In “Denaturalizing Disaster”, Klinenberg discusses how a natural disaster may reveal and even worsen underlying socioeconomic injustice. Klinenberg takes the 1995 Chicago heat wave as a case study. The many deaths that resulted from the disaster were not caused by the intense heat, rather the deaths were caused mainly by inadequate services and aid. It is not surprising that the areas that did not receive proper attention were low income areas. Even though some individuals required immediate aid in these low income areas, they were not given aid in a timely fashion. This was because emergency workers favored doing runs in high income areas on the basis that they imagined low income areas to be dangerous.

The increased crime rates in the low income Chicago areas were mainly caused by the lack of aid given to these areas. People became frustrated and restless because they were not given easy access to the help they needed so desperately. However, groups with strong social ties, such as Chicago’s Latinos, were able with weather the heatwave quite well. This is because members of such groups willingly cooperated with each other and pooled their resources.

In his article, Klinenberg brings up important issues about the aftermath of a “natural” disaster. According to Klinenberg, the damage of the disaster is not only caused by the unfortunate works of nature but also by the government neglect before and after the disaster has occurred. Those who were hit the hardest were those who ranked low on the socioeconomic scale. They are located in underdeveloped, resource-lacking neighborhoods. Government aid is focused on recovering the more affluent neighborhoods first before these neighborhoods of “lesser” importance. On top of already lacking government aid, the media focus is on the recovering neighborhoods, which are the wealthier areas.

All these accusations are valid up to a certain degree. The government does pinpoint most of their resources on more affluent areas, but, not to sound pretentious, those  areas do need it more. The more affluent areas are most likely the center of business, the place that keeps the city/state up and running. The government does not have enough resources to aid everyone at once. Most of the resources should be aimed at what’s important in keeping things moving. I do think the government could have acted quicker and done more for the lower income neighborhoods, but helping places of more influence on the city would help everyone in general.

Klinenberg discusses how the high temperature was not the main reason for the large number of deaths during the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave. Instead, several factors, such as the socio-economic status of citizens, as well as poor media coverage are to blame. Although the government and various organizations aid lower-income areas on a daily basis, during times of emergency when urgent help is needed these communities are often overlooked and citizens have to wait for supplies and assistance. Also, emergency personnel were often reluctant to enter the lowest income areas due to their perceptions of the neighborhoods being dangerous.

Despite living in some of the lower-income areas, the Latino community had surprisingly low death rates due to strong community ties. People looked after each other, taking care of those most at risk. If every community throughout the city showed such bonds, deaths could have easily been avoided. This shows that everyone must make an effort to help themselves and those around them, including both the government as well as ordinary citizens, and that no one source is to blame.

Klinenberg’s “Denaturalizing Disaster: A Social Autopsy of the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave” theorizes that the extent of the damage of any natural disaster is not inflicted by mother nature alone, but is also affected by the socioeconomic structure of the city and the role/influence of the government in making visible the vulnerabilities of the city. The study of the 1995 Chicago fire shed light on the sufferings of those who were socioeconomically disadvantaged. People who lived in poorer neighborhoods received help last and this prolonged suffering caused people to act out in violent ways, which increased the crime rate within these particular neighborhoods. This study is important because it elucidates the errors within the emergency response system. It was obvious in the 1995 Chicago fire that people did not receive help quickly and in a timely manner because of their economic standing. Now that we have seen these faults, we will be able to better the way in which we respond to future natural disasters, so that everyone receives assistance before it is too late.

The Chicago heat wave of 1995, which went down in history as an embarrassment to the existing governmental and social structures, exposed underlying problems in an unexpected way. The data summarizing the damage and death tolls of the environmental rarity held valuable information to sociologists. As the article states, “The processes that killed so many city residents were concentrated around the low-income, elderly, African-American. and more violent regions of the metropolis, the neighborhoods of exclusion in which the most vulnerable Chicagoans make their homes. “When analyzed, the information shows how the heat wave unevenly affected Chicago’s residents. One of the major keys for a community’s success in the heat wave was the strength of social ties and networks. The article illuminates the Latino community’s strong ethnic ties, unlike that of the African American communities and the affect these networks had on each community’s survival. In a similar way to New York immigrants, these Chicagoans depended on enclaves for mutual support and aide when it came to immediate needs and dependence on organizations for help obtaining governmental aide as well. These observations were not initially made in the reports of the heat wave: sociologists had to approach the information from several angles to determine unrevealed explanations for the high rates of disaster.

