Worst Disaster Research Articles

Foreshadowing Haiti's Catastrophe

Tens of thousands likely perished in what may be the Western Hemisphere's worst disaster in a century. But the devastation of last week's earthquake in Haiti was more the result of lack of infrastructure than the strength of the quake itself, which barely qualified as major.

Katrina: Macro-Ethical Issues for Engineers

Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst disasters in United States history. Failures within New Orleans' engineered hurricane protection system (levees and floodwalls) contributed to the severity of the event and have drawn considerable public attention. In the time since Katrina, forensic investigations have uncovered a range of issues and problems related to the engineering work. In this article, my goal is to distill from these investigations, and the related literature that has accumulated, some overarching macro-ethical issues that are relevant for all engineers. I attempt to frame these issues, using illustrative examples taken from Katrina, in a way that might be of pedagogical use and benefit for engineering educators interested in engaging their students in discussions of engineering ethics, societal impact of engineered systems, engineering design, or related topics. Some of the issues discussed are problems of unanticipated failure modes, faulty assumptions, lack or misuse of information, the importance of resiliency, the effects of time, balancing competing interests, attending to the details of interfaces, the fickleness of risk perception, and how the past constrains the present.

Commonwealth Update

Nigerian security forces put down an Islamist uprising by militants of Boko Haram that left 700 people dead. The leader of the Pakistan Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a US missile strike and Islamist militants were pushed out of the Swat valley after weeks of fighting. Zambia's former president Frederick Chiluba was acquitted of embezzlement. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative opposed Rwanda's application for Commonwealth membership. Tonga suffered one of its worst disasters in recent history when a ferry sank, killing 74 people.

Anatomy of a Military Disaster: The Fall of "Fortress Singapore" 1942

Anatomy of a Military Disaster:The Fall of "Fortress Singapore" 1942 Thomas S. Wilkins (bio) Singapore Diary: The Hidden Journal Of Captain R. M. Horner. Edited by Sally Moore McQuaid. Brimscombe, Port Stroud, U.K.: Spellmount, 2006. ISBN 1-86227-339-1. Illustrations. £20. Singapore Burning: Heroism and Surrender in World War II. By Colin Smith. London: Penguin Viking, 2005. ISBN 978-0-1410-1036-6. Maps. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 628. £25.00. The Battle for Singapore: the True Story of the Greatest Catastrophe of World War II. By Peter Thompson. London: Portrait, 2005. ISBN 978-0-7499-5099-6. Maps. Illustrations. Pp. 470. £9.99 (pb). Britain's Greatest Defeat: Singapore, 1942. By Alan Warren. New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2006. ISBN 1-852-8532-8X. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 370. £16.99 (pb) The "Worst Disaster" Contrary to popular perception, the Pacific War (1941-45) actually opened with Japanese air operations against Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore. Ninety-five minutes before Japanese warplanes appeared over Pearl Harbor on 7 December [End Page 221] 1941, Britain had already been attacked in the Far East. Two days later the warships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, pride of the Royal Navy, had been sunk. In the land campaign that followed on the Malayan peninsula the Japanese inflicted such a reverse upon British imperial forces that their former prestige and self confidence never truly recovered. Thus, the psychological shock felt by the British after the fall of Singapore in 1942 paralleled that experienced by their American allies after their crushing defeats at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines. Every conceivable reason has been advanced to explain the cause of the disaster. There is neither the space nor the necessity here to enumerate the full litany of factors that contributed to the Singapore debacle. It was, at the time, both the sheer unexpectedness and the magnitude of the defeat that stunned the British. The Japanese strike south (Nanshin) caught the complacent colonial overlords of Asia desperately unprepared. Many in the upper echelons misperceived Singapore island as an 'impregnable fortress' bristling with defenses. The Imperial Chiefs of Staff (COS), in a wildly optimistic assessment, expected this 'fortress' to withstand a siege of six months before expecting naval 'relief '. Moreover, weaned on a diet of Rudyard Kipling's 'white man's burden,' the British grievously underestimated their oriental foe, scorning Japan's martial prowess on the basis of ill-founded racist stereotypes. Some 80-120,000 troops surrendered to the Japanese on 15 February 1942 after the final battle for Singapore island.1 Not since Yorktown in 1781 had such a humiliation been experienced by British arms. Coming at a time of an almost unbroken series of setbacks in the war effort it caused morale in the home islands to plummet. The Beginning of the End of the British Empire? A story during the battle for Singapore – perhaps apocryphal – tells of a British officer questioning a young Singaporean passerby as to the source of a great explosion in the distance. The Singaporean, knowing this blast to be the demolition of the vaunted Royal Navy base at Sembawang, replied laconically: 'That was the end of the British Empire'.2 The passerby was Lee Kuan Yew, future Prime Minister of an independent Singapore, and his comment reflects the moment Britain's status and credibility as ruler of much of Asia was exploded. It 'shattered mental images held for a century or more', according to Karl Hack and Kevin Blackburn.3 Henceforth, Richard Mead declares, the British 'would never be held in the same [End Page 222] respect again. If any event can be said to be the beginning of the end of the British Empire, it was this.'4 The significance of the event cannot therefore be overstated and its place in British military historiography almost rivals that of Pearl Harbor to the Americans. Thus, we find the all too familiar controversies surrounding the campaign, both historical and contemporary. For example, in place of painful self-reflection and objective assessment we contend with the profusion of various myths and acrimonious disputes, coupled with an ever shifting 'blame game' (which now continues on internet...

