Focusing on the spectacular disasters of the 1980s -- the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Chernobyl meltdown, the Challenger space shuttle explosion, the Bhopal chemical plant release, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic -- Ann Larabee examines how culture is reconstructed after disaster through victims' stories, media coverage, and official efforts to restore faith in technology.

Decade of Disaster gives voice to a diverse cast of disaster participants, including Bhopal widows, people with AIDS, Chernobyl tourists, NASA administrators, international nuclear power authorities, and corporate spokespeople. Integrating sources ranging from official reports and scientific studies to news stories, movies, and science fiction novels, Larabee explores the fierce debates that followed these disasters, as government agencies, corporations, public interest groups, academics, and local communities fought to control their meaning.

An incisive commentary at the intersection of cultural history and cultural studies, Decade of Disaster peels away layers and screens of rhetoric to expose the underlying process of cultural negotiation.

In 1931, China suffered a catastrophic flood that claimed millions of lives. This was neither a natural nor human-made disaster. Rather, it was created by an interaction between the environment and society. Regular inundation had long been an integral feature of the ecology and culture of the middle Yangzi, yet by the modern era floods had become humanitarian catastrophes. Courtney describes how the ecological and economic effects of the 1931 flood pulse caused widespread famine and epidemics. He takes readers into the inundated streets of Wuhan, describing the terrifying and disorientating sensory environment. He explains why locals believed that an angry Dragon King was causing the flood, and explores how Japanese invasion and war with the Communists inhibited both official relief efforts and refugee coping strategies. This innovative study offers the first in-depth analysis of the 1931 flood, and charts the evolution of one of China's most persistent environmental problems.

A mass fatalities response goes far beyond returning the remains of a loved one to surviving family members. Those charged with this grim but critical responsibility will find themselves immersed in multiple tasks involving diverse individuals, organizations, and priorities. Mass Fatalities: Managing the Community Response examines multiple complex issues while providing practical guidance to communities and responders as they plan for, respond to, and recover from a mass fatalities incident. This book explores the immense array of tasks such as: Managing resources and personnel Protecting a potential crime scene Conducting a comprehensive search and recovery of the remains Identifying and returning the remains and personal effects Ensuring family members of the deceased are treated with compassion, dignity, and respect Making sure responders have the proper tools to complete their responsibilities Providing family members, responders, and the impacted community the necessary support to cope with the physical, spiritual, and emotional stressors of a mass fatalities incident The book explains in detail the functions performed at the mass fatalities operational sites, including the Disaster Site, Victim Identification Center, Family Assistance Center, and Staff Processing Center. It provides organizational charts with job descriptions detailing the roles and responsibilities for an effective leadership team and describes the management of the disaster site, presenting step-by-step procedures for search and recovery. The book also discusses the registration, initial interview, and Notification of Death for family members at the Family Assistance Center and covers best practices for the Victim Identification Center operations. Throughout, chapters emphasize the need for mental health services-exploring the essential elements of providing effective and compassionate support to surviving family members (including children), to responders and their families, and to the community. An increase in catastrophic disasters in recent years has highlighted the need for sound guidance outlining the protocol for handling these events. Mass Fatalities: Managing the Community Response is an indispensable resource for this formidable task. Peter Teahen discusses the book in a video on the CRC Press YouTube channel.

Learn Resilience Through These Survival Stories #1 New Release in Disaster Relief Extreme Survival is the long awaited followup to New York Times best-selling author Michael Tougias's The Finest Hours. This thriller will have you mentally on the edge-of-your-seat as you read these true survival stories and learn useful survival techniques! Explore the stories and the causes of manmade disasters. To answer the question of why disasters happen and how some survive, Tougias interviewed over 100 people who survived against all odds, first chronicling their harrowing survival stories, and then discussing in detail the lessons learned. Both an exciting and informative read, this book provides the entertainment and exceptional research fans expect. Learn resilience through the mindset of a survivor. Tougias shares what a person is capable of when under pressure and facing different types of disasters. Surviving disasters requires extreme survival techniques to kick in at just the right time! All of Michael Tougias books have a level of deep survival laced within the pages. Learn how to rise against the odds in your personal and professional life. Inside, you'll find: Captivating and narrative survival stories told in true Tougias' trademark style Analysis of major man-made disasters and the faulty decisions that led to them First-person accounts and detailed survival tactics that can be utilized in your day-to-day life If you like non-fiction survival books like The Gift of Fear, Deep Survival, or If I Live Until Morning, you'll love Extreme Survival.

