Case Studies of Disasters and Governance

Abstract

There are so many case studies about disasters that this paper focuses on an illustrative small sample dealing primarily with two countries, the United States and South Korea. In the United States, a combination of real-world natural disasters and simulated terrorist attacks implied very high levels of business interruption that could justify an overall strategy of significant spending on prevention and mitigation. An equally important point is the risk of top-down governance failures revealed in Hurricane Katrina (2005). The South Korean examples are very different. A long series of typhoons over more than two decades showed some gains in reduced fatalities, although the emergency management system remains imperfect despite a series of legislative actions including the recent Public Safety and Security Act of 2014. Much worse were several man-made disasters reflecting design weaknesses, inadequate prevention, the lack of regulations and inspection, and even corruption. There were many examples including the Sungsoo bridge, the Sampoong store, the Daegu subway, the Sewol ferry, the Pangyo concert, and the nuclear power errors. Two more examples are the Mexico City earthquake of 1985 in which successful bottom-up action by volunteers surprisingly took place in an autocratic society and the Thames Barrier in London, the UK (1996-83) where a “czar” was in complete charge of a very ambitious flood protection project.