Download or read book Environmental Public Health Impacts of Disasters written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2007-06-13 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public health officials have the traditional responsibilities of protecting the food supply, safeguarding against communicable disease, and ensuring safe and healthful conditions for the population. Beyond this, public health today is challenged in a way that it has never been before. Starting with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, public health officers have had to spend significant amounts of time addressing the threat of terrorism to human health. Hurricane Katrina was an unprecedented disaster for the United States. During the first weeks, the enormity of the event and the sheer response needs for public health became apparent. The tragic loss of human life overshadowed the ongoing social and economic disruption in a region that was already economically depressed. Hurricane Katrina reemphasized to the public and to policy makers the importance of addressing long-term needs after a disaster. On October 20, 2005, the Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine held a workshop which convened members of the scientific community to highlight the status of the recovery effort, consider the ongoing challenges in the midst of a disaster, and facilitate scientific dialogue about the impacts of Hurricane Katrina on people's health. Environmental Public Health Impacts of Disasters: Hurricane Katrina is the summary of this workshop. This report will inform the public health, first responder, and scientific communities on how the affected community can be helped in both the midterm and the near future. In addition, the report can provide guidance on how to use the information gathered about environmental health during a disaster to prepare for future events.
Download or read book Mi Mar a Surviving the Storm written by Ricia Anne Chansky and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2021-09-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Hurricane María made landfall in Puerto Rico in September 2017, it left no part of the archipelago unscathed. The hurricane triggered floods and mudslides, washed out roads, destroyed tens of thousands of homes, farms, and businesses, caused the largest blackout in US history, knocked out communications, led to widespread food, drinking water, and gasoline shortages, and caused thousands of deaths. The seventeen oral histories collected in Mi María: Surviving the Storm share stories of surviving the storm and its long aftermath as people waited for relief and aid that rarely arrived. Zaira and her husband floated on a patched air mattress for sixteen hours while floodwaters rose around them. The road washed out in front of Emmanuel as he desperately tried to drive his pregnant wife who had begun labor to the hospital. Luis and his father anxiously counted the days that the dialysis clinic remained closed and lifesaving treatment was unavailable, while Miliana’s mother was sent home from the hospital —undiagnosed— only to fall critically ill in her own home. Weaving together long-form oral histories and shorter testimonios, the book offers a multivocal peoples’ history of disaster that fosters a greater understanding of the failures of governmental disaster response and the correlating perseverance of the people impacted by these failures, highlighting the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. Ultimately, the ways in which these oral histories demonstrate the strength of community response to disaster in Puerto Rico are pertinent to other parts of the world that are being impacted by our current climate emergency.
Download or read book Reducing Coastal Risk on the East and Gulf Coasts written by Committee on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Water Resources Science, Engineering, and Planning: Coastal Risk Reduction and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hurricane- and coastal-storm-related losses have increased substantially during the past century, largely due to increases in population and development in the most susceptible coastal areas. Climate change poses additional threats to coastal communities from sea level rise and possible increases in strength of the largest hurricanes. Several large cities in the United States have extensive assets at risk to coastal storms, along with countless smaller cities and developed areas. The devastation from Superstorm Sandy has heightened the nation's awareness of these vulnerabilities. What can we do to better prepare for and respond to the increasing risks of loss? Reducing Coastal Risk on the East and Gulf Coasts reviews the coastal risk-reduction strategies and levels of protection that have been used along the United States East and Gulf Coasts to reduce the impacts of coastal flooding associated with storm surges. This report evaluates their effectiveness in terms of economic return, protection of life safety, and minimization of environmental effects. According to this report, the vast majority of the funding for coastal risk-related issues is provided only after a disaster occurs. This report calls for the development of a national vision for coastal risk management that includes a long-term view, regional solutions, and recognition of the full array of economic, social, environmental, and life-safety benefits that come from risk reduction efforts. To support this vision, Reducing Coastal Risk states that a national coastal risk assessment is needed to identify those areas with the greatest risks that are high priorities for risk reduction efforts. The report discusses the implications of expanding the extent and levels of coastal storm surge protection in terms of operation and maintenance costs and the availability of resources. Reducing Coastal Risk recommends that benefit-cost analysis, constrained by acceptable risk criteria and other important environmental and social factors, be used as a framework for evaluating national investments in coastal risk reduction. The recommendations of this report will assist engineers, planners and policy makers at national, regional, state, and local levels to move from a nation that is primarily reactive to coastal disasters to one that invests wisely in coastal risk reduction and builds resilience among coastal communities.
Download or read book Storm Surge written by Adam Sobel and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Sandy a freak of nature, or the new normal? On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy reached the shores of the northeastern United States to become one of the most destructive storms in history. But was Sandy a freak event, or should we have been better prepared for it? Was it a harbinger of things to come as the climate warms? In this fascinating and accessible work of popular science, atmospheric scientist and Columbia University professor Adam Sobel addresses these questions, combining his deep knowledge of the climate with his firsthand experience of the event itself. Sobel explains the remarkable atmospheric conditions that gave birth to Sandy and determined its path. He gives us insight into the science that led to the accurate forecasts of the storm from genesis to landfall, as well as an understanding of why our meteorological vocabulary failed our leaders in warning us about this unprecedented weather system—part hurricane, part winter-type nor'easter, fully deserving of the title "Superstorm." Storm Surge brings together the melting glaciers, the warming oceans, and a broad historical perspective to explain how our changing climate and developing coastlines are making New York and other cities more vulnerable. Engaging, informative, and timely, Sobel's book provokes us to think differently about how we can better prepare for the storms in our future.
