On November 1, 1755--All Saints' Day--a massive earthquake struck Europe's Iberian Peninsula and destroyed the city of Lisbon. Churches collapsed upon thousands of worshippers celebrating the holy day. "Earthquakes in Human History" tells the story of that calamity and other epic earthquakes. The authors, Jelle Zeilinga de Boer and Donald Theodore Sanders, recapture the power of their previous book, "Volcanoes in Human History." They vividly explain the geological processes responsible for earthquakes, and they describe how these events have had long-lasting aftereffects on human societies and cultures. Their accounts are enlivened with quotations from contemporary literature and from later reports.

In the chaos following the Lisbon quake, government and church leaders vied for control. The Marques de Pombal rose to power and became a virtual dictator. As a result, the Roman Catholic Jesuit Order lost much of its influence in Portugal. Voltaire wrote his satirical work "Candide" to refute the philosophy of "optimism," the belief that God had created a perfect world. And the 1755 earthquake sparked the search for a scientific understanding of natural disasters.

Ranging from an examination of temblors mentioned in the Bible, to a richly detailed account of the 1906 catastrophe in San Francisco, to Japan's Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, to the Peruvian earthquake in 1970 (the Western Hemisphere's greatest natural disaster), this book is an unequaled testament to a natural phenomenon that can be not only terrifying but also threatening to humankind's fragile existence, always at risk because of destructive powers beyond our control."

These case studies complement the earlier ground breaking work of ""Natural Disaster Hotspots: A Global Risk Analysis"" published in April 2005. Three case studies address specific hazards: landslides, storm surges and drought. An additional, three case studies address regional multi-hazard situations in Sri Lanka, the Tana River basin in Kenya, and the city of Caracas, Venezuela.

A magnificently told and thrilling account of one of the most dramatic events in British history.
Adrian Tinniswood's magnificent new account of the Great Fire of London explores the history of a cataclysm and its consequences, from that first small blaze in a baker's house in Pudding Lane in the early hours of September 2nd, 1666 to the inferno that would devastate the third largest city in the Western world. The statistics are terrible: 436 acres of closely packed streets burned; 13,200 houses destroyed; 10 million lost at a time when 10 million represented the City's annual income for 800 years. But the Great Fire wasn't simply a tragedy of economics or architecture. It wrecked lives and destroyed livelihoods. It killed and maimed, and it drove Londoners mad in their quest for vengeance.
By Permission of Heaven pieces together the untold human story of the Fire and its aftermath -- the panic and terror, the bewilderment and violence and chaos, the search for scapegoats, the rebirth of a city. Above all, it provides an unsurpassable recreation of what happened to schoolchildren and servants, courtiers and clergymen when the streets of London ran with fire and "by ye Permission of Heaven, Hell broke loose upon this Protestant City."

"From the Hardcover edition.

Catastrophic risks are much greater than is commonly appreciated. Collision with an asteroid, runaway global warming, voraciously replicating nanomachines, a pandemic of gene-spliced smallpox launched by bioterrorists, and a world-ending accident in a high-energy particle accelerator, are among the possible extinction events that are sufficiently likely to warrant careful study. How should we respond to events that, for a variety of psychological and cultural reasons, we find it hard to wrap our minds around? Posner argues that realism about science and scientists, innovative applications of cost-benefit analysis, a scientifically literate legal profession, unprecedented international cooperation, and a pragmatic attitude toward civil liberties are among the keys to coping effectively with the catastrophic risks.

