Disaster mitigation and rehabilitation are becoming increasingly important due to variety of natural and man-made disasters and due to ageing of many of the systems in place over several years. One of the major components of mitigation and rehabilitation is the human angle which forms the basis of follow-up action and this comes from the many physical visits and visual perception each has on the quality of the disaster. This study presents the results of visual and oral communication formats used by different strata of peoplepoliticians to engineers-visiting the site and the implication in terms of assessment of damage and possible rehabilitation, based on engineering modeling and analysis. Based on this, it may be seen that rehabilitation measures could vary significantly, depending on the vagueness and interpretation of visual data. © Medwell Journals, 2008.