Initially we wanted to find out why some communities seemed to cope better than others with natural disasters. With local researchers in six countries, we talked to people who had survived tsunami waves higher than multistory buildings, droughts that lasted for years, earthquakes that crumbled entire villages. Interviews with survivors of earthquakes in Mexico and Pakistan, tsunamis in Indonesia and Solomon Islands, drought in Kenya, cyclone in Myanmar and the U.S.’s Hurricane Katrina, actually found the responses of communities and their experience of disaster aid were more similar than different.

We found everywhere community resilience is the usual story and communities tearing themselves apart is the unusual story. But the problem is aid agencies, authorities and others who seek to help disaster survivors often take over and disempower local people, actually hurting the very resilience that helped people survive and cope with the disaster in the first place.

Add to this the media looking for stories of dysfunction rather than function in the wake of a natural disaster, as in the case of Hurricane Katrina, and the outsiders’ view of disaster-affected communities quickly becomes bleak. It’s as if their search for what is not working blinds them to the many people, groups and networks that are working to cope and rebuild after the disaster.

The implications from the research is humans do not survive disasters through competition but rather through cooperation, and many survivors affirm their belief in the goodwill of their neighbors, families, colleagues and friends in such trying times. Far from helpless victims, communities should be seen and treated as capable, cooperative and resilient.

Dr. Diane Bretherton and Anouk Ride, authors and peace researchers