"This book will have significant impact in film and media studies because Kaplan so skillfully 'translates' the most interesting work done in trauma studies and takes it in new and original directions. It is illuminating, lucid, and persuasive." --Patrice Petro, author of Aftershocks of the New: Feminism and Film History "This book is an engaging read--a real page turner--not only because of its conversational style and beautiful prose but also because it addresses some of the most complex psychological issues facing our culture today." --Kelly Oliver, W. Alton Jones Professor, Vanderbilt University It may be said that every trauma is two traumas or ten thousand--depending on the number of people involved. How one experiences and reacts to an event is unique and depends largely on one's direct or indirect positioning, personal and psychic history, and individual memories. But equally important to the experience of trauma are the broader political and cultural contexts within which a catastrophe takes place and how it is "managed" by institutional forces, including the media. In Trauma Culture, E. Ann Kaplan explores the relationship between the impact of trauma on individuals and on entire cultures and nations. Arguing that humans possess a compelling need to draw meaning from personal experience and to communicate what happens to others, she examines the artistic, literary, and cinematic forms that are often used to bridge the individual and collective experiences. Case studies, including Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism, Marguerite Duras's La Douleur, Sarah Kofman's Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, and Tracey Moffatt's Night Cries, reveal how empathy can be fostered without the sensationalistic element that typifies the media. From World War II to 9/11, this passionate study eloquently navigates the contentious debates surrounding trauma theory and persuasively advocates the responsible sharing and translating of catastrophe. E. Ann Kaplan is a professor of English at SUNY-Stony Brook, where she founded and directs the Humanities Instiute. She was recently the president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

This topical text explores how the risk of disasters can be reduced by structural and non structural measures with detailed, comprehensive strategies.

Twenty years ago the world slept, confident that biomedical science would protect it from devastating plagues. Our wake-up call sounded at the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. Then came more unfamiliar pathogens in its wake, such as the West Nile virus. Meanwhile, the neglected diseases of the third world, including malaria and African sleeping sickness, festered their victims salvageable only by unaffordable, patent-protected drugs. Robert S. Desowitz traces the histories of these diseases and the issues we must confront the morality and legality of patent laws, the effect of global warming on epidemics, public support for the commercial biochemical industry, the growing dissociation of clinicians and public health professionals, and the terrifying shadow of bioterrorism."

On September 16, 1999, rainfall from Hurricane Floyd swelled North Carolina's rivers, flooding tens of thousands of homes, businesses, and communities across the eastern third of the state; taking 52 lives; and causing an estimated $6 billion in damages. "Faces from the Flood" is a compelling look back at the state's most destructive natural disaster, conveyed through the words of those who endured it.

Thirty-seven interviews with victims, heroes, volunteers, scientists, and government officials offer tales of dramatic rescues, sorrowful losses, and the quiet determination to survive and rebuild. The story of Floyd is far from over, and North Carolinians must be prepared to face similar storms in the future, warn Richard Moore and Jay Barnes. They conclude with an assessment of the state's response to Floyd and a discussion of what programs should be initiated, maintained, or strengthened to prepare for future storms.

Through evocative personal stories, maps, tables, and dozens of striking photographs, "Faces from the Flood" highlights the dramatic impact of Hurricane Floyd. It will serve as a valuable reference for future explorations of North Carolina's greatest disaster.

This volume distills what is known about environmental health during an emergency or disaster. It draws on results from the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, and on experience with sustainable development between the two Earth Summits, in Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg. It is intended for practitioners, as well as for policy-makers and researchers, and thus covers both general and technical aspects of environmental health. In Part I of this volume, a conceptual framework is presented for understanding environmental health issues in the context of disaster management. The framework covers the entire disaster-management cycle, from preparedness and warning, to recovery and prevention. Guidelines are also suggested for planning and reducing the effects of extreme events on public health, and practical guidance is given in organizational and logistical matters. Throughout, the need for flexibility and innovation at the local level is emphasized, combined with solid advance planning. There is also a focus on the vulnerability of populations during an emergency or disaster, with the implication that such people have capacities and local knowledge that should be integrated into efforts to secure both environment and development against extreme events. The creative potential of balancing "top-down" and "bottom-up" approaches is emphasized in chapters on health promotion and community participation, and on human resources. Part II of this book is a detailed compendium of best practices and strategies for risk reduction and response in the fields of: * Shelter and emergency settlements; * Water supply; * Sanitation; * Food safety; * Vector and pest control; * Control of communicable diseases and prevention of epidemics; * Chemical incidents; * Radiation emergencies; * Mortuary service and handling of the dead; * Health promotion and community participation; and * Human resources. This book will be useful in planning for, responding to, and recovering from the movements of displaced persons and refugees in humanitarian crises, as well as the floods, storms, earthquakes and other extreme events that could confront health workers in the first decade of the 21st century. Given trends in the 1990s, it is unlikely that humanity has seen the last of these challenges.