Download or read book Our Community in Disaster written by Willamette University. Department of Sociology and Anthropology and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Eyes in a Storm written by Jessica McNew and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2003-05-07 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the massive tornado of April, 1998 that barreled across central Alabama.
Download or read book Hurricane Andrew the Public Schools and the Rebuilding of Community written by Eugene F. Provenzo Jr. and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1995-07-01 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida early on Monday morning, August 24, 1992. Widely described as the worst natural disaster in modern U.S. history, the storm left 38 people dead in South Florida, 80,000 homes destroyed, and damage estimates of at least $20 billion. The area devastated by the hurricane was approximately three times the size of Manhattan. Almost 250,000 people were left homeless by Andrew—roughly the population of the entire city of Las Vegas, Nevada. Garbage generated by the storm in a single night was equal to the projected landfill for Dade County for the next thirty years. Hurricane Andrew, the Public Schools and the Rebuilding of Community addresses the experience of the Dade County Public Schools—its teachers and students, administrators and staff—during the first school year following the storm. In particular, it examines the role of the schools in helping people cope with a disaster of the magnitude of Hurricane Andrew, and more specifically, with their role in rebuilding community.
Download or read book Shelter in a Time of Storm written by Jelani M. Favors and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-02-08 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award 2020 Lillian Smith Book Award Finalist, 2020 Pauli Murray Book Prize For generations, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have been essential institutions for the African American community. Their nurturing environments not only provided educational advancement but also catalyzed the Black freedom struggle, forever altering the political destiny of the United States. In this book, Jelani M. Favors offers a history of HBCUs from the 1837 founding of Cheyney State University to the present, told through the lens of how they fostered student activism. Favors chronicles the development and significance of HBCUs through stories from institutions such as Cheyney State University, Tougaloo College, Bennett College, Alabama State University, Jackson State University, Southern University, and North Carolina A&T. He demonstrates how HBCUs became a refuge during the oppression of the Jim Crow era and illustrates the central role their campus communities played during the civil rights and Black Power movements. Throughout this definitive history of how HBCUs became a vital seedbed for politicians, community leaders, reformers, and activists, Favors emphasizes what he calls an unwritten "second curriculum" at HBCUs, one that offered students a grounding in idealism, racial consciousness, and cultural nationalism.
Download or read book The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina written by and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2006 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The objective of this report is to identify and establish a roadmap on how to do that, and lay the groundwork for transforming how this Nation- from every level of government to the private sector to individual citizens and communities - pursues a real and lasting vision of preparedness. To get there will require significant change to the status quo, to include adjustments to policy, structure, and mindset"--P. 2.
Download or read book Fostering Community Resilience written by Tom Lansford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the Mississippi Gulf Coast as a case study, this book focuses on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and develops the concept of resilience and how it applies to Homeland Security in the aftermath of the worst natural disaster to hit the United States. Through the lens of the national response to Hurricane Katrina and the local lens of the recovery of the Mississippi Gulf Coast community, this work elucidates the particular qualities that make a community and a nation more resilient, discussing resilience as a concept and an application. Additionally, it explores in-depth the interconnected fields that comprise resilience; including economic, social, infrastructure, and political domains. By examining what went right, what went wrong, and what can be improved upon during the Mississippi Gulf Coast's recovery, scholars and policymakers can better understand community resilience not just as a concept, but also as a practice.
Download or read book A Failure of Initiative written by United States. Congress. House. Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An Initial Storm Damage Assessment Protocol for Urban and Community Forests written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Progress of This Storm written by Andreas Malm and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An attack on the idea that nature and society are impossible to distinguish from each other In a world careening towards climate chaos, nature is dead. It can no longer be separated from society. Everything is a blur of hybrids, where humans possess no exceptional agency to set them apart from dead matter. But is it really so? In this blistering polemic and theoretical manifesto, Andreas Malm develops a counterargument: in a warming world, nature comes roaring back, and it is more important than ever to distinguish between the natural and the social. Only with a unique agency attributed to humans can resistance become conceivable.
Download or read book Long Term Community Recovery from Natural Disasters written by Lucy A. Arendt and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2014-11-21 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, governmental efforts at long-term community recovery from a natural disaster consist primarily of rebuilding the physical artifact of the community. This entails reestablishing vital community services and infrastructure and creating housing to replace that which has been lost. While restoring the built environment of a disaster area is esse
Download or read book When the Storm Comes written by Linda Ashman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A storm and its sunny aftermath come to life through gorgeous art and lyrical text. What do you do when the clouds roll in, When the wind chimes clang and the weather vanes spin? When stormy skies threaten, people stock up on supplies, bring in their outside toys, and check the news for updates. And during the storm, if the power goes out, they can play games and tell stories by candlelight. But what do animals do? They watch and listen, look for a cozy den or some other sheltered spot, and hunker down to wait. After the storm, while the people are cleaning up their yards, making repairs, and checking on the neighbors, the animals emerge from their hiding places and shake off the rain. And everyone is happy to be out in the sunshine again, grateful for better weather and the company of friends.
Download or read book Storm Data written by and published by . This book was released on 1997-10 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Storms Over the Urban Forest written by John W. Andresen and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