Klinenberg’s article, “Denaturalizing Disaster: A social Autopsy of the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave” examines how mortality rates varied with economic status during a disaster. The first Chicago heat wave caused many deaths, partly because of the citizens and partly because of the government. On one hand, the citizens failed to do what was necessary for them to stay safe, much like residents in Zone A did not leave their homes during Hurricane Sandy. Also, the media was at fault for making small occurrences seem overly important and dangerous. As a result, the disaster was assumed to be less dangerous than predicted and people did not heed warnings. It is a pity that people usually dismiss warnings and assume disasters are just overstated because this mistake is sometimes just as costly as the catastrophe.

The high amount of deaths were seen to be in the poorer, less affluent areas in Chicago. The negative reputations of certain neighborhoods and the location made it difficult for help to arrive. It was unfortunate to learn that the mayor of Chicago during the disaster, Richard Daley, shifted all the blame on the victims. He said that the victims should have taken responsibility for their own fates and taken care of themselves. However, it is clear that many emergency services were unwilling to go to dangerous neighborhoods and people living in these areas did not get timely assistance.

            This article made it clear how important organization among different departments is for dealing with a major crisis. Cities should always have disaster plans set for emergencies instead of trying to figure out what to do amidst chaos. This was clear when Chicago was more prepared for the second heat wave. Although people still died, the government’s role in dealing with the disaster made a huge difference. Response programs were put in place to deal with the issue at hand.

Klinenberg’s sociological review on natural disasters really made me rethink just how much the government and the media play a role in the safety of our citizens.  He further explores this by using the Chicago Heat Wave of 1995 as an example. Klinenberg argues that the heat wave itself did not cause such a high amount of casualties, instead he posits that it was a combination of governmental and media influences that played a major role in this. The United States prides itself on the significant amounts of financial aid it offers to the less fortunate and lower classes of those especially vulnerable sectors of the country. However, it seems that when a natural disaster occurs the government fails to successfully handle the situation and offer aid to the poorer neighborhoods; they tend to be left overlooked. Klinenberg points out that citizens of higher socioeconomic status seem to get priority in these times of disaster when immediate aid is of the greatest importance. The media also plays a big role in the preparation for natural disasters. People look to the media, for example the news, for information about such natural disasters and what people ought to do; they look to the media for guidance. Often the media has misconstrued the actual severity of such natural disasters, as seen in both the Chicago heat wave in 1995 and our very own Hurricane Irene and Sandy. After reading Klinenberg’s socioeconomic analysis of the natural disaster in Chicago, I found many parallels between that and the two most prominent and recent hurricanes to hit New York City. The media overdramatized Hurricane Irene, when in actuality it wasn’t as severe. In the case of Hurricane Sandy, the media did not effectively predict the immense danger and devastation it would wreak on our city. The city was simply not even close to being prepared for such a natural disaster. Certain neighborhoods, for example Staten Island, were not given as much immediate aid as was necessary. The media seemed to glance over the serious long-lasting damaging effects of Hurricane Sandy on the lower working class citizens, just as Klinenberg noticed in regards to the Chicago Heat Wave of 1995.

Eric Klinenberg opens his article with a quote from Frederick Engels, one of the co-authors of The Communist Manifesto. In the quote Engels introduces the notion of “social murder.” How appropriate a term, especially in the context of the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave.