At 4:33 P.M. on March 3, 1966, the skies above Jackson, Mississippi, turned an ominous yellow before going suddenly and violently black. A tornado of the F-5 category -- the most lethal -- struck without warning. It tore roofs off buildings, twisted metal, blew out windows, threw cars into the air, and killed fourteen people -- thirteen of them in a newly built shopping mall, the Candlestick Shopping Center. The fury and destruction ended in seconds, but in those moments the tornado had ripped through the heart of a community, changing lives forever.

In A World Turned Over, Lorian Hemingway returns to the Jackson she knew as a child and tells the story of the Candlestick Tornado, as it came to be known. Vividly re-creating the terrifying day of the tornado, she recounts the miracles and tragedies that also happened that day -- including the story of Donna Durr, who with her baby was lifted in her car seventy-five feet up into the vortex, and of eighteen-year-old Ronny Hannis, who survived to help rescue others, oblivious to the danger to his own life. Decades later, the devastation of that single day continues to reverberate and affect those left behind.

Lyrical and haunting, A World Turned Over is an unforgettable story of awesome destruction -- and a powerful testament to the extraordinary resilience, faith, and heroism of ordinary people visited by fate.

The Hurricane Hunters and Their Fateful Flight into Hurricane Janet

Fifty years after Isaac's Storm, a riveting story of the first Hurricane Hunters, and the one crew who paid the ultimate price.

"In a virtual age when tempests are monitored by global positioning and The Weather Channel, Stormchasers reminds us that our first understanding of hurricanes was directly built on the risks and sacrifices of living, breathing heroes," writes Hampton Sides (author of Ghost Soldiers).

In September 1955, Navy Lieutenant Commander Grover B. Windham and a crew of eight flew out of Guantánamo Bay into the eye of Hurricane Janet swirling in the Caribbean: a routine weather reconnaissance mission from which they never returned. In the wake of World War II, the Air Force and the Navy had discovered a new civilian arena where daring pilots could test their courage and skill. These Hurricane Hunters flew into raging storms to gauge their strength and predict their paths. Without computer, global positioning, or satellite support, they relied on rudimentary radar systems to locate the hurricane's eye and estimated the drift of their aircraft by looking at windblown waves below. Drawing from Navy documents and interviews with members of the squadron and relatives of the crew, Stormchasers reconstructs the ill-fated mission of Windham's crew from preflight checks to the chilling moment of their final transmission. 8 b/w photographs.

"Riveting.... Toomey is imaginative and compelling in his re-creation."—Baltimore Sun

"Toomey brings a novelist's eye and an investigative journalist's panache to the history and science."—Chicago Tribune

This dissertation analyzes the current status of emergency management professionalization in the United States and Florida using a qualitative case study. I investigate the efforts of various organizations at the national and state levels in the private and public sectors to organize emergency management as a profession. I conceptualize emergency management professionalization as occurring in two phases: the indirect institutionalization of the occupation of emergency management and the formal advancement toward an emergency management profession. The legislative, organizational, and procedural developments that occurred between approximately 1900 and the late 1970s became the indirect institutionalization of the occupation of emergency management. Over time, as our society developed and became increasingly complex, more disasters affect the security of the population. In order to adapt to increasing risks and vulnerabilities the emergency management system emerged and with it the necessary elements upon which a future profession could be established providing the basis for the formal advancement toward an emergency management profession. The purpose of this research is to provide a frame of reference for whether or not the field of emergency management is a profession. Based on sociology of professions literature, emergency management can be considered to be professionalizing. The current emergency management professionalization efforts may or may not be sufficient to achieve the ultimate goal of becoming a legitimate profession based on legal and public support for the exclusive right to perform emergency management tasks (monopoly) as well as self-regulation of those tasks(autonomy).

As interest in planning for emergencies and disasters burgeons, and educational and training programs proliferate, Principles of emergency planning and management is the first book to meet the need for a concise yet comprehensive and systematic primer on how to prepare for a disaster. Providing readers with a comprehensive, systematic, yet concise introduction to effective preparation for disasters, it provides a unified starting point encompassing the scattered and parochial literature in this nascent field of academic enquiry and practical endeavor.

