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What is a disaster and what makes a disaster a disaster? These are two of the most difficult questions to answer about nature. Disasters are very unpredictable occurrences and how they relate to humans are difficult to determine. As Steven Biel notes in his article many see disasters as the antithesis to everyday life (5). Others such as Jonathan Bergman believe that disasters have a profound influence on our everyday lives. For Mississippians disaster was what forced them to develop their coast into a major tourist attraction thus establishing a stable component of their economy.
Bergman’s ideas seem to speak to a similar idea that Justin brought up in his post from last week. Justin talks about the interconnectedness of nature and humanity. One could not exist without the other. He also makes an interesting comment when he speaks about the constant reworking and repositioning of man’s relationship with nature.
When it comes to natural disasters humanity has two options. One, It can adapt like the Mississippians. For Bergman disasters operate as a check on human society. It provides them with opportunities to expand but also warns against overextension. It can act as a framework that allows us to build society on a strong and stable foundation. The second option is to try and build independently of nature. As Biel notes in his article “disasters evoke the defense of established ways…” (5) Despite what nature may deem necessary, man reverts back to the established ways.
This second option is what Mike Davis argues was the course for Southern California in the first chapter of his book Ecology of Fear. The goal of Davis in this chapter was to try and understand SoCal’s relationship to disaster and how this shaped the development of its cities and society. He begins the chapter by highlighting several of the natural disasters that hit the region. Despite these disasters Californians continued to present their state as the Mediterranean on the Pacific. It was supposed to be a perfect land that would see a disaster only once or twice a decade. According to Davis however, this belief in consistency was a flawed belief. The perfect nature of California landscape was a myth and that the perfectness of the landscape was overemphasized.
Due to this flawed understanding of the environment Californians constructed their societies without much thought to the tremendous power of natural disasters such as earthquakes. When they did devote some thought to safety they based their safety procedure on a limited and shortsighted disaster record. They assumed that the frequency and magnitude of these disasters would hold constant in the future. Recent science has indicated differently and has portrayed current patterns of disasters as an anomaly.
Most likely the future will bring about greater disasters and consequences. Regardless of these warnings politicians and businessmen have been unwilling to refit the structures of their buildings for they believed the cost to be too high. They have also failed to develop an effective enough emergency services program and so when disaster does strike the response will be relatively ineffective in comparison to what it should have been. Davis’ ultimate criticism of Southern California in this chapter was that politicians and industrialists have overlooked the power of disasters. They have expanded beyond the check that nature institutes on society. Even when science has indicated that a change is necessary, no change has occurred. Instead the established ways are reaffirmed which in time will reap a heavy price.