In Denaturalizing disaster: A social autopsy of the 1995 Chicago heat wave, Klinenberg makes an interesting point that the numerous deaths that occurred during the heat wave were not mainly caused by the natural disaster that is the heat wave itself.  Simply, I would assume that the extreme heat was too much for many people to handle unfortunately causing many of them to die; however, Klinenberg attributes the deaths during the 1995 heat wave to the circumstances in the city of Chicago.  Evidence showed that, compared to the previous heat waves, so many more people died in 1995 meaning that the natural disaster was not entirely to blame.  Klinenberg blames social and spatial division prior to the heat wave for the deaths saying that the urban city was unprepared to handle the disaster.  There was neglect in the city, a new urban poverty, isolation of seniors in bad neighborhoods, rising violence, and more contributing to the condition of Chicago.

Klinenberg also mentions that the media portrayed the countless deaths on the natural disaster, thus naturalizing the situation.  Even now, people look to the media for information on what is going on in their cities and countries, and what is portrayed in the media is often taken as true even if it actually is not completely accurate.  Klinenberg also says that there is pressure when it comes to the media.  Journalists often ponder what they are going to present to the public because it has to be consumable and appealing, but they also want to keep their connections to sources such as public officials.  This means what they end up reporting is effected by what public officials will approve of.  This contributes to why it was so hard for the few politicians and activist groups who were trying to expose the societal problems to get their views to other people.

In his article, “Denaturalizing disaster: A social autopsy of the 1995 Chicago heat wave”, Eric Klinenberg addresses various factors that he feels are significant in considering the damage and destruction caused by the Chicago heat wave of 1995. He takes a very different approach in evaluating the damage by taking a natural disaster and owing its drastic effects not to just nature, but to also the socioeconomic circumstances that he believes further escalated the catastrophe. He elaborates on this by stating that some features of “new urban poverty” that have contributed to the damage included “the literal social isolation of poor seniors…in the city’s most violent areas”, “the degradation and rising conflict in urban hotel residences”, and “the changes in public service delivery and the threats to the public health” (Klinemberg 240). Essentially, Klinenberg argues that the reason the Chicago heat wave affected so many people and the reason that it affected the KINDS of people that it did, namely low-income African Americans among others, is owed due to socioeconomic reasons, including the location of the communities and the availability of resources to those communities that could have been of substantial aid during the time.

While Klinenberg’s argument greatly qualifies and even undermines the natural disaster’s responsibility on the damage, he proposes a very important and culturally viable point that we must consider. Even if a natural disaster were to hit, it is no wonder why low-income, underdeveloped, and poorly supported areas and communities suffer more than those that are in wealthy, developed, heavily supported areas. Selected media coverage of certain areas and communities over others does not help the situation. It has become a social truth that this is how our world works, but this does not make it any less severe or worthy of disregard. This is a serious issue that must be faced and dealt with, because the longer that such issues are kept under a cloak, the worse the problem gets.

– Nadera Rahman

What initially surprised and struck me when reading this piece was the sentence “In fact, scientific studies show that the differences in the mortality rates between the 1995 and earlier heat waves are not natural; that is, they are not attributable to the weather.”  Klineneberg also deemed this the most important sentence, as it is the one of the very few italicized sections in this article.  The fact that this was the worst reaction to a heat wave in Chicago history shows a lot about the intensity of this disaster.  However it seems even more horrible when Mayor Daley decided not to include sociologists into the group that would dissect the different aspects of this disaster.  It is interesting to see how the poor was directly affected by this disaster, as shown when Klinenberg talks about the so called “water war” .  Mainly to poor used fire hydrants and such as a method to deal with the scorching hot days, however the depleting water collections posed a threat to the whole city, and thus a consequence to using water was a fine.  The hardest hit areas, areas with the most deaths, were the poorest neighborhoods, and generally had a substantial percentage of blacks within their populations.  This could have been seen as a coincidence however, blacks have been kept from moving into white neighborhoods with the use of riots and attacks against blacks.