The book provides a general introduction to the methods, procedures, protocols and strategies of emergency planning, with emphasis on situations in industrialized countries and the local level of organization (i.e. cities, municipalities, metropolitan areas and small regions), though with ample reference to national and international levels. Rather than concentrating on the practices of any one country or state, the author focuses on general principles. Principles of emergency planning and management is designed to be a reference source and manual from which emergency managers can extract ideas, suggestions and pro-forma methodologies to help them design and implement emergency plans. A comprehensive all-hazards approach is adopted, with frequent reference to the most important individual hazards and the planning and management needs that they create. Twelve examples of actual emergency planning and management problems are analyzed in detail.

Principles of emergency planning and management is written especially for the new generation of emergency planners and managers that is emerging as a result of intensified governmental interest in disaster preparedness. Many of them will occupy positions in government or other organizations that require emergency plans. The book will also be of value to students of disasters and hazards who have a practical interest in how disasters are planned for and managed, and to professional workers and trainees who will eventually have to participate in disaster plans. Principles of emergency planning and management is designed to be easily integrated with training courses in emergency preparedness.

"Tonight the Bhopalis are going through their Hiroshima."
-Professor Manish Mishra, a doctor on the scene from FIVE PAST MIDNIGHT IN BHOPAL

One of the premier historians of our time, Dominique Lapierre is the author of such stirring classics as Is Paris Burning? and The City of Joy. Famed for uncovering the humanity in historic events, he here joins forces with acclaimed writer Javier Moro. Together they investigate and chronicle each fateful moment counting down to what happened...

FIVE PAST MIDNIGHT IN BHOPAL

Union Carbide was a huge American corporation whose leaders had only the best intentions. In New York they invented a miracle insecticide. In ancient Bhopal, they formulated the lethal gas needed to produce it and built a giant plant to process it.

But at five past midnight on December 3, 1984, toxic gas leaked out of a pesticide tank. By one thirty geysers were spitting poison into the night wind. The apocalypse had begun. Banks of deadly fog filled nearby slums. Lungs burst. Corneas burned. Death would strike in seconds and no one was prepared: neither the bride at her wedding banquet nor the peasants who came to Bhopal for a better life, not the shoemaker rousing his neighbors to flee their huts or the Scottish nun risking all to rescue lost children. By night's end, over half a million Bhopalis were drowning in pain and chaos and between 16,000 and 30,000 would die in the worst industrial disaster in history.

In FIVE PAST MIDNIGHT IN BHOPAL, Lapierre and Moro weave hundreds of characters, eyewitness accounts, and adventures into one haunting human tapestry. An epic of ambition and valor, faith and hope, catastrophe and consequence, it is as spine-tingling as Titanic, as harrowing as The Perfect Storm, and as relevant as the latest headline.

Half of all royalties for this book go to the Dominique Lapierre City of Joy Indian Foundation to support humanitarian actions in Bhopal.

Natural disasters have long been a neglected subject in the study of history. At most they have been casually mentioned as a background material for political or social history. During the 90s this state of affairs has slowly began to change. Nevertheless, there is still no general history of natural disasters available in any language. This book aims to cover one grey area in historical studies, that is, spiritual responses and survival strategies of medieval man in front of natural disasters. It asks what were his means to deal with natural disasters, phenomena he could not scientifically understand. How did he try to prevent them? What were his feelings and actions when the situation was on? How did he manage to carry on with his life afterwards? It is an unusual book in many respects. It is a specific study based on original and in most cases unedited sources, but it can also be read as a general introduction. It crosses boundaries between different fields of learning and traditionally accepted time periods of history. Even if it is essentially a book on medieval man, it stretches far beyond the middle ages as conventionally understood. The final chapter traces the slow disappearance of the medieval mentality until the early nineteenth century.

The first book to establish hurricanes as a key factor in the development of modern Cuba, Winds of Change shows how these great storms played a decisive role in shaping the economy, the culture, and the nation during a critical century in the island's history. Always vulnerable to hurricanes, Cuba was ravaged in 1842, 1844, and 1846 by three catastrophic storms, with staggering losses of life and property. Louis P erez combines eyewitness and literary accounts with agricultural data and economic records to show how important facets of the colonial political economy--among them, land tenure forms, labor organization, and production systems--and many of the social relationships at the core of Cuban society were transformed as a result of these and lesser hurricanes. He also examines the impact of repeated natural disasters on the development of Cuban identity and community. Bound together in the face of forces beyond their control, Cubans forged bonds of unity in their ongoing efforts to persevere and recover in the aftermath of destruction. |The first book to establish hurricanes as a key factor in the history of Cuba, Winds of Change shows how the savage storms of the 1840s played a decisive role in shaping the economy, the culture, and the nation during a critical century in the island's development.

