Disaster Resilience
Disaster resilience is the ability to survive, adapt, and eventually thrive after a disaster of any type or severity. Disaster-resilient communities can withstand and quickly recover from catastrophic events without experiencing long-term disruptions to the economy or way of life. Utah has a one-in-four chance of experiencing a major earthquake in the coming decades. Across the state, the risk of fire, flooding, and other disasters is also significant and may be increasing. Utahns want to substantially improve the state’s disaster resilience so they can feel safe, have less stress, and reduce the likelihood that they or their children will have to move away from Utah if a disaster occurs and the economy suffers.
In April and May of 2015, 52,845 Utahns shared their voice through the Your Utah, Your Future survey. Four out of five Utahns chose a scenario in which Utah’s disaster resilience improves dramatically. More than half chose the scenario that makes the greatest improvement to disaster resilience, requiring the greatest investment. In this scenario, almost all unreinforced brick buildings are retrofitted, building codes are upgraded as soon as possible to strengthen new buildings, new homes and buildings are generally not built in disaster-prone areas, and infrastructure is upgraded to be disaster resilient.
