The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers African American Communities

3. The Legacy of Bias: Hurricanes, Droughts, and Floods

| 47 3 The Legacy of Bias Hurricanes, Droughts, and Floods Much of the death and destruction attributed to “natural” disasters is unnatural and human-induced. Many unnatural disasters result from “human error or malicious intent,” negligence, or the failure of a system.1 Human activity is affecting our environment so much that the so-called natural disasters framework is being reassessed.2 Quite often, preventable human error figures heavily in much of the death, damage, and destruction left behind by natural disasters. Such is the case for industrial accidents, toxic chemical contamination, and even climate-related disasters that are exacerbated by human activity that meddles with already fragile environments. Some scholars argue that “there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ disaster.”3 What we often term “natural” disasters are in fact acts of social injustice perpetuated by government and business on the poor, minorities, and the elderly—groups least able to withstand such disasters. In his book Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disasters in America, Case Western University history professor Ted Steinberg says humans prefer to make “Mother Nature” or “God” the villain in catastrophic losses from tsunamis, earthquakes, droughts, floods, and hurricanes, rather than place responsibility squarely on social and political forces.4 More than two billion people worldwide were affected by disasters between 2000 and 2010. In the 1990s, disasters such as hurricanes, floods, and fires caused more than $608 billion in economic losses worldwide, losses greater than those incurred during the previous four decades. Global insured economic losses from climate-related disasters was $27 billion in 2010 alone. Climate change was a big share of the $109 billion in economic damage in 2010. The catastrophic “effects of a disaster are magnified by ecologically destructive practices, like degrading forests, engineering rivers, filling in wetlands, and destabilizing the climate.”5 48 | The Wrong Complexion for Protection When extreme weather events hit, we often hear about the property loss and insurance loss. However, the healthcare costs are seldom reported. A 2011 NRDC study estimated deaths and health problems from six floods, drought, and other U.S. disasters related to climate change cost an estimated $14 billion between 2000 and 2009. The six events resulted in 1,689 premature deaths, 8,992 hospitalizations, 21,113 emergency room visits, and 734,398 outpatient visits.6 The number of people forced to flee their homes because of extreme weather events is increasing globally. More than 90 percent of all disaster displacement around the world in 2010 was caused by climate-related disasters . More than 38.3 million women, men, and children were forced to move, mainly by floods and storms in 2010. Today, there are more “environmental refugees” (twenty-five million) than “political refugees” (twenty-two million ). By 2050, the number of “environmental refugees” is expected to top 150 million, mainly because of the effects of global warming.7 Weather-related disasters, including hurricanes, floods, droughts, and windstorm, are growing in frequency and intensity. Globally, the number of reported weather-related natural disasters has more than tripled since the 1960s. Every year, these disasters result in more than sixty thousand deaths, mainly in developing countries, and have forced millions to flee their homes. Generally, “rich people tend to take the higher land leaving to the poor and working class more vulnerable flooding and environmental pestilence.”8 Assigning nature or God as the primary culprit has helped to hide the fact that some Americans are better protected from the violence of nature than their counterparts lower down the socioeconomic ladder. As more Americans move to coastal regions, future losses from “unnatural” disasters will continue to be formidable because of increased development in these highhazard areas.9 Blaming nature has become a political tool. Quite often, the scale of a disaster’s impact, as in the case of Hurricane Katrina, has more to do with the political economy of a country or region than with the hurricane category strength.10 Measures to prevent or contain the effects of disaster vulnerability are not equally provided to all. What is vulnerability, and how does it operate? Vulnerability is “the characteristics of a person or group and their situation that influence their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impact of a natural hazard.”11 Clearly, some populations are more prone to damage, loss, and suffering in the context of different hazards. Vulnerability also denotes “capacity,” or The Legacy...