Hurricane Katrina forced the largest and most abrupt displacement in U.S. history. About 1.5 million people evacuated from the Gulf Coast preceding Katrina’s landfall. New Orleans, a city of 500,000, ...was nearly emptied of life after the hurricane and flooding. Katrina survivors eventually scattered across all fifty states, and tens of thousands still remain displaced. Some are desperate to return to the Gulf Coast but cannot find the means. Others have chosen to make their homes elsewhere. Still others found a way to return home but were unable to stay due to the limited availability of social services, educational opportunities, health care options, and affordable housing. The contributors to Displaced have been following the lives of Katrina evacuees since 2005. In this illuminating book, they offer the first comprehensive analysis of the experiences of the displaced. Drawing on research in thirteen communities in seven states across the country, the contributors describe the struggles that evacuees have faced in securing life-sustaining resources and rebuilding their lives. They also recount the impact that the displaced have had on communities that initially welcomed them and then later experienced “Katrina fatigue" as the ongoing needs of evacuees strained local resources. Displaced reveals that Katrina took a particularly heavy toll on households headed by low-income African American women who lost the support provided by local networks of family and friends. It also shows the resilience and resourcefulness of Katrina evacuees who have built new networks and partnered with community organizations and religious institutions to create new lives in the diaspora.
In the wake of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, many are asking what, if anything, can be done to prevent large-scale disasters. How is it that we know more about the hazards of modern American life than ...ever before, yet the nation faces ever-increasing losses from such events? History shows that disasters are not simply random acts. Where is the logic in creating an elaborate set of fire codes for buildings, and then allowing structures like the Twin Towers-tall, impressive, and risky-to go up as design experiments? Why prepare for terrorist attacks above all else when floods, fires, and earthquakes pose far more consistent threats to American life and prosperity?The Disaster Expertstakes on these questions, offering historical context for understanding who the experts are that influence these decisions, how they became powerful, and why they are only slightly closer today than a decade ago to protecting the public from disasters. Tracing the intertwined development of disaster expertise, public policy, and urbanization over the past century, historian Scott Gabriel Knowles tells the fascinating story of how this diverse collection of professionals-insurance inspectors, engineers, scientists, journalists, public officials, civil defense planners, and emergency managers-emerged as the authorities on risk and disaster and, in the process, shaped modern America.
This book continues to serve as the leading comprehensive overview of global emergency management. This edition provides practitioners and students alike with a comprehensive understanding of the ...disaster management profession by utilizing a global perspective and including the different sources of risk and vulnerability, the systems that exist to manage hazard risk, and the many different stakeholders involved. This update examines the impact of many recent large-scale and catastrophic disaster events on countries and communities, as well as their influence on disaster risk reduction efforts worldwide. It also expands coverage of small-island developing states (SIDS) and explores the achievements of the United Nations Hyogo Framework for Action (2005-2015) and the priorities for action in the Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction currently under development.
Even before the wreckage of a disaster is cleared, one question is foremost in the minds of the public: "What can be done to prevent this from happening again?" Today, news media and policymakers ...often invoke the "lessons of September 11" and the "lessons of Hurricane Katrina." Certainly, these unexpected events heightened awareness about problems that might have contributed to or worsened the disasters, particularly about gaps in preparation. Inquiries and investigations are made that claim that "lessons" were "learned" from a disaster, leading us to assume that we will be more ready the next time a similar threat looms, and that our government will put in place measures to protect us. In Lessons of Disaster, Thomas Birkland takes a critical look at this assumption. We know that disasters play a role in setting policy agendas—in getting policymakers to think about problems—but does our government always take the next step and enact new legislation or regulations? To determine when and how a catastrophic event serves as a catalyst for true policy change, the author examines four categories of disasters: aviation security, homeland security, earthquakes, and hurricanes. He explores lessons learned from each, focusing on three types of policy change: change in the larger social construction of the issues surrounding the disaster; instrumental change, in which laws and regulations are made; and political change, in which alliances are created and shifted. Birkland argues that the type of disaster affects the types of lessons learned from it, and that certain conditions are necessary to translate awareness into new policy, including media attention, salience for a large portion of the public, the existence of advocacy groups for the issue, and the preexistence of policy ideas that can be drawn upon. This timely study concludes with a discussion of the interplay of multiple disasters, focusing on the initial government response to Hurricane Katrina and the negative effect the September 11 catastrophe seems to have had on reaction to that tragedy.
Over half the world’s population lives in urban regions, and increasingly disasters are of great concern to city dwellers, policymakers, and builders. However, disaster risk is also of great interest ...to corporations, financiers, and investors. Risky Cities is a critical examination of global urban development, capitalism, and its relationship with environmental hazards. It is about how cities live and profit from the threat of sinkholes, garbage, and fire. Risky Cities is not simply about post-catastrophe profiteering. This book focuses on the way in which disaster capitalism has figured out ways to commodify environmental bads and manage risks. Notably, capitalist city-building results in the physical transformation of nature. This necessitates risk management strategies –such as insurance, environmental assessments, and technocratic mitigation plans. As such capitalists redistribute risk relying on short-term fixes to disaster risk rather than address long-term vulnerabilities.