Climate Change, Disasters and the Refugee Convention is concerned with refugee status determination (RSD) in the context of disasters and climate change. It demonstrates that the legal predicament of people who seek refugee status in this connection has been inconsistently addressed by judicial bodies in leading refugee law jurisdictions, and identifies epistemological as well as doctrinal impediments to a clear and principled application of international refugee law. Arguing that RSD cannot safely be performed without a clear understanding of the relationship between natural hazards and human agency, the book draws insights from disaster anthropology and political ecology that see discrimination as a contributory cause of people's differential exposure and vulnerability to disaster-related harm. This theoretical framework, combined with insights derived from the review of existing doctrinal and judicial approaches, prompts a critical revision of the dominant human rights-based approach to the refugee definition.

Preventing War and Promoting Peace: A Guide for Health Professionals is an interdisciplinary study of how pervasive militarism creates a propensity for war through the influence of academia, economic policy, the defense industry, and the news media. Comprising contributions by academics and practitioners from the fields of public health, medicine, nursing, law, sociology, psychology, political science, and peace and conflict studies, as well as representatives from organizations active in war prevention, the book emphasizes the underlying preventable causes of war, particularly militarism, and focuses on the methods health professionals can use to prevent war. Preventing War and Promoting Peace provides hard-hitting facts about the devastating health effects of war and a broad perspective on war and health, presenting a new paradigm for the proactive engagement of health professions in the prevention of war and the promotion of peace.

The contemporary world is characterized by the massive use of digital communication platforms and services that allow people to stay in touch with each other and their organizations. On the other hand, it is also a world with great challenges in terms of crisis, disaster, and emergency situations of various kinds. Thus, it is crucial to understand the role of digital platforms/services in the context of crisis, disaster, and emergency situations. Digital Services in Crisis, Disaster, and Emergency Situations presents recent studies on crisis, disaster, and emergency situations in which digital technologies are considered as a key mediator. Featuring multi- and interdisciplinary research findings, this comprehensive reference work highlights the relevance of society's digitization and its usefulness and contribution to the different phases and types of risk scenarios. Thus, the book investigates the design of digital services that are specifically developed for use in crisis situations and examines services such as online social networks that can be used for communication purposes in emergency events. Highlighting themes that include crisis management communication, risk monitoring, digital crisis intervention, and smartphone applications, this book is of particular use to governments, institutions, corporations, and professionals who deal with crisis, disaster, and emergency scenarios, as well as researchers, academicians, and students working in fields such as communications, multimedia, sociology, political science, and engineering.

Today, our lives are dominated by an ideology of extreme competition and individualism. It misrepresents human nature, destroying hope and common purpose. But we cannot replace it without a positive vision, one that reengages people in politics and lights a path to a better world. Urgent and passionate, George Monbiot shows how new findings in psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology cast humans in a radically different light: as the supreme altruists and cooperators. He shows how both democracy and economic life can be radically reorganised from the bottom up, enabling us to take back control and overthrow the forces that have thwarted our ambitions for a better society. Out of the Wreckage explains just how communities can be rebuilt with the help of a new "politics of belonging".

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita made landfall less than four weeks apart in 2005. Months later, much of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast remained in tatters. As the region faded from national headlines, its residents faced a dire future. Emmanuel David chronicles how one activist group confronted the crisis. Founded by a few elite white women in New Orleans, Women of the Storm quickly formed a broad coalition that sought to represent Louisiana's diverse population. From its early lobbying of Congress through its response to the 2010 BP oil spill, David shows how members' actions were shaped by gender, race, class, and geography. Drawing on in-depth interviews, ethnographic observation, and archival research, David tells a compelling story of collective action and personal transformation that expands our understanding of the aftermath of an historic American catastrophe.

