Sociology and Natural Disasters
Sociologists have been studying disasters (natural and “man” made), but without much fanfare. In fact, back in 1972 one of the worst disasters took place in a small coal mining town. Here is a description:
The Buffalo Creek Flood was an accident that occurred on February 26, 1972 when a coal slurry impoundment dam built on a hillside in Logan County, West Virginia by the Pittston Coal Company burst. The resulting flood unleashed approximately 132 million gallons (500,000,000 L) of black waste water upon the residents of 16 coal mining communities in Buffalo Creek Hollow. Out of a population of 5,000 people, 125 people were killed, 1,121 were injured, and over 4,000 were left homeless. The incident completely leveled the town of Saunders, W.V. (the current town of Saunders is not the same one that once was located in Buffalo Creek).
Sociologist Kai Erickson wrote a book about it that is still worth reading. His work, an analysis of the effects of the disaster on the Buffalo Creek community entitled Everything In Its Path. The book later went on to win the Sorokin Award, an accolade handed out by the American Sociological Association for “outstanding contribution to the progress of sociology.”
Similarly, sociologist Adeline G. Levine wrote a book (LOVE CANAL) about another disaster that took place in the upstate New York community known as Love Canal. It is a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York. Unlike the Buffalo Creek disaster, Love Canal was the result of deliberate chemical dumping in the Niagara River by the corporate chemical company Hooker Chemical and Plastics. The human damage was horrific. Birth deaths and cancer were discovered to be the outcome of the toxic dumping.
I mention these two examples from the sociological literature because I wonder who will write the definitive study of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Can someone write this study?
From what we heard and saw yesterday, I doubt it. The destruction from Katrina in Bay St. Louis and Waveland Mississippi is incomprehensible. The death. The destruction of homes, schools, businesses, libraries and bridges can not be imagined. These forms of destruction can not even become movies.
Listening to the Hancock Library staff introduce us to our Service Learning Project not only brought many questions from the class but also tears. The bus tour of Bay St. Louis and Waveland was quiet. Other than our tour guide no one spoke. You could hear gasps only; all of us were stunned.
Hence, our first day in Bay St. Louis was a tough one. This morning we will conduct several service learning projects. We will build scrap books, scan documents and take oral histories. All of these projects were suggested to us via Dr. Lynn Sutton our Director of Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Her international work on the board of a major consortium of libraries brought this possibility to my attention early 2007. The students are “pumped” about the projects as are the staff traveling with us.
The students participating in the oral history project took Institutional Review Board (IRB) training in the spring to obtain certification necessary for working with human subjects (most groaned about the task)!
Later today I will report on how we did this morning.
Have a great day.
Earl Smith
Dr. Smith, you are right. There can be no difinitive study of the aftermath of Katrina, for it was not only a natural disaster (on the Gulf Coast), but only fifty miles away, a man-made disaster (New Orleans and surrounding communities). In talking with the students today, I saw that they were beginning to understand the enormity of the issues that affect people affected by Katrina. Political, societal, environmental, financial, physical and mental health issues, infrastructure issues, loss of culture. art, history, architecture, the list goes on and on. I could see that they wanted to come to a rational understanding as to what could have been done differently, who is to blame for lives and property not being saved, and why, after two years is the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi still like a third world county? There are no answers, but what what they need to know is how important their visit was to us. For their questions, their blogs, their comments, their observations validate our feelings about our personal struggle to make some sense of all of this.
- Thursday, May 31, 2007 8:22 pm