New Orleans After Katrina and the continual start-and-stop-and-slow rebuilding process in New Orleans with side trips and explorations to Kobe and more recently cities in Eastern Japan after those earthquakes and the tsunami attacks, and other cities near and far, I have come to believe that the way governments, established institutions, and community and popular organizations deal with disasters is extremely important. These are the ultimate “stress tests” not simply of the built environment, but of the organic resilience of human and social organizations. So in the same way I couldn’t stop reading Katrina stories and participated in the watch “force” on the nuclear meltdowns in Japan, I’m all over Sandy, as well, especially in the way it looks at the impacts across the entire community.
There were two very interesting pieces in the Times this morning that were both significant in this regard and disturbing.
One was about life in public housing without electricity or heat. First you had to get past the headline on the front page which was meant to project all possible fears of the worst kind on the projects: “In New York’s Public Housing: Fear Creeps in With the Dark.” Interestingly, the headline in the on-line version was much more balance, as you can see by including “heroism.” Ok, well a little more balanced anyway.
The actual story was less lurid and more helpful. Less than 10% of the more than 2000 NYCHA buildings were powerless, which deserves an attaboy of some kind right there. There were stories of people looking after people. Building by building impromptu barbeques to share the food that would have spoiled was reported. Hallways became public spaces. People talked of visiting with neighbors not usually part of their circle. The rhythms of life move with the sun, which speaks as much to what I always refer to as “inside camping” on the Gulf Coast hurricane hunkerdowns, as it does to any particular or latent fear of crime and mayhem.
Rebecca Solnit in A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster has handled this phenomena best in this book about the way that in the worst of times sometimes the best arises in people to build real communities from the San Francisco Fire to Katrina. My Battle for the Ninth Ward about the post-Katrina experience found many of these same elements in the fierce fights for people to come home. If you can survive the latent racism lurking behind the headlines, there’s a lot to feel good about in these stories of adaptation. One quote from a 73-year old tenant that identifies with what he inaccurately thinks is “half of the world” living without electricity is a classic!
Another story looked at the problem of lost wages for workers displaced in the storm who don’t get paid if they can’t get to work or if work is shutdown from flooding, power failures, and other catastrophes. Too often we read about “stay-cations” and “hurrica-tions,” as if these are party times for people, as long as the storm “attacks,” as they correctly call these natural events in Japan, who escape the devastation. People are hurting everywhere including the pocketbook, and no matter what the Republican Congress thinks, we don’t do enough to help individual families bounce back. One man talks about how to pay for $7000 in roof damage. Looking at my roof that still lacks gutters 7 years after Katrina, I could tell him the answer, but he might not like it. I can already see the articles the Times will be writing about homes without any flood insurance up and down the East Coast, because who expected the 100-year “super storm.”
I haven’t read any story yet where they recommend not rebuilding New York City and the East Coast, like we read daily about New Orleans, so that’s refreshing. Maybe this “shared suffering” in the media center of America, will lead to some compassion and public policy reforms on a number of fronts for post-disaster families and communities? Dare we hope?