1. Knowing that the government, as well as social groups failed to help people during this terrible time, how would the same disaster be dealt with today?

2. Though we can not help everyone, why did social and community groups not help out their members or neighbors, if help was needed, why was it not given?

The Klinenberg article provides important insight regarding the role of the city, and society in general, in preventing individuals from being both injured and killed in large-scale natural disasters.  Long-standing governmental and social institutions impact how a city responds to protect its citizens.  This observation was very evident during the Chicago heat wave, and also in our own city’s response to Hurricane Sandy.

Two observations:

1.  Chicago was much more prepared to respond to large scale tragedy when the second heat wave hit the city.  They learned from terrible mistakes during the first heat wave that may have cost the lives of hundreds of residents.  The city implemented essential response programs to more adequately deal with the situation.  Although the second heat wave was less severe, the government’s ability to respond effectively made a hug difference in the amount of people killed and injured as compared to the first heat wave.  Unfortunately, the reverse seemed to happen in New York when most residents passed off Hurricane Sandy as “just another Hurricane Irene”.  The media’s decision, and some would say “irresponsibility”, in building hype about Hurricane Irene, ultimately led many New Yorkers to not take the 24/7 news cycle warning about Sandy’s power seriously.  The city was ill-prepared for the size and strength of the storm, and the death tool and billions of dollars in damage suffered attest to that fact.

2.  Much like the strength of the Latino community in Chicago, certain communities in Staten Island (my home borough), seemed to be better prepared for Hurricane Sandy.  Groups that exist on the “edges” of society such as minorities, undocumented immigrants, and the elderly, were more likely to suffer as a result of the storm.  Undocumented citizens were afraid to seek government assistance both before and after the storm.  With few resources of their own, the ability of these groups to recover from Hurricane Sandy are severely restrained by their place in society.

-Victor Rerick

The most important idea that I gleaned from this journal article is primarily what affects the magnitude of damage that can arise from a disaster. Klinenberg takes a particular natural phenomenon, in this case the Chicago heat wave of 1995, and examines its human casualties an how they came about to be so high. Klinenberg argues that the intensity of the heat wave was not really the cause of the spike in casualties (in comparison to similar historical phenomena); rather he asserts that the causes of death were not examined from a sociological perspective and seeks to do so himself. What appears to be uncontestable is the relationship between poverty and suffering. There are three social conditions that he identifies as contributing factors to high death tolls:

1) the social morphology an political economy of vulnerability

2) the role of the state in determining this vulnerability

3) the tendency of journalists and political officials to render invisible the severity of the first two factors.

Several Questions I Had:

– To what extent was it the state’s fault that poor seniors were literally isolated?

– Which changes in public service delivery had the greatest impact on the suffering?

1. While reading Klinenberg’s “Denaturalizing disaster” something that struck me was how hopeless it would have been for certain age and ethnic groups in Chicago. They had never been helped before by the city, and thus when they needed help, they didn’t respond and even more disparaging they weren’t offered anything close to the level of assistance they needed. I think that Klinenberg had a really good way of showing this, by describing the police inaction which led to many elderly African American deaths during the heat wave. This also ties in very closely with how one would look at what happened to the large amount of elderly living in walk-ups in Chinatown during Sandy. One would hope that any deaths that occurred during that time were not under the same circumstances as in Chicago.

2. During class, something that I found interesting was the idea that women connect people to one another. We discussed how in the Latino communities in Chicago, where less deaths occurred than in the non-Latino black communities, there may have been more women to get the word out and to help out those who may otherwise have been stuck in their apartments like the non-Latino black elderly. This brought us to a discussion about looking at gender, class, and race closely when making or looking at statistical data, which I think is obviously very important when coming to any conclusions about these descriptors and their effects on what happened.

