Investigating the Extent to Which States of Economic Development Influence the Way People Respond to Natural Hazards

The natural environment is, of course, not “getting its revenge”. Geophysical, meteorological, and hydrologic processes are unfolding as they have for millennia, beginning long before humans occupied the earth and continuing to the present. Given the eons-long perspective of the natural environment, it would be very difficult to identify meaningful changes in event frequency for the short time period in which scientific records are available on geological, meteorological, and hydrological phenomena. Event frequency, from an emergency management perspective, is not really the issue. It is certainly true that, over the years, more people have been affected by natural disasters and losses are becoming progressively greater. The significant feature driving these observations, however, is the extent of human encroachment into hazard prone areas. With increasing population density and changing land use patterns, more people are exposed to natural hazards and consequently our accumulated human and economic losses are increasing. Much of this exposure is a matter of choice. Sometimes people choose hazardous places, building houses on picturesque cliffs, on mountain slopes, in floodplains, near beautiful volcanoes, or along seismic faults. Sometimes people choose hazardous building materials that fail under extreme environmental stresses—for example, unreinforced masonry construction in seismically active areas. Some exposure results from constrained choices; the cheap land or

While we do not have historical record of all of the natural hazards that have impacted the United States, we do know that for multitudes of years, the United States has been hit by many natural hazards – hurricane, tornado, drought, wildfire, flood and earthquake, to name a few. As each of these natural hazards occur, multiple issues arise – relative to the core components of emergency management: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. Yet, even with prior knowledge from years past and the destructive events that have occurred, we as a nation continue to struggle with natural hazards that more often than not become natural disasters. For too long it seems as if we have settled in to a rhythm of responding, attempting to recover, rebuilding and then repeating the cycle as another natural hazard strikes.

Individuals with less resources are often times unprepared for disasters because all of their time, money, and energy is spent on what is currently happening. For many, they cannot afford to pay all of their bills on time and cannot put money back for emergencies that may or may not happen. A lot of individuals with lower incomes or no incomes are already living in places that are unsafe, and many do not own their own homes and do not have renter 's insurance because in their opinion that is an extra unnecessary bill. Some individuals are not healthy enough to prepare for disasters because they cannot afford health care and can barely work enough to stay in poverty and out of homelessness. In the case of homeless individuals, they have no resources whatsoever. If they live in shelters or on the streets

According to the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) by Lindell and Perry (1992; 2004; 2012) which summarized previous researches on public’s responses to environmental threats, people would be made aware of a threat by social warnings, social cues, and environmental cues (Huang, Lindell & Prater, in press a; Lindell, in press), then assess their risk and identify potentials protective actions (PAs), and ultimately take an appropriate PA (Huang et al., 2012, Huang, Lindell & Prater, in press b). Hence, local authorities, on the one hand, have the responsibilities to carry the PARs to the people who are at risk (Basher, 2006; Lindell and Perry, 2012), whereas risk area households’ response efforts, on the other hand, would rely on the guidance of officials’ PARs (Baker 1991, 1995; Huang et al. in press a; Lin et al. 2014). However, households’ response efforts are often limited by their information availability (Chen et al., 2007). Consequently, the failure of the delivery of the appropriate PARs in time would either set those households in danger or push them to follow peers’ response actions (Huang et al., 2012; Huang, Lindell & Prater, in press a; b). It is a significant gap Cova et al. (in press) has pointed out that local authorities tend to struggle on PARs selections and the triggers from “wait and see” to “take immediate action” (see also Dye, Eggers, and Shapira, 2014). Nonetheless, there are very few studies examine the behavior of local

This book addresses the response to natural disasters, focusing on how the governments role changes, It traces the evolution of federal disaster assistance role and major programs, reviews constitutional law on the “taking issue” as it applies to hazardous areas and gives a summary of ideas for policy recommendations, Also the book goes along with the class because it has to do with hazards and the federal planning that goes along with the disasters. Rutherford is trying to prove whether Public policy helps or causes more problems with natural disasters by federalizing the disasters. “Disasters and Democracy” traces back throughout different case studies from different decades to analyze the effect of federalizing disasters. An example of a case study used is the Bay area and the disasters it went through in the 1900s. This book is intended to reach people who are interested in policy, and this is because first off this is what the book is mainly about, but Platt goes in through detail ways to move

After using maps and facts to compare the risks of a natural disaster happening in different states: California is the state with the most natural hazards. As an example, the San Andreas fault created the deadliest earthquake, provoking over 3,000 deaths and destroying over 80% of the city of San Francisco in 1906. The state of California is sitting between two tectonic plates, the north american and pacific ones, the San Andreas fault runs the entire length of the state. California is subject to season disasters; the fires that happen when the weather gets unbearably hot. That natural hazard is not deadly, yet it brings a lot of material and ecological damage. The south-western state is know to have many hills, it is a known fact that an abundance of rain and any elevated area of 20% or more can provoke mud slides, that swipe anything they have on their way: people or material property.People living in California are adapting to the way nature treats them. Construction is getting sturdier, people are more prepared. Due to the afore mentioned facts, the population of California has been learning to adapt to the situation of their