Policy Shock examines how policy-makers in industrialized democracies respond to major crises. After the immediate challenges of disaster management, crises often reveal new evidence or frame new normative perspectives that drive reforms designed to prevent future events of a similar magnitude. Such responses vary widely - from cosmetically masking inaction, to creating stronger incentive systems, requiring greater transparency, reorganizing government institutions and tightening regulatory standards. This book situates post-crisis regulatory policy-making through a set of conceptual essays written by leading scholars from economics, psychology and political science, which probe the latest thinking about risk analysis, risk perceptions, focusing events and narrative politics. It then presents ten historically-rich case studies that engage with crisis events in three policy domains: offshore oil, nuclear power and finance. It considers how governments can prepare to learn from crisis events - by creating standing expert investigative agencies to identify crisis causes and frame policy recommendations.

In law, as elsewhere, the ordinary is overshadowed in the popular and academic literature by the dramatic and sensational. While the role and behavior of lawyers in the operation of our criminal justice system has been closely scrutinized, comparatively little research has been devoted to the manner in which lawyers litigate the day-to-day civil (non-criminal) cases that comprise the vast bulk of the workload in state and federal courts. Originally commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, this is the first comprehensive national study of the U.S. civil justice system. Kritzer analyzes 1600 cases involving 1400 attorneys in five federal judicial districts. Examining the background, experiences, day-to-day activities, and outlook of civil lawyers, Kritzer finds that the work of lawyers combines the roles of the professional and the broker in many aeas of ordinary litigation. Arguing that lawyers' behavior must be understood in part as a form of brokerage between the client and the legal system, he suggests that the roles of professionals and brokers be considered as complements rather than alternatives in the justice system, and concludes by recommending that lawyers' monopoly on advocacy in civil litigation be restricted. An engaging, lucidly written study, The Justice Broker will be of special interest to practicing lawyers and legal scholars.

A comprehensive and contextual text that examines the manifold strategies of managing both natural and manmade disasters in India. Disaster Management in India critically evaluates the various policies, plans, structures, institutions, processes as well as functionaries that work towards managing disasters in the country. It seeks to provoke its readers to not only revisit the entire discourse of disasters and their management, but also develop a sense of disaster resilience in their lives and effectively deal with any unwarranted natural or manmade eventuality. Key Features: * Explores disaster management from an interdisciplinary perspective * Detailed analysis of various theoretical underpinnings necessary to understand the concept of disaster management * Lucid explanation of ideas with tables, maps, flowcharts, appropriate examples and practice assignments

Chaos Organization and Disaster Management offers a scholarly survey of disaster response behavior and management in the face of natural and manmade catastrophe. The author provides a methodological and empirical platform from which to initiate a critical analysis of disaster management. Sparked by a unique field study of the Israeli experience during the Gulf War, this book demonstrates the massive divide between individual responses to disaster and the actual functioning of disaster management organizations. It exposes the fundamental flaws of disaster management agencies, analyzing disasters from the perspectives of both agencies and potential victims. Formulating an alternative approach to disaster management that draws upon the advantages of privatization, this volume appraises methods of measuring disaster agency effectiveness, emphasizing the citizen vantage point and stakeholder evaluations. It outlines the intrinsic bureaucratic constraints that impede the efficacy of government agencies, and reveals the disconnect between organizational and victim perceptions of disaster. By highlighting a new empirically based understanding of disaster behavior, the book recommends moving the focus of disaster management to a social process model that will save lives.

Climate Change, Disasters and the Refugee Convention is concerned with refugee status determination (RSD) in the context of disasters and climate change. It demonstrates that the legal predicament of people who seek refugee status in this connection has been inconsistently addressed by judicial bodies in leading refugee law jurisdictions, and identifies epistemological as well as doctrinal impediments to a clear and principled application of international refugee law. Arguing that RSD cannot safely be performed without a clear understanding of the relationship between natural hazards and human agency, the book draws insights from disaster anthropology and political ecology that see discrimination as a contributory cause of people's differential exposure and vulnerability to disaster-related harm. This theoretical framework, combined with insights derived from the review of existing doctrinal and judicial approaches, prompts a critical revision of the dominant human rights-based approach to the refugee definition.