-It was interesting that the Latino population did not suffer as much deaths as the African American population in Chicago. This is because the “low-income Latino communities live largely outside of the most extreme poverty areas in the city,” while the low-income black communities live in these extreme poverty and dangerous areas. Thus, the African American neighborhoods received little assistance from the state because the social workers did not want to enter these areas. I found this to be ridiculous because it these social service providers were not doing their jobs. If these social service providers actually went to these areas, the death rate in these neighborhoods would not have been so high.
– I found that Mayor Daley did not do his job efficiently during the heat wave. Instead of taking responsibility, he blamed the victims of the heat wave. He believed it was their own fault for not taking care of themselves and each other. He refused to acknowledge that the city failed to respond to the heat properly. The government was partially at fault because Daley did not issue a Heat Emergency warning and did not activate emergency procedures. The police and the fire department were not prepared to handle the effects of the heat wave. It is ironic that the Mayor’s commission said “government cannot do it all,” since two weeks after the heat wave, another heat wave challenged the city again. This time, an emergency plan was executed that secured the health and welfare of the citizens.

Comments/Questions:

-During the deadly heat wave in Chicago, it was reported that Latinos had a sense of communal support and living. If someone needed assistance it was given. As a result, the causalities among the Latino community were far less severe than with the black and white population. After Hurricane Sandy was the same the case for the Chinese community living in Chinatown? If an elderly Chinese person wasn’t able to go up and down the stairs to get necessities, did someone offer assistance? Did the community based organizations for Asian Americans aid in any major way? If so, how did the community aid compare to that which was given by national organizations? Did the two amplify the efforts of the other or did one have to compensate for the lack of the other? What were they major organizations? Did people in the community know about these agencies before the lethal Hurricane Sandy hit?

-Although the government shouldn’t be entirely to blame for the aftermath of natural disasters such as heat waves, I find it ironic how the results change when the government is proactive instead of pointing a finger. For example, when another heat wave hit, by implementing an emergency plan, there were only two heat related deaths. The subtle simply acts of opening more cooling centers, extending beach hours and assigning police to check on seniors made a world of a difference.

-Following Hurricane Irene, the hurricane from the year before although not nearly as devastating as Hurricane Sandy, did the government take any steps to better prepare the city? If not, why not, didn’t it become obvious that New York is now susceptible to Hurricanes and that we need to be prepared? Has any new changes been made now after quite some time has passed since Hurricane Sandy? If not, has the city’s officials been blind to their surroundings?

– The social causes of the 1995 Chicago heat wave, as elucidated by Klinenberg, were overlooked initially because media coverage failed to recognize “the political determinants of the heat wave deaths” (272).   Klinenberg acknowledges that the heat wave shed light upon the underlying violence, vulnerability, and state entrenchment that was present during this ‘natural’ disaster.  It thus becomes evident that the media coverage during the heat wave also served to de-politicize the event. The media’s naturalization of the heat wave shifted the public eye’s focus from the marginality and neglect of particular groups (for instance, the elderly), despite the fact that the death rates among the marginalized brought to light the social issues in Chicago at the time.  It was interesting to note that, when the social causes of the heat wave started to become apparent – after the government failed to implement emergency procedures and then blamed the victims of the heat wave for not taking proper care of themselves – the Chicago mayor defensively argued, “I’m not insensitive” (274).

– Klinenberg’s article also draws attention to the influence of gender, race, and class on the survival rate of those who experienced the Chicago heat wave, thereby shedding light upon the social aspects that influenced the outcomes of this natural disaster.  Klinenberg reports a higher death rate among blacks and whites in comparison to Latinos because of their socially connected lifestyles.  A tradition of communal living, as well as the presence of women in Latino families, allowed them to cooperate during the heat wave.

– Can the outcomes of Hurricane Sandy in particular geographic areas indicate social marginalization in NY? (To be honest, the lack of immediate attention to certain areas in Staten Island certainly seemed to validate – for me – the suggestion that we are “the forgotten borough”!)