It's been almost two weeks since Hurricane Harvey began its assault on southeastern Texas, and communities throughout the region have set off down the long, hard road to recovery. FEMA administrator Brock Long and Texas governor Greg Abbott both said last week that it will take years to rebuild homes, salvage businesses, shore up infrastructure, and rehouse droves of displaced residents. Their inauspicious projections have left many Texans wondering what a multiyear recovery effort could entail for them and their communities.

So WIRED spoke with experts about what that recovery could look like in practice.

Obvious caveats apply: Every disaster is unique. So, too, are recovery timelines. The experts WIRED spoke with were careful to point out that they cannot predict the future. But most were willing to speculate about what comes next for Houston, based on years of experience studying, leading, and participating in disaster recovery efforts. From their feedback, a number of common observations emerged.

One Week Later: Damage Assessment

Harvey's most destructive feature wasn't wind but water; the storm dumped upward of 50 inches of rain in parts of southeastern Texas. One of the most pressing—and ongoing—orders of business will be assessing not just the immediate damage that rain wrought but the pernicious conditions it will leave behind: Where floodwaters recede in the days and weeks ahead, dampness will linger. Walls, floors, insulation, and internal structures of once-flooded buildings will give rise to breeding grounds for mold and mildew if they are not properly managed.

Some damage assessment will be handled by emergency management agencies and local building officials, who will use colored tags to identify which structures are safe to occupy, which are in need of repairs, and which are beyond saving. More important than who does this work is how quickly it's performed. Communities will need to act quickly to limit the spread of fungal overgrowth.

In practice, that means assessing the damage to infrastructure and buildings throughout Greater Houston—the first of countless undertakings the metropolis will need help with in the months and years ahead. "Local officials often try to mount recovery efforts with their usual staff. That ain't gonna work here," says Ed Thomas, president of the Natural Hazard Mitigation Association and a disaster recovery specialist with 35 years of field experience. “They’ll need to hire some folks, or ask for help from somebody who’s gone through disaster recovery before. People from Vermont. Or North Dakota. Or New Orleans. They need people and organizations with that skill set, who can help a municipality and its people through the recovery process, whether it’s through contractors, emergency management agencies, or mutual aid agreements with neighboring states."

"We're looking at a Texas-sized disaster," Thomas says. "They're gonna need a Texas-sized recovery operation. And for that, they'll need to pull together."

One Month Later: Municipal-Level Triage

By some estimates, Harvey displaced more than a million people from their homes and caused upward of 42,000 to seek emergency shelter. Census reports won't confirm these numbers for months or years, but by the end of October most of the people Harvey drove away will have returned to their communities to survey the destruction.