Citizens regularly form impromptu relief organizations in the aftermath of natural disasters, what scholars call “emergent organisations.” While initially focused on rescue and delivering aid, some emergent organisations are turning toward broader goals of social and political transformation. Adopting prefigurative political strategies, these groups go beyond advocating for change and attempt to build and showcase alternative models of social and political organisation through their disaster response. This paper examines the case of “Occupy Sandy,” an emergent organisation formed in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, in order to better understand disasters as potential sites of political transformation, and what opportunities and traps these events provide to activists. Drawing upon interviews, ethnographic observations, and archival research, I argue that disaster recovery can be a generative venue for collective action because it offers meaningful experiences of agency when so-called normal times do not. These politicised emergent organisations demonstrate the productive potential of horizontal organising in the face of emergency, acting as a democratic alternative to prominent administrative models of disaster response. However, these bursts of activity are often fleeting. Without a larger movement to attach themselves to, these emergent organisations fade as the recovery process progresses, and life returns to normal.