Disasters like earthquakes are known as focusing events—sudden calamities that cause both citizens and policymakers to pay more attention to a public problem and often to press for solutions. This book, the first comprehensive analysis of these dramatic events, explains how and why some public disasters change political agendas and, ultimately, public policies.
Thomas A. Birkland explores important successes and failures in the policy process by analyzing the political outcomes of four types of events: earthquakes, hurricanes, oil spills, and nuclear accidents. Using this empirical data to go beyond an intuitive understanding of focusing events, he presents a theory of where and when these events will gain attention and how they trigger political reactions. Birkland concludes that different types of disasters result in different kinds of agenda politics. Public outrage over the highly visible damage caused by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, for example, ended a fourteen-year logjam holding back Congressional legislation to regulate oil spill cleanups. On the other hand, the intangible effects of Three Mile Island had less concrete results in a political arena that was already highly polarized.
Integrating a variety of theories on the policy process, including agenda setting, policy communities, advocacy coalitions, the political aspects of the news media, and the use of symbols in political debate, Birkland illuminates the dynamics of event-driven policy activity. As the first extensive study of its kind, this book offers new insights into the policy process.
More than fifteen years later, Hurricane Katrina maintains a strong grip on the American imagination. The reason is not simply that Katrina was an event of enormous scale, although it certainly was by any measure one of the most damaging storms in American history. But, quite apart from its lethality and destructiveness, Katrina retains a place in living memory because it is one of the most telling disasters in our recent national experience, revealing important truths about our society and ourselves.
The final volume in the award-winning Katrina Bookshelf series The Continuing Storm reflects upon what we have learned about Katrina and about America. Kai Erikson and Lori Peek expand our view of the disaster by assessing its ongoing impact on individual lives and across the wide-ranging geographies where displaced New Orleanians landed after the storm. Such an expanded view, the authors argue, is critical for understanding the human costs of catastrophe across time and space. Concluding with a broader examination of disasters in the years since Katrina—including COVID-19—The Continuing Storm is a sobering meditation on the duration of a catastrophe that continues to exact steep costs in human suffering.
By every measure, Hurricane Sandy was a disaster of epic proportions. The deadliest storm to strike the East Coast since Hurricane Diane in 1955, Sandy killed thirty-seven people and caused more than $30 billion in damages in 2012 to New Jersey alone. But earlier centuries experienced their own catastrophes.
In Disaster!, Alan A. Siegel brings readers face-to-face with twenty-eight of the deadliest natural and human-caused calamities to strike New Jersey between 1821 and 1906, ranging from horrific transportation accidents to uncontrolled fires of a kind rarely seen today. As Siegel writes in his introduction, “None of the stories end well—there are dead and injured by the thousands as well as millions in property lost.” Accounts of these fires, steamboat explosions, shipwrecks, train wrecks, and storms are told in the words of the people who experienced the events firsthand, lending a sense of immediacy to each story.
Disasters bring out the worst as well as the best in people. Siegel focuses on the bravest individuals, including harbor pilot Thomas Freeborn who drowned while attempting to save fifty passengers and crew of a ship foundering on the Jersey Shore, and Warwicke Greene, a fourteen-year-old schoolboy who rescued the injured “like the hero of an epic poem” after a train wreck in the Hackensack Meadows. These and many other stories of forgotten acts of courage in the face of danger will make Disaster! an unforgettable read.
In recent years, the number of presidential declarations of “major disasters” has skyrocketed. Such declarations make stricken areas eligible for federal emergency relief funds that greatly reduce their costs. But is federalizing the costs of disasters helping to lighten the overall burden of disasters or is it making matters worse? Does it remove incentives for individuals and local communities to take measures to protect themselves? Are people more likely to invest in property in hazardous locations in the belief that, if worse comes to worst, the federal government will bail them out?
Disasters and Democracy addresses the political response to natural disasters, focusing specifically on the changing role of the federal government from distant observer to immediate responder and principal financier of disaster costs.
The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. The South Asian Tsunami of 2004. The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. Hurricane Katrina in 2005. All of these are natural disasters that not only caused massive devastation but actually changed the course of history, and have influenced our reactions to and perspectives on disasters ever since.
Spanning two millennia, The End is Nigh provides a detailed history of natural disasters around the world and how they have shaped our cultural beliefs and our practical planning. Henrik Svensen draws from many eyewitness accounts to reveal the personal stories of the victims of natural disasters. Through them, we are reminded that while the disasters are natural phenomena, victims often react in similar ways seeking to explain the disaster within the context of an omen or a divine warning. A geologist, Svensen also explores the science behind the occurrence of specific disasters, and he examines whether climate change is creating an environment where natural disasters are more frequent and more deadly.
The End is Nigh is as instructive as it is insightful and will appeal to fans of history and science, as well as policy makers and all those seeking to better prepare for future calamities.
