While some communities appear to blossom in the wake of a disaster, others are left to struggle in the ashes. This article introduces the concept of conspicuous resilience to understand how emergent community-based recovery efforts privilege some needs while marginalizing others, contributing to uneven forms of recovery. Drawing on a qualitative case study of the deadly 2018 Montecito debris flow, an in-depth examination of emergent community-based resilience efforts is gauged next to the social construction of unmet needs. Conspicuous acts of resilience centered around gaps in social and financial support as well as desires for protection from future debris flows. In defining and addressing needs, community-based interventions mirrored existing social inequalities and uneven relationships of power, promoting a false sense of equality and a false sense of security while reinforcing private interests. In order to address the limits of conspicuous resilience, a justice-oriented politics of disaster recovery is needed.