Q&A with Veronica Taylor

Veronica Taylor is senior director of Global Disaster Response at Habitat for Humanity International. From her office in Atlanta, she answered a few questions about the challenges and rewards of dealing with disaster every day.

How long have you been with Habitat? What’s your background?

I will have been with HFHI three years this coming May. I had just moved back from Thailand, where my family and I were living on the island of Phuket. We lived on the beach and experienced the tsunami firsthand, so I spent three months doing volunteer work with the head of forensics and other local groups. I was working in Thailand for EGAT, The Electric Generating Authority of Thailand. My background is the electric utility industry and I was helping them take the government-owned utility public. The tsunami changed my life and fueled my desire to work for a nonprofit.

What’s the greatest challenge of Habitat’s Disaster Response program?

In disasters, systems fail. Infrastructure, technology, communication – everything is susceptible to break down. Ongoing or systemic problems that are manageable in routine circumstances may be a serious problem in a crisis. Our ongoing challenge is to plan ahead, develop alternative solutions, train, test and practice in order to respond more effectively in the next disaster.

Are the obstacles different at every disaster?

Absolutely. The disaster itself is different – flood, earthquake, hurricanes, civil conflict. The environment is different – the culture, available materials, land availability, logistics, financial resources and most importantly, the capacity of our local offices.

How important is teaching preparedness and mitigation in the mission? Has that approach changed over the years?

Disaster preparedness and mitigation has a measureable impact on saving lives. UN statistics show that average annual death tolls due to natural disasters have dropped from over 75,000 per year (1994-1998) to 59,000 per year (1999 to 2003).

But, the number of people affected has risen. Over the past decade, the total number of people affected by natural disasters has tripled, to 2 billion. The economic losses from natural disasters have multiplied five-fold, to $629 billion.

There is much more emphasis now on including community training and awareness of disaster preparedness in our programs. We continually study and improve local building technologies and even conduct mitigation building programs. We work with communities to look at land options to move families from low-lying, flood-prone areas. Improved building technology, early warning systems and community awareness do save lives and livelihoods.

When you see news reports of a disaster, what’s your first thought?

“Please, God, keep them safe.” I have a very heightened sense of awareness about the number of disasters around the world, so it is almost impossible for me to read a newspaper, flip through a magazine, listen to the radio or turn on the TV without picking up on a new disaster. There are more than 700 natural disasters a year now. That’s a lot of disasters and there’s no end in site. Global warming; the vulnerability of children, women and elderly people; economic troubles and civil conflict are only adding to the challenge.

Is there a specific success story that stands out for you or your team?

The thing that we all have to remember is that disaster response is what Habitat does, day in and day out. Any day there is a family without decent affordable housing – it’s a disaster. An “event” like a hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, etc., just brings a heighted awareness to the problems that were there all along. That awareness, though, brings an opportunity for increased volunteer participation, engagement with local governments in community development, establishment of significant, long-term partner alliances and a tremendous outpouring of donor support.

So a real success story is that 15 affiliates in the Gulf Coast that built an annual average of 65 homes before Katrina built close to 900 homes in two years post-Katrina, and now have a sustainable building capacity of almost 250 homes a year. They have more than quadrupled their sustainable capacity. Several of the tsunami-affected Habitat offices have similar success stories.

That’s the benchmark for the DR team – significantly increase sustainable capacity as a result of disaster response.

How big a role do volunteers play in Habitat’s Disaster Response?

I can’t even begin to imagine a disaster response without the help of volunteers. They are so crucial that we have identified the recruitment, development and deployment of specially trained Disaster Corp volunteers as part of our strategic action plan. These teams will supplement our regular volunteer programs by going in early to disaster zones, providing leadership and knowledge to incoming volunteer teams, and supporting local offices with administrative tasks. Habitat for Humanity volunteers are the best! They realize that disaster recovery does not happen in a week or months – but takes years and years. They just keep coming back, and we love them for it!