This workforce industry that rebuilds communities is growing in response to natural disasters

When natural disasters hit a community, there’s naturally talk of rebuilding. That work, though, takes workers to do the rebuilding.

Saket Soni is director of a group called Resilience Force, which represents people who do this kind of work in what’s called the resilience economy. Soni will be speaking virtually Wednesday evening at an event put on by Arizona State University's Future Security Initiative. The initiative is a partnership between the university and the D.C.-based think tank New America.

The Show spoke with Soni earlier and asked how he describes the resilience economy.

Full conversation

SAKET SONI: So I’m a labor organizer who spends most of his time in disaster zones. When hurricanes, floods and fires hit, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people lose their homes overnight. I represent the workers who come in to repair them.

These are the workers who we call resilience workers. This is a workforce that has emerged over the last 20 years as climate change has become more frequent and more destructive. So our work and the work of these workers is rooted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina back when we thought of climate disasters and extreme weather as anomalies, right? Freak occurrences. They were the exception rather than the norm. Now, they’re the new normal.

MARK BRODIE: So given the number of years it’s been since Hurricane Katrina, how have you seen this workforce and this industry evolve over those years?

SAKET SONI: Well, the workers over the last 20 years have gone from city to city, storm after storm, rebuilding home after home each time disaster hits. And I saw them becoming highly skilled, but also acquiring along the way on the road a deep sense of vocation, the same kind of sense of commitment and vocation that firefighters and healthcare workers have. So that’s how that’s how the workers evolved.

At first, the work that they did was largely seasonal, surges of intensive disaster response work followed by off-seasons. But as weather became a constant challenge, we’ve seen the work happen year-round.

And along that journey, the industry they work in has grown. So as more and more disasters hit, more and more insurance money and FEMA money has been has been flowing into repairs. Companies have been growing, and and now what we’ve got is an industry full of these large companies who have these subcontracting chains, and at the bottom of the chain, there are these these workers.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so when you talk about this being more of a year-round kind of thing now, you know, we hear, for example, about how wildfire season is now just a 12-month-a-year kind of thing. Have you seen the kinds of disasters that these workers are responding to changing and expanding?

SAKET SONI: Yes, and that’s why we’re building out a new American profession called the certified climate technician. So the idea is that the old order was a hurricane hits or fires burn, homes are damaged and there’s a period of repairs that lasts sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes in in large cities a few years. But the work was mostly repair work.

Now what we have is that in, you know, almost half the ZIP codes in America where disaster has hit, it’s not the first disaster. In fact, most places where disasters happen are experiencing repeat events where every new disaster means you need to not just repair, but prepare for the next one. And, you know, climate adaptation is becoming a large-scale need in America. So these trained professionals are needed, not just people who can do the work once, but who can rebuild and repair even as they adapt and prepare.

MARK BRODIE: I’m especially interested in that preparation, sort of that preventative work. When you think of a place like Phoenix, which obviously does not have hurricanes and tornadoes and a lot of sort of the natural disasters that one thinks about typically, wildfires, you know, knock on wood, don’t hit in the city itself or in the metro area itself. I wonder, though, if, you know, given the the heat and the increase heat that we are seeing year over year in the Phoenix area, if there’s work that, you know, these professionals might be able to do or maybe are doing to try to help folks adapt to it and maybe not fall victim to some kind of a heat-related disaster later on.

SAKET SONI: Yeah, that’s very important. Phoenix is exactly the kind of place where you need a year-round resilience workforce helping a place and its community adapt. Of course, you’re going to need surge relief work during particularly hot periods to go door to door, check on people, you know, make sure people are OK, help those who are not.

But also, the year-round adaptation work can include installing and maintaining shade structures, planting trees and long-term tree maintenance, adapting and maintaining cooling centers. And then there is the need to weatherize homes and communities.

MARK BRODIE: Would that kind of work though be still done by the the folks who sort of go from community to community after a disaster, or is that maybe more a permanent, you know, Phoenix-based workforce that’s doing that work here?

SAKET SONI: Well, although we started in our work by protecting those who go from place to place, the real end goal is local people doing the work where they live. So, you know, the end game for Phoenix really should be a a cohort, a cadre, a workforce that lives there, and the need to prepare and adapt translates into good, long-term, career-building jobs.

MARK BRODIE: So we’ve talked about how this sector has grown over the last couple of decades. How big do you think it’s ultimately going to get?

SAKET SONI: Well, extreme weather isn’t going anywhere, and it’s not going to happen purely in episodes of fires, floods and hurricanes. Extreme heat will continue to rise, and so the resilience economy will grow into a multibillion-dollar economy. And the really important thing here is that every dollar we spend preparing saves between $5 and $15 down the line repairing.

MARK BRODIE: So as this economy is growing, how are the workers doing? Like are their wages growing? Are their safety protections improving for the folks who are doing this work?

SAKET SONI: Nowhere near fast enough. The workers we represent, the ones who go from city to city, are still following hurricanes, floods and fires, getting to places that need rebuilding and sleeping in their cars, sleeping on parking lot floors, wake up in the morning, washing themselves with bottles of water, and then getting on rooftops to repair homes in record-breaking heat conditions. This is in Florida, Louisiana and across the Southeast.

In states like Colorado and California where public officials are more aware for of the need to adapt, more money is being put into state budgets for preparation, and that’s fueling some amount of work, you know, work to do ecological management, for example, or make homes fireproof.

But not enough money is being spent to make sure that wages are high and work is safe. And the reason for that, I think, is we in America still want to do this on the cheap, when in fact, you need a skilled, scaled workforce, and that costs money.

MARK BRODIE: Saket Soni is director of a group called Resilience Force. He’ll be speaking this evening as part of ASU’s Future Security Initiative, which is a partnership between the university and the D.C.-based think tank New America.