Restoration and Loss after Disaster: Applying the Dual Process Model of Coping in Bereavement

The article asks whether disasters that destroy life but leave the material infrastructure relatively intact tend to prompt communal coping focusing on loss, while disasters that destroy significant material infrastructure tend to prompt coping through restoration/rebuilding. After comparing memorials to New Zealand’s Christchurch earthquake and Pike River mine disasters, we outline circumstances in which collective restorative endeavor may be grassroots, organized from above, or manipulated, along with limits to effective restoration. We conclude that bereavement literature may need to take restoration more seriously, while disaster literature may need to take loss more seriously.