<\/strong><\/p>\n

The earthquake and subsequent fire that decimated 1906 San Francisco was a disaster perpetuated by the corruption that encompassed the local government, city building infrastructure, and city planning. The assigned reading \u201cSmoke and Mirrors\u201d by Ted Steinberg presented a very interesting argument into the categorization of disasters. I had never thought of this type of disaster distinction prior to this reading. Steinberg described the division in class distinctions almost immediately following the event. Businessmen were concerned with rebuilding the gigantic economic power that San Francisco and her ports had become. A steady influx of international goods, commodities, resources, cheap immigrant labor and economic wealth flowed through the city; and as such was the primary concern for big business. I agree with my classmate @ngojoseph<\/em> who classified the businessmen as plausible \u201cdeniers\u201d of the origin of the disaster to (in essence), protect their own current and more importantly future business interests. Even in 1906, following the most traumatic event the city had ever experienced the first order of business as the fires were extinguished was \u201cgetting back to business\u201d. That is at the heart of American determination for those of upper class statuses, for whom the basic necessities of living are not a primary concern following a disaster. For individuals in lower economic classes the primary concern is not what to label the disaster, but how to provide shelter, food, clothing medical in a traumatic time. This was also evident when Hurricane Katrina occurred in New Orleans. The city survived the initial impact of the hurricane, but the disaster ensued when the levees did not work correctly and keep the flood waters out of the city. When the disaster is discussed it is the devastation from Katrina, not the failure of the government infrastructure. In that case it made more \u201cbusiness sense\u201d to focus on the hurricane, which could be controlled in the future and not the inadequacies of the city to protect its interests. The city of San Francisco eventually recovered and prospered, but will the people of New Orleans fair the same?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The earthquake and subsequent fire that decimated 1906 San Francisco was a disaster perpetuated by the corruption that encompassed the local government, city building infrastructure, and city planning. The assigned reading \u201cSmoke and Mirrors\u201d by Ted Steinberg presented a very interesting argument into the categorization of disasters. I had never thought of this type of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":667,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions\/667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}