This book showcases research in disaster response in Southeast Asia of particular interest for those studying disaster and mental health, and for providers of mental health and psychosocial support. ...Contributors cover topics ranging from resistance to disasters to resilience and recovery interventions.
This report explores the macro-economic and public finance implications of natural disasters, including the role of information and mechanisms for risk spreading, and drawing in particular on ...evidence from Bangladesh, Dominica and Malawi.Major natural disasters can have severe negative short-run economic and budgetary impacts. Disasters also appear to have adverse longer-term consequences for economic growth, development and poverty reduction. However, negative impacts are not inevitable: sensitivity to natural hazards is determined by a complex, dynamic set of influences. Vulnerability can shift rapidly, especially in countries experiencing economic transformation - rapid growth, urbanization, and related technical and social changes. The report concludes that in order to stem the rising cost of natural disasters globally, hazard risk management concerns need to be integrated into longer-term national investment policies and development strategies and appropriately reflected in the allocation of financial resources, including medium-term financial planning. The generation and dissemination of quality, reliable scientific information should be supported as part of this process. In addition, assessment of the economic and financial impacts of disasters should be extended to include a full reassessment 18 to 24 months after an event, generating vital information on the nature of impacts and underlying causal factors.
The much expanded sixth edition of Environmental Hazards provides a fully up-to-date overview of all the extreme events that threaten people and what they value in the 21st century. It integrates ...cutting-edge material from the physical and social sciences to illustrate how natural and human systems interact to place communities of all sizes, and at all stages of economic development, at risk. It also explains in detail the various measures available to reduce the ongoing losses to life and property. Part One of this established textbook defines basic concepts of hazard, risk, vulnerability and disaster. Attention is given to the evolution of theory, to the scales and patterns of disaster impact and to the optimum management strategies needed to minimize the future impact of damaging events. Part Two employs a consistent chapter structure to demonstrate how individual hazards, such as earthquakes, severe storms, floods and droughts, plus biophysical and technological processes, create distinctive impacts and challenges throughout the world. The ways in which different societies can make positive responses to these threats are placed firmly in the context of sustainable development and global environmental change.
This extensively revised edition includes:
A new concluding chapter that summarizes the globalization of hazard and critically examines the latest perspectives on climate-related disasters
Fresh perspectives on the reliability of disaster data, disaster risk reduction, severe storms, droughts and technological hazards
More boxed sections with a focus on both generic issues and the lessons to be learned from a carefully selected range of recent extreme events
An annotated list of key resources, including further reading and relevant websites, for all chapters
183 diagrams, now in full colour, and available to download on: www.routledge.com/9780415681063/
Over 30 colour photographs and more than 1,000 references to some of the most significant and recent published material.
Environmental Hazards is a clearly-written, authoritative account of the causes and consequences of the extreme natural and technological processes that cause death and destruction across the globe. It draws on the latest research findings to guide the reader from common problems, theories and policies to explore practical, real-world situations and solutions. This carefully structured and balanced book captures the complexity and dynamism of environmental hazards and has become essential reading for students of every kind seeking to understand this most important contemporary issue.
"The latest edition of Environmental Hazards provides a reliable guide to the ever changing field of natural hazards and disasters. The sixth edition covers a remarkable range of interdisciplinary topics in an accessible manner. The text is a unique resource for anyone wanting to understand how human society on planet Earth often finds itself in peril, and what we can do about it." Roger Pielke, Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.
"Environmental Hazards has become the indispensable text for hazards students and scholars. The new edition brings together a wealth of updated and new case studies and examples. The common structure adopted for the chapters in Part II enables useful comparisons between hazard types and the varied risks and adaptation opportunities they present. This is a detailed and thorough treatment of the complex approaches to and challenges of hazard management." Dr Maureen Fordham, Enterprise Fellow Principal Lecturer in Disaster Management, University of Northumbria, UK.
"This is one of a minority that combines information on the range of disasters—natural, biophysical and technological. It is also one of the only textbooks that provides a good general overview of the basic concepts important to the study of hazards such as disaster trends, risk management, vulnerability, mitigation/risk reduction, adaptation, etc. I would further argue that the language, case studies, suggestions for further readings, web links, etc. contribute to the book’s pedagogical value for an undergraduate introductory text. If students have only one opportunity to learn about hazards in their undergraduate program then this book will indeed provide ‘the basics’." Jessica Lehman - The University of British Columbia
Keith Smith is Emeritus Professor of Environmental Science and former Dean of Natural Sciences at the University of Stirling. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Part One: The Nature of Hazard 1. Hazard in the Environment 2. Dimensions of Disaster 3. Complexity, Sustainability and Vulnerability 4. Risk Assessment and Management 5. Reducing the Impacts of Disaster Part Two: The Experience and Reduction of Hazard 6. Tectonic Hazards - Earthquakes and Tsunamis 7. Tectonic Hazards - Volcanoes 8. Landslide and Avalanche Hazards 9. Severe Storm Hazards 10. Weather Extremes, Disease Epidemics and Wildfires 11. Hydrological Hazards - Floods 12. Hydrological Hazards - Droughts 13. Technological Hazards 14. Environmental Hazards in a Changing World Bibliography Index
