Open letter: After the storm — to owners rebuilding

Open letter: After the storm — to owners rebuilding

RC/RS/2026/24
Date: 21 September 2026
Status: Circulated
From: Gregorio Yap, Chair, Resilience Council, Tacloban, Philippines; and the Rapporteur, Resilience Council
To: Owners whose businesses have been affected by a disaster

To every owner trying to reopen after a storm, flood, earthquake, fire or other disaster:

We know that reopening is not a single decision made on a single day. It is a sequence of urgent, difficult choices: whether to repair, replace, relocate or stop; how to pay workers and suppliers while income is interrupted; how to document a loss when records or equipment have been damaged; and how to keep customers from disappearing before the doors open again. The work is often invisible to people who measure recovery only by the date a road is cleared or a building is declared safe.

This letter is for you. It does not promise that every business can or should reopen. It asks that owners who want to continue are not left to navigate recovery alone, and that the institutions involved make their processes understandable, timely and usable for small businesses.

Who we are and what we are asking

The Resilience Council is one of seven councils in Reseated, the Founders Assembly: a global assembly of small-business owners. Our council’s work is to describe recurring problems faced by owners after disasters and develop practical responses. We do not represent one company, insurer,

government or relief organization. Members are anonymous unless they choose a public role, and the accounts we gather do not identify members’ businesses.

Our process starts with reports from owners. We examine a problem for volume, frequency, consistency, spread and corroboration; prepare a proposed fix; invite public comment; and submit the resulting proposal to an Assembly ballot. The present letter is not an adopted standard or a finding against any particular institution. It is a public account of the evidence available to the Council and a set of requests for decision-makers and recovery partners.

The Council’s agenda item RS-001, the Reopen Standard, concerns three practical needs: insurance claims decided within 30 days; bridge funding available within 10 days of a declared disaster; and continuity-planning support that micro businesses can use. These are proposed service expectations, not a statement that current law already requires those timelines. We are continuing to test the evidence and refine the proposal.

What owners have reported

As of 21 September 2026, the Resilience Council had 131 members in 47 countries. It had received 253 reports from 48 countries. The median amount at stake in those reports was approximately US$4,525. All 253 reports concerned a disaster situation. In the last 30 days before the data date, owners filed 86 reports.

The reports came from a wide geographic spread. The countries with the highest reported counts were the United States, 40; the Philippines, 18; Canada, 18; Spain, 16; the United Kingdom, 14; Mexico, 10; Japan, 9; and India, 8. These are counts of reports, not estimates of disaster losses, business closures or the relative risk in each country. The remaining reports came from other countries represented in the dataset.

The team-size figures matter. More than a third of the reporting owners worked alone, and nearly half reported teams of two to nine people. A recovery process designed around a dedicated claims department, a full-time finance team or specialist legal support may be inaccessible to the very businesses it is intended to serve.

The available aggregate does not provide a sector-by-sector count. We will not assign sector totals that the dataset does not contain. The reports are drawn from businesses in different settings and activities, but the present figures cannot establish how many reports came from any particular sector.

We consider transparent limits on what the data can show part of responsible evidence work.

The reports are not a representative survey of all affected businesses. They describe the experiences of owners who chose to report to the Council, and the counts do not establish causation or measure the full effect of any one disaster. They do, however, show that recovery questions recur across countries and that owners with very small teams are substantially represented in the evidence. We ask institutions to treat that as a reason to examine their processes, not as a claim that every case is the same.

The policy context

Disaster recovery for small businesses is also a resilience and risk-reduction issue. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has reported that small and medium-sized enterprises bear about 75 per cent of business disaster losses, and that disaster risk reduction can reduce losses by up to one third.¹ The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 identifies business continuity and the integration of disaster risk reduction into business practice, including for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, as matters for action. The Council’s proposed continuity-planning support is intended to make that concern practical for owners with limited time and resources.

Evidence cited in a UNDRR report, drawing on a Japanese METI survey, found that 8 per cent of prepared small and medium-sized enterprises had not recovered sales, compared with 19 per cent of unprepared enterprises.² This comparison is not a guarantee that a plan will prevent loss or ensure a business reopens. It supports a narrower point: continuity preparation deserves to be accessible before a disaster, rather than treated as a task only large organizations can manage.

Owners reading this letter may be subject to different national and local rules on insurance, emergency assistance, building safety, licensing, employment, taxation and debt. The Council has not been given a single recipient jurisdiction or a complete legal record for every place represented

in its reports. We therefore do not state that a particular domestic claim deadline, grant entitlement or right to bridge funding applies to all readers. Please check current guidance from the relevant public authorities and qualified local advisers. The requests below are directed to the responsible offices in each jurisdiction and do not presume what those offices have said or what laws they have adopted.

Requests to public authorities, insurers and recovery partners

We ask the officials and organizations responsible for disaster response, business recovery, insurance and local economic development to consider the following actions. They are requests for clear, measurable service practices that can be adapted to the law and capacity of each jurisdiction.