The analysis and the mapping of social vulnerabilities have been successfully used in many countries as a tool for the development of emergency management plans. One of the most consistent methodologies is the Social Vulnerability Index (hereafter defined as SoVI®), initially constructed to compare U.S. counties (Cutter et al., 2013). The SoVI® provides a social vulnerability map by synthetizing socio-economic and demographic factors based on the principal component analysis [see Dunteman (1989) for further details]. In the recent years, this approach has been utilized in various geographical settings, different time periods and accounting different variables for the identification of social vulnerabilities for effective management of disaster-related

Data obtained by assessing social vulnerability must be implemented within each phase of the emergency management process; mitigation, response, and recovery. First, to effectively respond and recover from incidents emergency management agencies must concentrate on the mitigation phase to prevent incidents from happening in the first place. This is achieved through a thorough hazard/vulnerability analysis (HVA). This type of analysis assesses the risk of physical, economic, and social vulnerability within all communities of a given jurisdiction (Lindell et al., 2006, p. 165). Additionally, the basis of the HVA allows emergency managers to effectively plan for disaster by creating pre-planned responses to disasters (rather than improvised response) and staging resources to locations with the highest probability of risk; ultimately contributing to the mitigation and response phases.

Why local government perceive a lower risk of a disaster for their communities than exists.

In the United States, people who live in poverty are already one of the most vulnerable populations and it is this population that is heavily impacted by public policy relating to natural disasters. Often, public policies relating to disaster preparedness and recovery are not discussed until after a natural disaster takes place which is too late to do any good for the people affected and who are devastated almost beyond comprehension. The role of government in disaster preparedness and recovery became a “hot button” issue especially after Hurricane Katrina when the federal and local governments seemed to protect/help those who already had resources and not those with little to no resources. According to a Gallup Poll by Jones & Carroll (2005), forty-nine percent of respondents said that FEMA was most helpful to them while thirty-one percent of respondents said that nothing was helpful to them during recovery from Hurricane Katrina. This information indicates that there is a gap in services disaster relief policies and programs that needs to be filled.

As the Marxist approach puts it, “underlying states of human marginalisation are conceived as the principle cause of disaster.” (Pelling, 2001, p. 179). This resource exclusion to particular categories of people within society creates their vulnerability to risk, and in turn disaster. McLaughlin and Dietz (2007) suggest there are three dimensions that make up vulnerability including exposure, sensitivity and resilience. An example displaying the vulnerability of lower classed social categories is in North Bihar, India, where floods have been managed through engineering works to create embankments. While the Government appears to be reducing the hazard, this has increased the vulnerability of the local people. Soil fertility has decreased reducing agricultural success, dangerous flash floods are occurring due to embankment walls collapsing and communities have settled on apparently safe embankments and are now highly exposed (Pelling, 2001). The natural flood hazard was dangerous, but these works by society have created a natural disaster (Pelling, 2001). Power inequalities have created this disastrous situation where lower classes are at high exposure to floods due to profit hungry management bodies. This technological approach is clearly failing but the Government and other managing groups make large profits off flood engineering works and have the power to decide how to control the issue (Pelling, 2001). This has resulted in creating

Risk for disasters is a part of life; emergency situations occur more frequently than many people believe. A wise person plans for the worse, and hopes for the best. After a disaster, how well a community can recover will depend largely on how well they prepared in advance. Risk management includes identifying any potential risks to a community and proactively planning to minimize the threat. Proactive organization of resources and people to respond to emergencies can mean the difference between a community’s ability to regroup and recover, and the loss of life. To better

Natural disasters may be defined as natural catastrophes which cause great damage by disrupting the functioning of a society thus rendering the country incapable of coping through using its own resources as there is a need for outsider assistance in order to effectively preserve lives and the environment. Conversely, Natural hazards are natural phenomena that are potential threats to people within a society, structures or economic assets and may cause disaster. Natural disasters are inevitable and ubiquitous worldwide. Within the Caribbean, they are chiefly present in the forms of hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, droughts, and volcanoes. The great damages caused by natural disasters may be divided into three categories: social, economic

What other types of natural disasters or social crises might affect demand in a community or region?

Natural disasters are a devastating, but undeniably inevitable part of life and society. Because of this fact, many of us tend to believe that they happen as an act of nature, purely out of the human control. We need to start realizing that this is far from the truth and it this attitude that is stopping us from learning from our mistakes. The contemporary world inaccurately labels various disasters as ‘natural’ when in fact, when looked at more closely; there is an enormous correlation between ‘nature’ and ‘society’. There are many flaws in the human preparation for natural disasters that have equated in death and injury where it could have been minimized. Although the occurrence of a disaster can happen at any time, it is vital that we