“The End is Nigh is a great example of storytelling across scientific disciplines, and in gripping prose it spans geology, geography and history, anthropology, sociology, and the history of religion.”—Apollon
Even before the wreckage of a disaster is cleared, one question is foremost in the minds of the public: "What can be done to prevent this from happening again?" Today, news media and policymakers often invoke the "lessons of September 11" and the "lessons of Hurricane Katrina." Certainly, these unexpected events heightened awareness about problems that might have contributed to or worsened the disasters, particularly about gaps in preparation. Inquiries and investigations are made that claim that "lessons" were "learned" from a disaster, leading us to assume that we will be more ready the next time a similar threat looms, and that our government will put in place measures to protect us.
In Lessons of Disaster, Thomas Birkland takes a critical look at this assumption. We know that disasters play a role in setting policy agendas—in getting policymakers to think about problems—but does our government always take the next step and enact new legislation or regulations? To determine when and how a catastrophic event serves as a catalyst for true policy change, the author examines four categories of disasters: aviation security, homeland security, earthquakes, and hurricanes. He explores lessons learned from each, focusing on three types of policy change: change in the larger social construction of the issues surrounding the disaster; instrumental change, in which laws and regulations are made; and political change, in which alliances are created and shifted. Birkland argues that the type of disaster affects the types of lessons learned from it, and that certain conditions are necessary to translate awareness into new policy, including media attention, salience for a large portion of the public, the existence of advocacy groups for the issue, and the preexistence of policy ideas that can be drawn upon.
This timely study concludes with a discussion of the interplay of multiple disasters, focusing on the initial government response to Hurricane Katrina and the negative effect the September 11 catastrophe seems to have had on reaction to that tragedy.
Facing two oceans and three seas, Alaska's coastline stretches through bays, fjords, and around islands for 45,000 miles. Living with the Coast of Alaska, a new volume in the Living with the Shore series, is a user's guide for both present and future inhabitants of Alaska. Providing individual property owners in all regions of the state with the fundamentals of hazard recognition and mitigation strategy, the authors discuss the geological history of Alaska and its relation to the area's cultural history and present customized hazard risk assessments for coastal communities.
Describing the dynamic nature of natural seismic events and coastal processes in Alaska, the authors emphasize the multiplicity of potential effects that result from a unique combination of geology, climate, and the sea. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunami waves, avalanches, glacial advances, storm surges, flash flooding, wind channeling, and shoreline erosion combined with human-induced hazards such as oil spills, fire, and beach and offshore mining accidents make living with danger a way of life in Alaska. The authors provide information on federal and state laws and programs regarding natural disasters and coastal zone management as well as practical suggestions for the design and construction of buildings. For private, commercial, and public developments, this book offers a manual to help Alaskans make informed decisions to minimize, if not avoid, damage and danger.
Media, Culture and the Environment provides an accessible introduction to key issues and debates surrounding the media politics of risk assessment and the environment. Anderson looks at nature as contested terrain and reveals how news sources use it to compete for our emotions and attention. She shows how framings of risk in relation to the environment are influenced by social, political, and cultural factors, but she also rejects extreme versions of social constructionism.
The book moves beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries by synthesizing recent debates in cultural theory and media studies with key developments in human geography. It offers an in-depth analysis of pressure politics and environmental lobbying groups, while examining the production, transmission and negotiation language of news discourse. The examples, drawn from both Europe and North America, include the tremendous headline controversies over oil spills and killing of baby seals. Difficult issues, clearly surveyed and incisively presented, make this book essential reading for anyone interested in how and why journalists handle environmental news in the ways they do.
The first half of the 1990s saw the largest and most costly floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes in the history of the United States. While natural hazards cannot be prevented, their human impacts can be greatly reduced through advance action that mitigates risks and reduces vulnerability.
Natural Hazard Mitigation describes and analyzes the way that hazard mitigation has been carried out in the U.S. under our national disaster law, the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. It is the first systematic study of the complete intergovernmental system for natural hazard mitigation, including its major elements and the linkages among them.
The book:
Damages from natural disasters are reaching catastrophic proportions, making natural hazard mitigation an important national policy issue. The findings and recommendations presented in this volume should help to strengthen natural hazard mitigation policy and practice, thereby serving to reduce drains on the federal treasury that pay for preventable recovery and relief costs, and to spare residents in areas hit by natural disasters undue suffering and expense. It is an informative and eye-opening study for planners, policymakers, students of planning and geography, and professionals working for government agencies that deal with natural hazards.
Many disasters originate from a force of nature, such as an earthquake, cyclone, tsunami, volcanic eruption, drought, or flood. But that is only half of the story; decisions of people and their particular cultural lifeways are the rest. Sociocultural factors are essential in understanding risk, impact, resilience, reactions, and recoveries from massive sudden environmental changes. By using deep-time perspectives provided by interdisciplinary approaches, this book provides a rich temporal background to the human experience of environmental hazards and disasters. In addition, each chapter is followed by an abstract summarizing the important implications for today's management practices and providing recommendations for policy makers. Publication supported in part by the National Science Foundation.
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