Local Entrepreneurs Should be Allowed to Lead Mexico's Recovery from Hurricane Patricia Stefanie Haeffele-Balch and Virgil Henry Storr - U.S. News
go to original November 3, 2015

Hurricane Patricia damaged 9,000 houses in Jalisco (UNB)

We all, we're sure, breathed a sigh of relief to learn that Hurricane Patricia, at one point the strongest hurricane on record, caused much less damage than expected.

As the hurricane's landfall approached, no one knew what level of destruction it would cause on the tourist areas and poorer rural towns of Mexico's west coast. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated, and governments and aid agencies waited to see what would happen.

Luckily, the storm dissipated quickly. Zero deaths have been confirmed as being directly caused by the storm, and no major damage has been reported.

However, there is still much work to be done for many living in the areas affected by Hurricane Patricia. Heavy rain flooded homes, caused mudslides and resulted in power outages not just in Jalisco state where the storm made landfall but also in other areas in the storm's path, like cities across Texas.

How quickly these areas will return to normalcy may vary widely based on whether disaster victims can access resources, overcome the emotional loss and work together to rebuild their communities. While this challenge is daunting, time and again we have witnessed communities come together and rebound from disasters.

And, time and again, it is the work of local entrepreneurs – the community leaders of business, civics, and religion – that is essential to recovery. In our conversations with disaster victims after Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, they frequently mentioned the key role that entrepreneurs can play in helping communities return to normalcy after a major storm.

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