This article analyzes the socio-economic and racial factors of over five hundred heat-related deaths. The lack of infrastructure in many of Chicago’s underprivileged neighborhoods, coupled with the fact that many elderly residents refused to leave their homes for fear of being burglarized, and the reluctance of civic workers to go into these neighborhoods to distribute aid and spread information resulted in a disproportionate amount of (avoidable) deaths in those neighborhoods. Klinenberg demonstrates without a doubt that these deaths were “social murder.” Those who died heat-related deaths, died because they were marginalized.

There are many parallels to be drawn between the 1995 Chicago heat wave and Hurricane Sandy. Working class neighborhoods in Staten Island were without aid for days. Those worst affected by the storm are still struggling to piece their lives back together. And just as happened in Chicago, the press paid very little attention, if any at all, to the disproportionately grave effect of Hurricane Sandy on the working class and working poor residents of New York City. It’s amazing how quickly we forget what those just across the east river are still facing. Social murder is alive and well.

In Eric Klinenberg’s article, “ Denaturalizing Disaster: A social Autopsy of the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave” Klinenberg attributes the majority of deaths of the Chicago Heat Wave, not to the heat, but to the socio-economic situation and segregation present in Chicago at this time. In the article he states that the majority of the help was focused on the white community and the minority community was ignored, and they did not receive as much aid and water. To this he attributes a great deal of the deaths. I think this article illustrates a very controversial view, because I do not think the Chicago government would want to be accused of having a large amount of deaths that were supposed to be caused by a natural disaster, actually caused by racism. I sincerely hope that things have changed in Chicago since then and that such a thing will not happen again.

In Eric Klinenberg’s article, “ Denaturalizing Disaster: A social Autopsy of the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave”, he tries to offer a sociological explanation of the deaths of 1995 Heat Wave in terms of the social conditions rather than meteorological conditions. Klinenberg states, “In fact, scientific studies show that the differences in the mortality rate between 1995 and earlier heat waves are not natural, that is, they are not attributable to the weather.” He outlines his assessment of the Chicago Heat Wave by first discussing the “social morphology ad political economy of vulnerability that determines disaster damage”, “the role of the state in determining this vulnerability”, and “the tendencies of journalists and political officials to render invisible both the political economy of vulnerability and the role of the state in the reconstructions of the disasters the produce”.  The concept of a natural disaster not necessarily being a natural disaster was very interesting. Societies arrange themselves in certain ways and sociology is a discipline that tries to observe and highlight those means of organization. Klinenberg explains how the neighborhoods with people of less income were affected more than people in higher income neighborhoods. Also, senior citizens through a municipal program were living in buildings with low-income substance abusers therefore not easy for them to leave or search for help from their residence. On top of those social conditions, politicians were not willing to take action instead calling on local governments to give aid and the journalists covering the political officials’ side of the story instead of warning the people of the rising death toll.

When a natural disaster strikes, people do not have control of what might happen due to the disaster but they do have control over what is already in place in their society. The government, organizations, the hospitals, businesses, and the people as well should all do their part to make sure that none of the damage that results were due to their actions or inactions.

“Denaturalizing Disaster” shocks most readers with the assertion that deaths from the Chicago Heat Wave of 1995 are more attributable to socio-economic status and segregation based on race and age than anything else. Of course the actual heat wave played a large role, but it only acted to expose the greater issues of segregation at hand. Yes the heat wave was a disaster but it was the unjust constructs of society that caused the deaths. The elderly refused to leave their homes because of the unforgiving neighborhoods outside and poor African-American communities were not assisted as thoroughly or had as stable an infrastructure as wealthier white communities. These conditions could have easily been prevented, but the impact of this disconnect between neighborhoods was clearly not expected. The Latino community had the least amount of deaths or hospitalizations, as they were very receptive to and caring of each other. The aid that was offered to each other by Latinos should be seen in every community and even in between communities. Such a response was seen after Hurricane Sandy ravaged Staten Island and lower Brooklyn. Even though the volunteers arrived after the disaster, they made a difference to those who had their homes destroyed, partially or fully, by Sandy. There is a very clear lesson to be learned as volunteers traveled quite a distance and put aside prejudices to help others in need.