We’re Not Saving Lives. We’re Saving Livelihoods

In this week’s bonus episode, David Billstrom and Matt Raker, two business leaders who have played important roles in Western North Carolina’s attempt to recover from Hurricane Helene, talk about what we’re still figuring out about disaster recovery. The world tends to move on pretty quickly after an event, but the economic recovery can drag on for years. And it can be especially devastating for smaller businesses. The data from other catastrophic storms, David tells us, suggest that more than half of the small businesses in the area could be gone within a year. And of course those odds are not improved when insurance companies find ways not to pay claims and when government takes too long to respond. As you’ll hear, at the time we recorded the conversation in mid-December, the U.S. Congress still had not appropriated funds to help. That did finally happen at the end of December, but it’s still tempting to ask: Shouldn’t we be getting better at this?