Originally written as a study guide to assist individuals preparing for the Certified Crisis Operations Manager examination, this volume provides a reference manual for emergency managers on the organizational structures, facilities, and procedures used to manage disaster response operations. The focus is on management of operations during the period immediately prior to disaster onset, the event impact, and the immediate post impact period. Topics covered include the Incident Command System, Command Posts, Emergency Operations Center facilities and organization, emergency plans and guidance documents, information management, interface procedures, communications, strategy and tactics, decision processes, risks and safety, media relations, documentation, stress management, and standards and ethics.

Alaska is like no other state and few countries; men experience greater risk in her arms. This one-of-a-kind anthology captures the spine tingling adventures of daring men and women who venture into Alaska's vast wilderness and look death in the eye. "Danger Stalks the Land" relates gripping episodes of animal attacks, avalanches, aircraft disasters, fishing, hunting, and skiing accidents, and chronicles risky climbs and reckless mountaineering amid Alaska's fantastic peaks. Through exhaustive research and interviews, author Larry Kaniut has captured in one volume, the terror and beauty of man's attempt to explore a vast and unforgiving land.

A timely ethnography of how Indonesia's coastal dwellers inhabit the "chronic present" of a slow-motion natural disaster Ice caps are melting, seas are rising, and densely populated cities worldwide are threatened by floodwaters, especially in Southeast Asia. Building on Borrowed Time is a timely and powerful ethnography of how people in Semarang, Indonesia, on the north coast of Java, are dealing with this global warming-driven existential challenge. In addition to antiflooding infrastructure breaking down, vast areas of cities like Semarang and Jakarta are rapidly sinking, affecting the very foundations of urban life: toxic water oozes through the floors of houses, bridges are submerged, traffic is interrupted. As Lukas Ley shows, the residents of Semarang are constantly engaged in maintaining their homes and streets, trying to live through a slow-motion disaster shaped by the interacting temporalities of infrastructural failure, ecological deterioration, and urban development. He casts this predicament through the temporal lens of a "meantime," a managerial response that means a constant enduring of the present rather than progress toward a better future-a "chronic present." Building on Borrowed Time takes us to a place where a flood crisis has already arrived-where everyday residents are not waiting for the effects of climate change but are in fact already living with it-and shows that life in coastal Southeast Asia is defined not by the temporality of climate science but by the lived experience of tidal flooding.

A global catastrophic risk is one with the potential to wreak death and destruction on a global scale. In human history, wars and plagues have done so on more than one occasion, and misguided ideologies and totalitarian regimes have darkened an entire era or a region. Advances in technology are adding dangers of a new kind. It could happen again.
In Global Catastrophic Risks 25 leading experts look at the gravest risks facing humanity in the 21st century, including asteroid impacts, gamma-ray bursts, Earth-based natural catastrophes, nuclear war, terrorism, global warming, biological weapons, totalitarianism, advanced nanotechnology, general artificial intelligence, and social collapse. The book also addresses over-arching issues - policy responses and methods for predicting and managing catastrophes.
This is invaluable reading for anyone interested in the big issues of our time; for students focusing on science, society, technology, and public policy; and for academics, policy-makers, and professionals working in these acutely important fields.

Three devastating epidemics swept Egypt in the 1940's killing more people than all the wars Egypt has fought in the twentieth century. Egypt's Other Wars vividly reconstructs the nation's struggle against malaria, relapsing fever, and cholera and explores the unique combination of forces that put public health at the top of the national political agenda. Egypt in the 1940's as in the throes of a nationalist upheaval. Nationalists of all political ideologies attributed the sever epidemics that the country was experiencing to Egypt's status as an underdeveloped and colonized nation. The epidemics were therefore viewed for the first time as not only a public health crisis but also a political problem that called for a political solution.