The pressure of climate change, environmental degradation, and urbanisation, as well as the widening of socio- economic disparities have rendered the global population increasingly vulnerable to the impact of natural disasters. With a primary focus on medical and public health humanitarian response to disasters, Public Health Humanitarian Responses to Natural Disasters provides a timely critical analysis of public health responses to natural disasters. Using a number of case studies and examples of innovative disaster response measures developed by international agencies and stakeholders, this book illustrates how theoretical understanding of public health issues can be practically applied in the context of humanitarian relief response. Starting with an introduction to public health principles within the context of medical and public health disaster and humanitarian response, the book goes on to explore key trends, threats and challenges in contemporary disaster medical response. This book provides a comprehensive overview of an emergent discipline and offers a unique multidisciplinary perspective across a range of relevant topics including the concepts of disaster preparedness and resilience, and key challenges in human health needs for the twenty-first century. This book will be of interest to students of public health, disaster and emergency medicine and development studies, as well as to development and medical practitioners working within NGOs, development agencies, health authorities and public administration.

Disasters in today's globalized world are becoming not only more frequent but, often, more catastrophic. The media play a critical role in communicating and making sense of these cataclysmic events. This book offers unique insights into how news media today make disasters culturally meaningful and politically important, drawing on cutting-edge theoretical work and recent examples. It looks at how globalization is affecting the meanings of disaster but also considers the continued relevance of nations and their citizens as interpretive frameworks. It examines how journalists' witnessing of disasters is changing in response to new technologies, including social media, and how the ideal of objectivity might be challenged by new, more emotional and more compassionate forms of story-telling premised on an injunction to care. Ultimately, the book calls attention to the media possibilities for addressing disasters as global social, political, cultural and economic events in which we all have a stake.

A richly nuanced cultural history of the Great Mississippi flood The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in U.S. history, drowning crops and displacing more than half a million people across seven states. It was also the first environmental disaster to be experienced virtually on a mass scale. The Flood Year 1927 draws from newspapers, radio broadcasts, political cartoons, vaudeville, blues songs, poetry, and fiction to show how this event provoked an intense and lasting cultural response. Americans at first seemed united in what Herbert Hoover called a "great relief machine," but deep rifts soon arose. Southerners, pointing to faulty federal levee design, decried the attack of Yankee water. The condition of African American evacuees prompted comparisons to slavery from pundits like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells. And environmentalists like Gifford Pinchot called the flood "the most colossal blunder in civilized history." Susan Scott Parrish examines how these and other key figures-from entertainers Will Rogers, Miller & Lyles, and Bessie Smith to authors Sterling Brown, William Faulkner, and Richard Wright-shaped public awareness and collective memory of the event. The crises of this period that usually dominate historical accounts are war and financial collapse, but The Flood Year 1927 allows us to assess how mediated environmental disasters became central to modern consciousness.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. In recent years, typhoons have struck the Philippines and Vanuatu; earthquakes have rocked Haiti, Pakistan, and Nepal; floods have swept through Pakistan and Mozambique; droughts have hit Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia; and more. All led to loss of life and loss of livelihoods, and recovery will take years. One of the likely effects of climate change is to increase the likelihood of the type of extreme weather events that seems to cause these disasters. But do extreme events have to turn into disasters with huge loss of life and suffering? Dull Disasters? harnesses lessons from finance, political science, economics, psychology, and the natural sciences to show how countries and their partners can be far better prepared to deal with disasters. The insights can lead to practical ways in which governments, civil society, private firms, and international organizations can work together to reduce the risks to people and economies when a disaster looms. Responses to disasters then become less emotional, less political, less headline-grabbing, and more business as usual and effective. The book takes the reader through a range of solutions that have been implemented around the world to respond to disasters. It gives an overview of the evidence on what works and what doesn't and it examines the crucial issue of disaster risk financing. Building on the latest evidence, it presents a set of lessons and principles to guide future thinking, research, and practice in this area.

