Family firms’ risk-taking behaviour is central to these firms’ ability to recover from major loses after a natural disaster. Natural disasters pose a threat to family firms’ continuity, a primary goal for this type of firm. Accordingly, it is necessary to understand how socioemotional wealth importance and entrepreneurial orientation interact to influence family firms’ ownership risk, performance hazard risk and control risk in a post-disaster scenario. Using a sample of family firms from the Bío-Bío region in Chile, which was devastated by a massive earthquake in 2010, we performed partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The PLS-SEM results partially support our hypotheses. The fsQCA results provide three, six and seven causal configurations that explain 34%, 67% and 72% of ownership risk, performance hazard risk and control risk, respectively. This article shows that the interaction between socioemotional wealth importance and entrepreneurial orientation is important to explain risk-taking behaviour by family firms in a post-disaster scenario.