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Great natural disasters are rare, but their aftermath can change the fortunes of a city or region forever. This book and its companion Policy Focus Report identify lessons from different parts of the world to help communities and government leaders better organize for recovery after future disasters. The authors consider the processes and outcomes of community recovery and reconstruction following major disasters in six countries: China, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Post-disaster reconstruction offers opportunities to improve construction and design standards, renew infrastructure, create new land use arrangements, reinvent economies, and improve governance. If done well, reconstruction can help break the cycle of disaster-related impacts and losses, and improve the resilience of a city or region.
"How fragile everything had been. People walked through life everyday taking it all for granted, their cars, their cell phones, their lattes, their dramatic social issues and their medical problems." She started her day at her home in the mountains just like any other. There was nothing unusual about making the familiar drive down to Sacramento to go to work. Then in a flash Mother Nature decided it was time to create a new landscape. Follow the journey of a dynamic young woman, mother and wife, Erika, as she is thrust into a world turned upside down by a series of natural disasters. Alone in a mutilated city, she must navigate the path home, back to her family. Not knowing if they are alive or dead, Erika calls upon all of her survival instincts to traverse this broken environment. Will she make it home? Will her family still be alive? What will Mother Nature dish out next?
Two years after Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Ricans are still reeling from its effects and aftereffects. Aftershocks collects poems, essays and photos from survivors of Hurricane Maria detailing their determination to persevere. The concept of "aftershocks" is used in the context of earthquakes to describe the jolts felt after the initial quake, but no disaster is a singular event. Aftershocks of Disaster examines the lasting effects of hurricane Maria, not just the effects of the wind or the rain, but delving into what followed: state failure, social abandonment, capitalization on human misery, and the collective trauma produced by the botched response.
Disasters—natural ones, such as hurricanes, floods, or earthquakes, and unnatural ones such as terrorist attacks—are part of the American experience in the twenty-first century. The challenges of preparing for these events, withstanding their impact, and rebuilding communities afterward require strategic responses from different levels of government in partnership with the private sector and in accordance with the public will. Disasters have a disproportionate effect on urban places. Dense by definition, cities and their environs suffer great damage to their complex, interdependent social, environmental, and economic systems. Social and medical services collapse. Long-standing problems in educational access and quality become especially acute. Local economies cease to function. Cultural resources disappear. The plight of New Orleans and several smaller Gulf Coast cities exemplifies this phenomenon. This volume examines the rebuilding of cities and their environs after a disaster and focuses on four major issues: making cities less vulnerable to disaster, reestablishing economic viability, responding to the permanent needs of the displaced, and recreating a sense of place. Success in these areas requires that priorities be set cooperatively, and this goal poses significant challenges for rebuilding efforts in a democratic, market-based society. Who sets priorities and how? Can participatory decision-making be organized under conditions requiring focused, strategic choices? How do issues of race and class intersect with these priorities? Should the purpose of rebuilding be restoration or reformation? Contributors address these and other questions related to environmental conditions, economic imperatives, social welfare concerns, and issues of planning and design in light of the lessons to be drawn from Hurricane Katrina.
The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami caused immense destruction and over 170,000 deaths in the Indonesian province of Aceh. The disaster spurred large-scale social and political changes in Aceh, including the intensified implementation of shari‘a law and an end to the long separatist conflict. After the Tsunami explores Acehnese survivors’ experiences of the deadly waves and the subsequent reconstruction process through the stories they tell about the disaster. Narratives, author Annemarie Samuels argues, are both a window onto the process of remaking everyday life and an essential component of it. Building on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Samuels shows how the everyday work of recovery is indispensable for any large-scale reconstruction effort to succeed. Recovery is an ambiguous process in which grief remains as life goes on, where optimism and disappointment, remembering and forgetting, structural poverty and the rhetoric of success are often intertwined in individual and social worlds. Such paradoxes are key and form a thread through the five chapters of the book. Addressing post-disaster reconstruction from the survivors’ perspectives opens up space for criticism of post-disaster governance without reducing the discussion of recovery to top-down interventions. Individual histories, emotions, creativity, and ways of being in the world, the author argues, inform the remaking of worlds as much as social, political, and cultural transformations do. After the Tsunami is a provocative and highly significant contribution to studies of humanitarian aid and disaster, psychological anthropology, narrative studies, and scholarly studies of Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Its elegant style, pointed theorizing, and moving ethnographic descriptions will draw readers into Acehnese lifeworlds and politics. Its narratives attest to Acehnese ways of living with loss, within and across a history of colonial and postcolonial violence and suffering and a present of political uncertainty and hope.
Examines how disasters like earthquakes, oil spills, and nuclear power plant accidents can act as focusing events "which cause both citizens and policymakers to pay more attention to a public problem and often to press for solutions ... Explains how and why some public disasters change political agendas and, ultimately, public policies."--P. [4] of cover.
"Terrorist attacks, hurricanes, pandemic, earthquakes, tornadoes, oil spills, floods and tsunami -- Ed Minyard has responded to them all. Over the past 10 years, Ed has been involved in almost every major crisis in and around North America -- and one long-range mission to Japan. This book describes his adventures and presents a view that most have never seen -- from inside the heart of chaos. Read of Ed's experiences with politicians, heroes, tragic victims and yes, the inevitable crooks that always seem to be there to exploit these events. Ed tells it like it was -- no holds barred. In the end, it's the lessons from these terrible events that matter. Ed expresses those lessons with stright-talk, peppered with a bit of (sometimes dark) humor. Above all else, this book will educate the reader in the subject of preparedness -- but only if you take the lessons to heart. That part is up to you."--Back cover.
Disasters often strike without warning and leave a trail of destruction in their wake. Yet armed with the right tools and information, survivors can fend for themselves and get through even the toughest circumstances. Matthew Stein's When Disaster Strikes provides a thorough, practical guide for how to prepare for and react in many of life's most unpredictable scenarios. In this disaster-preparedness manual, he outlines the materials you'll need-from food and water, to shelter and energy, to first-aid and survival skills-to help you safely live through the worst. When Disaster Strikes covers how to find and store food, water, and clothing, as well as the basics of installing back-up power and lights. You'll learn how to gather and sterilize water, build a fire, treat injuries in an emergency, and use alternative medical sources when conventional ones are unavailable. Stein instructs you on the smartest responses to natural disasters-such as fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and floods-how to keep warm during winter storms, even how to protect yourself from attack or other dangerous situations. With this comprehensive guide in hand, you can be sure to respond quickly, correctly, and confidently when a crisis threatens.
An exploration of loss and survival by one of America's finest nautical writers After the Storm is John Rousmaniere's most ambitious work ever, the unique expression of a master storyteller and authority on seamanship who has survived storms at sea. Each of the book's stories of seafaring disaster­­many little known, all exciting and of deep human interest­­presents a broad human drama. Rousmaniere tells of the hopes and choices that put these sailors in harm's way. He takes readers into the gales themselves with authoritative knowledge of horrific weather and the split-second decisions that seamen must make. Finally, he explores the consequences of these disasters for survivors, rescuers, families, communities, and in some cases nations. The pursuit of these elusive strands leads the reader deep into our ambivalent relationship with the sea as both "destroyer and preserver."