The Christmas Island Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

The aim of the DRP is to detail the emergency recovery arrangements for the Territory of Christmas Island. It is designed to guide key agencies and individuals in responding to a variety of emergencies throughout the Territory.

The purpose is to provide a DRP CI to enable it to establish services and processes required to assist the community to recover from an emergency event and regain emotional, social, economic and physical wellbeing.

Recovery is the coordinated process of supporting affected individuals, families and communities towards the restoration of emotional, social, economic and physical wellbeing following an emergency. The services typically include provision of information, payment of financial support and provision of personal and psychological support.

Recovery operations should commence as soon as possible and occur in parallel with emergency response activities. Recovery may extend for weeks, months or even years and is concerned with 'long term' issues. Further into the recovery phase, recovery is characterised by different rates of recovery for different individuals and groups. Support needs change over time. Special arrangements to manage the emergency consequences are gradually disassembled. Even after the majority of the community is back to functioning normally, there will be some who still require assistance.