What is a disaster’s impact?
In general, a disaster’s impact can be both intensive and extensive, driven by multiple underlying conditions. The intensive impact of a disaster refers to the damage of property, loss of life, and immediate poverty caused by the very disastrous event alone, whereas the extensive impact of a disaster refers to the continuing poverty, loss of opportunities, and emotional trauma that persist in the post-disaster long run.
Disasters impact different communities in different intensities. Usually, the effects of disasters are distributional. An incident can be perceived as a disaster for many, but not for others. In the United States, researchers find people of low socioeconomic status much more vulnerable to the intensive and extensive damages a disaster causes. Many would assume that disasters are great “levelers” of social inequality–a hurricane may flush away both mansions and lodges, thus leaving both the rich and the poor a fair end. Sadly, this has not been quite true. Disasters not only contribute to more adversity of those who are disadvantaged and othered in society but also intensify the inequality in social wealth that would lead to more disasters.
Disasters demonstrate their intensifier impact in multiple ways. For example, marginalized neighborhoods tend to receive disaster warnings later than other neighborhoods in the same area. Even if a disaster is alarmed to both neighborhoods simultaneously, marginalized neighborhoods often have less time to prepare for or react to the potential damages. While some can afford to take a vacation to avoid encounters with the hurricane, others must work fixed hours to support their households. Ideally, everyone should take proper measures to minimize the intensive and extensive impacts of a disaster. In reality, though, not many have the luxury of saving themselves. After the disaster, families of higher income recover faster than those of lower income, adjusted for the government subsidies they receive correspondingly. The pressure to walk out of the disaster economically often leads to mental illness, fractured families, and lack of attention on children, which then leads to a lack of preparedness for the subsequent disasters. Institutional remedies may help the most hurt but often fail to protect the most vulnerable.
Voices
I think there’s no question that it’s the wars. It’s the duration that does it, and all the uncertainty. When the college is hit by flood or fire or hurricane, it’s over soon and everybody immediately goes to work to address the damage. I don’t think there were any campus fatalities as a result of those disasters, although there were some close calls. Even with the 1918 flu pandemic, I’m only aware of one student dying on campus. But WWI and especially WWII completely changed the AC curriculum, the college calendar, and the function of the campus, and delayed graduation for many. And, of course, people died. Even the Vietnam conflict, as it escalated over the course of years, had a major impact on students’ mentality, affecting how seriously they studied, what they planned to do after graduation, and how they felt about living in America, let alone going to college. A class of 1968 grad told me that his class stood out for being a rare example of one that performed more poorly overall as seniors than as first-year students; by their senior year, those students were all feeling so disillusioned, the motivation to succeed academically was pretty much dead.
Libby Maxey, Staff, Classics
Natural disasters do not affect people equally. In fact, a vulnerability approach to disasters would suggest that inequalities in exposure and sensitivity to risk as well as inequalities in access to resources, capabilities, and opportunities systematically disadvantage certain groups of people, rendering them more vulnerable to the impact of natural disasters.
Eric Neumayer and Thomas Plumper, (2007) The Gendered Nature of Natural Disasters: The Impact of Catastrophic Events on the Gender Gap in Life Expectancy, 1981–2002, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97:3, 551-566, DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8306.2007.00563.x