The sociology of hazardous waste, risk, and disasters is a relatively new discipline. This book focuses on hazardous and toxic wastes releases, industrial toxic disasters, contamination of communities and the environment, and the subsequent adverse health effects among exposed populations

The 2010 earthquake in Haiti was one of the deadliest disasters in modern history, sparking an international aid response - with pledges and donations of $16 billion - that was exceedingly generous. But now, five years later, that generous aid has clearly failed. In Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti, anthropologist Mark Schuller captures the voices of those involved in the earthquake aid response, and they paint a sharp, unflattering view of the humanitarian enterprise. Schuller led an independent study of eight displaced-persons camps in Haiti, compiling more than 150 interviews ranging from Haitian front-line workers and camp directors to foreign humanitarians and many displaced Haitian people. The result is an insightful account of why the multi-billion-dollar aid response not only did little to help but also did much harm, triggering a range of unintended consequences, rupturing Haitian social and cultural institutions, and actually increasing violence, especially against women. The book shows how Haitian people were removed from any real decision-making, replaced by a top-down, NGO-dominated system of humanitarian aid, led by an army of often young, inexperienced foreign workers. Ignorant of Haitian culture, these aid workers unwittingly enacted policies that triggered a range of negative results. Haitian interviewees also note that the NGOs ""planted the flag"", and often tended to ""just do something"", always with an eye to the ""photo op"" (in no small part due to the competition over funding). Worse yet, they blindly supported the eviction of displaced people from the camps, forcing earthquake victims to relocate in vast shantytowns that were hotbeds of violence. Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti concludes with suggestions to help improve humanitarian aid in the future, perhaps most notably, that aid workers listen to - and respect the culture of - the victims of catastrophe.

Prevention, preparedness, response and recovery--the key components of emergency planning--form the major sections of this work. The book first describes PSM (Process Safety Management) as the key to prevention, then goes on to consider the main features of a preparedness program, including recognizing credible incidents, planning practical strategy to deal with these incidents, selecting necessary physical support systems and equipment, and developing a complete emergency response plan. The Response section presents the functions implemented during an actual emergency and concludes with a section on managing cleanup and restoration of operations. The many tables and figures include Sample Incident Command System Plans for both large and small organizations, OSHA and EPA regulations affecting planning, sample Fire Emergency Action Levels, HAZMAT Responder Levels, and OSHA Emergency Training Requirements.

In October 2010, nine months after the massive earthquake that devastated Haiti, a second disaster began to unfold-soon to become the world's largest cholera epidemic in modern times. In a country that had never before reported cholera, the epidemic mysteriously and simultaneously appeared in river communities of central Haiti, eventually triggering nearly 800,000 cases and 9,000 deaths. What had caused the first cases of cholera in Haiti in recorded history? Who or what was the deadly agent of origin? Why did it explode in the agricultural-rich delta of the Artibonite River? When answers were few, rumors spread, causing social and political consequences of their own. Wanting insight, the Haitian government and French embassy requested epidemiological assistance from France. A few weeks into the epidemic, physician and infectious disease specialist Renaud Piarroux arrived in Haiti.In Deadly River, Ralph R. Frerichs tells the story of the epidemic-of a French disease detective determined to trace its origins so that he could help contain the spread and possibly eliminate the disease-and the political intrigue that has made that effort so difficult. The story involves political maneuvering by powerful organizations such as the United Nations and its peacekeeping troops in Haiti, as well as by the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Frerichs explores a quest for scientific truth and dissects a scientific disagreement involving world-renowned cholera experts who find themselves embroiled in intellectual and political turmoil in a poverty-stricken country.Frerichs's narrative highlights how the world's wealthy nations, nongovernmental agencies, and international institutions respond when their interests clash with the needs of the world's most vulnerable people. The story poses big social questions and offers insights not only on how to eliminate cholera in Haiti but also how nations, NGOs, and international organizations such as the UN and CDC deal with catastrophic infectious disease epidemics.