In Miriam Greenberg’s article The Disaster inside the Disaster: Hurricane Sandy and Post-crisis Redevelopment, she highlights the issues that metropolitan cities have been faced with during times of natural and unnatural disasters. Yes, the disaster itself, whether it be a hurricane or a terrorist attack, is horrific on multiple levels. However, the way that that city copes with and tries to rebuild after said disaster is a crucial part of the entire landscape and often gets overlooked. Too often, a city will focus all of its rebuilding efforts on the upper class, while basically neglecting the lower class. Greenberg argues that in all of the major disasters that have occurred in the US during this century, all of them have been followed by the respective governments failing to evenly redevelop post-disaster. This is an issue, and we must take steps to resolve it.
In an article by three professors at the University Of Minnesota entitled Distribution of impacts of natural disasters across income groups, the authors examine the rising effects of hurricanes on multiple levels. For one thing, it has been estimated that natural disasters cost approximately 20 billion dollars annually, and this cost is spread across governments, insurance agencies, and the victims of these disasters. To make matters worse, it appears that these costs are continuing to escalate based on a few things but the most important factor is the rising number of people moving to the coast and therefore being more vulnerable to these disasters. Additionally, studies have shown that both the frequency as well as the intensity of hurricanes have increased in recent years, due to climate pattern changes.
In any such disaster, it all comes down to how vulnerable a specific person is at the time the disaster hits. Vulnerability is based on multiple factors but one very important one is income level, and it is apparent that the lower a person’s income level the more vulnerable they are to a disaster and therefore will be more negatively affected by it. But what makes lower income people more vulnerable to these disasters? It’s a combination of a lot of different attributes such as the fact that lower income people are more likely to live in high risk areas, being less likely to have adequate insurance, or being less likely to perform necessary actions to avoid being affected. So ultimately, it seems there is a direct correlation between poverty and being vulnerable to a natural disaster.
In conclusion, the effects of natural disasters show another problem with income inequality and one that needs to be fixed as soon as possible. This can be fixed by creating new jobs and/or raising minimum wage in areas that are highly vulnerable. These aren’t simple to carry out, but it’s important to promote more economic equality especially in highly affected places. It’s also important to give people with lower access more access to the resources that will help them in a natural disaster. This includes making reasonable insurance policies, and educating people on what to do during a natural disaster. None of these are quick fixes, but they will go a long way in helping prevent future storms from devastating cities the way they have in the past.
Resources:
https://files.eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4902/2015/03/16061700/Greenberg-The-Disaster-Inside-the-Disaster.pdf
http://www.d.umn.edu/~pfarrell/Natural%20Hazards/Readings/Katrina%20article.pdf
Just a regular kid trying to navigate a complicated website.
Hi Dory,
I agree with you, as well as Miriam Greenberg, that something must be done about relief inequalities based on social class. The government focuses on getting the wealthy up and running, and fails to recognize the help that the lower class needs as well.
I also see that hurricanes are expensive to deal with in their entirety, they ruin homes, offices, and lives.
I view this vulnerability, though, as an ongoing problem that is brought out by natural disasters. Dealing with income inequality is something that, yes, must be taken care of, but natural disaster relief is only one part of that issue.
If honing in on disasters, the focus should not be on how to fix income inequality before the disaster hits, but how we deal with it after. It is important to educate, have broader access to healthcare and insurance, as well as to create jobs. But while these ideas could eventually help with disaster relief, they are not focused on it.
These goals are huge and can take decades to accomplish. Mayors and other elected officials have been working on them for years. We need more specific and disaster focused objectives for relief after the disaster hits.
While I agree with everything that was said, I think that to deal with anything as difficult as this, clearly defined plans must be set forth.
Hi Dory
I was impressend by reading your post. Clearly this is an issue that we’ve been facing and something that we need to know is that natural disaster can’t be control. However, i do agree with what sophie mentions too that there must be some type of plans or actions that we must do in order to solve this issue. I knew and heard about this before but never really pay that much attention to it. When i was reading your post i was impressed because when you really think about it the people that are clearly most affected by the disasters are the low income families (as you mention on your post) and is this really something we can fix? and if so how? I like when you mention that there needs to be reasonable insurances policies….. I agree with you, i think this would be a perfect way to help lower income families. If they can get insurances that are easy for them to obtain, then at least we know that these families have some type of protections and that yes they will still be affected but the outcome is not going to be as bad as it is right now.