “holistic burden assessment process” will be designed by building a burden assessment methodology, validating it with agency practitioners and academic experts, and testing it for usage and improvement with other service providers.

Project objectives

Create a consistent and replicable method for measuring and assessing end-to-end burden using a more uniform methodology to capture psychological, learning, and time costs.

High Impact Service Providers (HISPs), Life Experience teams, Federal agencies, and other delivery partners can use the toolkit for their burden assessments and better pinpoint opportunities to improve the customer experience and measure improvements and cost savings.

Updates

“Administrative burden” refers to the costs of interacting with the government, such as time, money, and psychological stress. Typically, agency burden estimates are limited to the time it takes to complete a form, which doesn’t capture all of the effort and resources an individual might expend to navigate a government service.

The team developed a Holistic Burden Assessment process and prototype tool that uses a customer-centric perspective to learn, categorize, and measure burden across the entire customer journey, including aspects of psychological, learning, compliance, and redemption costs. The team reviewed existing models used worldwide and adapted these practices for use by Federal agencies. The team has initially tested the process and a calculator prototype to assess experiences of disaster survivors and small businesses; however, the calculations are incomplete until the team has more data and time to work with agency experts in the field.

Milestones

Measures of success

Key outcomes:

Federal agencies and delivery partners involved in disaster recovery utilize the burden baseline toolkit for service improvements. HISPs, other Life Experience teams, or Federal agencies use the toolkit to understand customer experience burden baselines.

Design phase project measures:

Collaborating agencies: DHS (FEMA), SBA, HUD, USDA

Sources: Project Documentation

The project aims to simplify the experience of applying for Federal disaster assistance programs, in response to extensive feedback from survivors that navigating across application forms can be confusing, frustrating, and often requires sharing the same information multiple times.

The design work involves analyzing data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Individual Assistance (IA) registration and the Small Business Administration (SBA) disaster loan program, identifying critical moments for the most useful interagency collaboration and data sharing, conducting qualitative research on how to improve the registration process, and implementing changes to improve the application processes and forms themselves.

Project objectives

Improve how survivors begin FEMA’s Individual Assistance (IA) registration process, and clarify how FEMA IA and SBA’s disaster loan application offer direct assistance programs.

These improvements will reduce customer navigation burden, minimize duplication, and effectively communicate steps to access relevant assistance provided by multiple Federal entities. Ultimately, this will enable survivors to receive the aid they are eligible for more, quickly and expedite their recovery.

Updates

In early 2023, the team started the design phase with extended scoping to better understand the identified customer pain points in the intake and referral process (when the customer moves between FEMA and SBA). For example, the team learned from Disaster Recovery Center (DRC) staff that technology and communication barriers make it difficult for survivors to navigate the disaster registration intake process with FEMA and the referral process to other Federal agencies that provide individual assistance. The team worked with FEMA and SBA to gather and analyze customer navigation data. They focused on the referral process from FEMA to SBA and learned that 7 percent of all FEMA registrants ultimately apply for assistance with SBA. Evidence from in-person research suggests that survivors who could benefit from assistance from SBA do not understand that the agency provides assistance to homeowners.

The project team consulted with FEMA on potential improvements to disasterassistance.gov and SBA on enhancements to the MySBA Loan Portal to identify areas for improved coordination. Both agencies are progressing on internal changes that will improve the survivor experience and will further shape this project. The team also discussed the possibilities for data sharing and other developments with agency leaders during recurring Steering Committee meetings.

Milestones

Measures of success

Key outcomes:

The project’s success is defined by its ability to reduce customer navigation burden, minimize duplication, and effectively communicate steps to access relevant assistance provided by multiple Federal entities, which will enable more survivors to receive the aid they are eligible for and recover more quickly.

Project Documentation

Project Outputs

Agency collaborators

General Services Administration (GSA)
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
Department of Health & Human Services (HHS)
Small Business Administration (SBA)
Department of the Interior (DOI)
Department of Commerce (DOC)
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)