The Tale of Two Cities
Natural disasters in recent years have often been followed by big charity checks from the wealthy. From Hurricane Katrina to the Haiti earthquake and Asian Tsunami, all these events have featured millionaires and billionaires giving time, checks to help speed along the recovery process. So far, however, the philanthropic response to Superstorm Sandy has been relatively muted. High-profile checks from individual wealthy donors have been few and far between. The region’s wealthy are pre-occupied with putting their lives back together – with homes in Manhattan, Connecticut, Long Island and New Jersey still without power or badly damaged. In some sense, natural disasters are a great equalizer since they do not discriminate between rich and poor, and inflict misery in seemingly equal proportion on the haves and have nots. What is unequal between social groups is the power that people are able to command to help them rebound after disasters.
Residents of devastated poor districts accused authorities of abandoning them in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. In smart shopping streets of uptown Manhattan, life had returned to normal for the city’s elite and rich tourists. But in lower Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn and parts of Queens, cold, wet and hungry people who bore the brunt of Sandy’s killer onslaught six days ago were battling third world conditions. There are scenes reminiscent of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Working class poor are screaming for help — but say nobody is listening. The situation has not been helped by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to go ahead with the New York Marathon — diverting precious resources from desperate families. The marathon attracts around 40,000 runners and will be policed by 1,000 cops. Staten Island and Brooklyn politician Nicole Malliotakis said: “To take away just one policeman to supervise a marathon is wrong.”
The best strategy against acts of nature disasters is to be rich. The most neglected survivors will be those who lack insurance, those living paycheck to paycheck, those without the legal know-how and social supports needed to navigate systems of disaster relief. In other words, entrenched economic and bureaucratic barriers will usher in a second wave of trauma for the poor.
Disaster Capitalism
Just in the past year, flooding killed 140 in the Niger Delta and left hundreds homeless, 66 dead in Manila and 440,000 in evacuation centers across the Philippines, 100 dead in northeastern India with 2 million people forced from their homes—and that’s a partial list. More broadly, around 90 percent of the 60,000 people who die in natural disasters each year die in the developing world.
The best disaster resilience strategies involve developing infrastructure—from sea walls to all-weather roads to irrigation systems—and solidly constructed buildings, alongside quality public services such as fire fighting, police, and ambulances. And withstanding a catastrophe requires being able to afford food and medicine.
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Natural disasters in recent years have often been followed by big charity checks from the wealthy. From Hurricane Katrina to the Haiti earthquake and Asian Tsunami, all these events have featured millionaires and billionaires giving time, checks to help speed along the recovery process. So far, however, the philanthropic response to Superstorm Sandy has been relatively muted. High-profile checks from individual wealthy donors have been few and far between. The region’s wealthy are pre-occupied with putting their lives back together – with homes in Manhattan, Connecticut, Long Island and New Jersey still without power or badly damaged. In some sense, natural disasters are a great equalizer since they do not discriminate between rich and poor, and inflict misery in seemingly equal proportion on the haves and have nots. What is unequal between social groups is the power that people are able to command to help them rebound after disasters.
Residents of devastated poor districts accused authorities of abandoning them in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. In smart shopping streets of uptown Manhattan, life had returned to normal for the city’s elite and rich tourists. But in lower Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn and parts of Queens, cold, wet and hungry people who bore the brunt of Sandy’s killer onslaught six days ago were battling third world conditions. There are scenes reminiscent of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Working class poor are screaming for help — but say nobody is listening. The situation has not been helped by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to go ahead with the New York Marathon — diverting precious resources from desperate families. The marathon attracts around 40,000 runners and will be policed by 1,000 cops. Staten Island and Brooklyn politician Nicole Malliotakis said: “To take away just one policeman to supervise a marathon is wrong.”
The best strategy against acts of nature disasters is to be rich. The most neglected survivors will be those who lack insurance, those living paycheck to paycheck, those without the legal know-how and social supports needed to navigate systems of disaster relief. In other words, entrenched economic and bureaucratic barriers will usher in a second wave of trauma for the poor.
Disaster Capitalism
Just in the past year, flooding killed 140 in the Niger Delta and left hundreds homeless, 66 dead in Manila and 440,000 in evacuation centers across the Philippines, 100 dead in northeastern India with 2 million people forced from their homes—and that’s a partial list. More broadly, around 90 percent of the 60,000 people who die in natural disasters each year die in the developing world.
The best disaster resilience strategies involve developing infrastructure—from sea walls to all-weather roads to irrigation systems—and solidly constructed buildings, alongside quality public services such as fire fighting, police, and ambulances. And withstanding a catastrophe requires being able to afford food and medicine.
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