1. Publish a small-business reopening pathway. After a disaster is declared, provide one clear, accessible route showing where an owner can report damage, check safety requirements, apply for available assistance and obtain current information about reopening. Identify the responsible office for each step and explain what documents are needed. Make the information available in formats and languages usable by affected communities, including by phone or in person where online access is disrupted.

2. Make claim decisions timely and understandable. For insurance claims connected with a declared disaster, adopt the RS-001 proposed expectation of a decision within 30 days, subject to applicable law and a fair process for cases that require further evidence. Tell claimants when the clock starts, what information is missing, who is handling the claim and when the next update will arrive. If a decision cannot be made within the stated period, explain the reason and give a specific revised date. A decision should state the basis for the outcome and how to request review.

3. Provide a bridge while longer assessments continue. Establish a route to emergency or bridge funding within 10 days of a declared disaster for eligible micro businesses, consistent with the RS-001 proposal. Where a final loss calculation is not yet possible, consider a clearly explained interim payment or other temporary support. State eligibility rules, application requirements, expected timing and any repayment conditions in plain language. Do not describe a proposed Council timeline as an existing legal entitlement.

4. Support continuity planning before the next event. Offer short, practical planning support that owners can use without specialist staff: a checklist for essential records and contacts, a way to identify critical suppliers and equipment, and guidance on how to communicate with workers and customers if operations stop. Make support available to businesses of one person as well as larger employers. Planning should be proportionate to the business, not a costly compliance exercise.

5. Keep requirements coordinated during recovery. Where more than one office, insurer or recovery partner is involved, explain how an owner can avoid repeating the same information and how conflicting instructions will be resolved. Communicate changes in requirements directly and preserve a record of submissions. A damaged device, interrupted connection or loss of paper records should not automatically make an owner unable to begin a claim or request assistance.

6. Measure the time to reopen, not only the time to respond. Record, with suitable privacy protections, the time between a disaster and key steps such as claim decision, first bridge support and permission or practical ability to resume trading. Publish aggregate results, including delays and the reasons for them. Such measures can reveal where procedures that look complete on paper still leave owners unable to earn income.

7. Include affected owners in review. Invite small-business owners, including those who did not reopen, to describe which steps worked and where they were blocked. Provide a way to contribute without disclosing a business name publicly. Review procedures after each major event and publish what will change, what will not change and why.

For owners who are rebuilding now

If you can do so safely, keep a simple record of dates, contacts, requests, decisions, receipts and the practical barriers that prevent you from reopening. Save copies in more than one place when possible. Ask each organization to confirm what it needs and when it expects to respond. These steps cannot replace professional advice, emergency support or a fair institutional process; they may help preserve a record when several processes are moving at once.

Please do not put yourself, your workers or your family at risk to meet a deadline or recover property. Follow current safety instructions from the competent local authorities. If you cannot submit information because records, power, communications or transport are unavailable, tell the relevant office when you are able and ask what alternative process applies. The Council cannot determine an individual claim or guarantee that assistance is available in your jurisdiction.

We also ask you to tell us what happened if you are willing. A report can help show whether a delay or barrier is isolated or repeated. You may share evidence without making your business public. Please avoid sending unnecessary sensitive personal or financial information. We will use reports to examine patterns, not to identify a member’s business in public accounts.

Our offer of evidence

The Resilience Council is prepared to offer appropriately anonymized aggregate data to public authorities, disaster agencies, insurers and researchers working on business continuity and recovery. The data

available on 21 September 2026 includes the counts, country distribution, team-size profile and median amount at stake stated in this letter. It does not include a published sector breakdown, and it should not be treated as a representative sample of all affected businesses.

Any data sharing should have a clear purpose, protect members from identification and avoid presenting individual reports as verified findings about a named company or official. We welcome requests that specify the policy question, the data needed and the safeguards proposed. We will consider them through the Council’s process and will not disclose members’ identities or link a member to a named business.

Annex: Sources and evidence basis

1. Resilience Council, interim pattern review: closures and reopening after disasters, RC/RS/2026/N.1, 15 September 2026. The Council’s dated internal aggregate provides the membership, report, country, team-size and median figures stated above.

2. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, “Supporting disaster risk reduction and resilience practices for small and medium-sized” (event information and stated evidence on SME losses and risk reduction).¹

3. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Resilience of SMEs report, including the Japanese METI survey comparison cited above.²

4. Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, paragraphs 30(o) and 36(c), as identified in the Council’s evidence dossier. The Council refers to these provisions as policy context for business continuity and disaster-risk-reduction practice; this letter does not interpret them as creating a specific domestic claim deadline or funding entitlement.

Notes and sources

Sources

1. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, “Supporting disaster risk reduction and resilience practices for small and medium-sized”
2. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Resilience of SMEs report