Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Current Psychology https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03835-z Antecedents and consequences of resilience among survivors of cyclone Fani Girija Shankar Panigrahi 1  · Damodar Suar 1 Accepted: 29 September 2022 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022 Abstract Cyclone Fani in 2019 was a strong tropical cyclone and it adversely afected the lives and livelihood of people in Odisha. This study investigates the antecedents and consequences of resilience among Fani survivors. Twelve months after the cyclone Fani, 300 households were randomly selected and an adult survivor from each household responded to the ques- tionnaire from one location each of Puri and Balasore districts in Odisha (India). Standard inventories assessed survivors’ self-efcacy, hope, cognitive fexibility, collective efcacy, social support, general health, resilience, posttraumatic growth, and thriving. Findings suggest that the survivors’ higher level of self-efcacy, hope, cognitive fexibility, collective efcacy, social support, and health are associated with their higher level of resilience. Higher level of resilience furthers survivors’ posttraumatic growth and thriving in terms of meaning, purpose, life satisfaction, sense of accomplishment, and self-worth. Survivors’ resilience mediates the relationship between antecedents and outcomes. Improving the antecedent resources and resilience can facilitate posttraumatic growth and thrive among disaster survivors. Keywords Natural hazards · Resilience · Antecedents · Consequences · Survivor Introduction After two decades of the devastating 1999 Odisha supercy- clone, another strong tropical cyclone Fani struck the state of Odisha (India) in 2019. This extremely severe cyclonic storm was accompanied by heavy rainfall, covered a coast- line of 3,030 km, and sustained wind speed of 215 km/hr, causing massive damage (India Meteorological Department, Government of India, 2019). It caused unprecedented dam- age to livelihood, property, infrastructure, and public utilities in 14 of the 30 districts in the state. Cyclone Fani caused 42% damage to infrastructure sectors (power, telecommuni- cations, roads, water resources, and public buildings), 25% to social sectors (housing, health, education, cultural herit- age, and tourism), 21% to cross-cutting sectors (livelihoods, social protection, and environment), and 12% to productive sectors (agriculture, fsheries, and livestock). It afected about 16.5 million people in 18,388 villages, damaged 361,743 houses, left many homeless, caused crop losses of 19,734 hectares, and death of 64 persons. The Puri and Balasore districts in Odisha were the hardest hit and expe- rienced extensive devastation to agriculture, fsheries, and livestock. Trees were uprooted, electric lines were downed, hundreds of thatched houses were swept away, and people’s established ways of living were completely disrupted (Gov- ernment of Odisha, 2019). People nearer to the hardest-hit areas of natural hazards (NHs) are exposed to multiple stressors, including loss of loved ones, loss of house, household property, crops, and workshop tools; experience injury to self and others and disruption in social structure. Consequently, survivors face challenges to fulfll their basic needs, get employed, build residences, and resolve family and societal conficts. Expo- sure to such stressors disrupts physical, psychological, and social functioning and endangers survivors’ lives and exis- tential outlook (Suar et al., 2017). Exposure to NHs and living with multiple stressors, chal- lenging surroundings, and psycho-social impairments dimin- ish survivors’ ability to cope with and recover. In the after- math of NHs, most survivors experience mild psychological impairments. For others, the intensity and frequency of symptoms meet diagnostic criteria (Maj et al., 1989; McFar- lane et al., 1997; Rubonis & Bickman, 1991). In developing * Girija Shankar Panigrahi gspanigrahi@gmail.com 1 School of Social, Financial & Human Sciences, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar, India