Disaster Planning and Preparedness: A Human Story

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the worst disaster in the history of New York City, the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) faced a monumental challenge in rebuilding the Department, and in continuing to provide emergency services for New York City in a daunting new threat environment. Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, who took over the agency in December 2001, describes how the FDNY has rebounded and what lessons were learned that terrible day

Evacuation of a Maternal-Newborn Area During Hurricane Katrina

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall and inflicted devastation across the Gulf Coast. The catastrophic hurricane and flooding from failed levees in New Orleans made this event the most destructive natural and man-made disaster to occur in the United States' history (White House, 2006). Such a massive disaster challenged survival for everyone in its path, including patients and healthcare professionals. This hurricane challenged the usual standards of care and disaster management strategies well beyond what we had ever prepared for or experienced. The city of New Orleans was under 8 to 12 feet of water. Memorial Medical Center, located in one of the lowest sections of the city, quickly became isolated from everyone and everything. The challenges that nurses faced during the 6 days after the disaster were arduous and multifaceted. Nurses had no choice but to be creative and flexible and improvise by using what limited resources were available. Nurses were not able to provide care in the typical patient care environment because patients were relocated to multiple areas of the hospital, the ER ramp, and the parking garage to await evacuation. The temperature soared to 110 degrees F, and evacuation efforts were chaotic and disorganized. This article describes the heroic efforts of a strong and cohesive nursing team in caring for our patients and providing for the evacuation of 16 critically ill newborns from the Level 3 regional neonatal intensive care unit and 5 well newborns and their mothers.

Counting the war dead

Every day, researchers risk their lives in some of the world's worst disaster zones to get a true picture of the death toll

Mind and Matter: The Practice of Military History with Reference to Britain and Southeast Asia

Wayne Lee is right: military historians need not see any contradiction between studying operational and humanistic dimensions of their subject. The Western military experience in Asia only underlines his argument; in study of that history, mat ter side of equation has never been neglected, and field remains war-centered. This does indeed provide the significant advantage of encouraging transnational and comparative perspectives.1 But most scholars in that field have, when framing their questions, paid careful attention to connections between military operations and societies, cultures, and peoples that fought in them. That approach was driven more by nature of military experience than by a preference for certain methods or techniques. The Western military presence in region, a product of imperialism, total war, and Cold War, had to be examined through a broad humanist prism in order to make sense of it. English-language scholarship naturally concentrates on British and American experiences, with two notable caveats. The literature on French war in Vietnam remains lively and multifaceted, as does study of other, be it Impe rial Japanese Army (ija), Chinese People's Volunteers, or Vietnamese National Liberation Front. Wayne Lee and Ron Spector have already explored more familiar American questions related to World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War. My commentary will try to broaden this round table by discussing how recent scholarship examines military history of British presence in Malay world during and after World War II. While that literature may remain war-centered, revolving as it does around global war and conflicts driven by Cold War and decolonization, its evolu tion justifies Lee's argument that cultural analysis bolsters, rather than undermines, importance of contingency in military history. The staying power of clich?s is enormous. Take for example Winston Churchill's de scription of fall of Singapore in 1942 as worst disaster in British military his tory. His assertion cannot stand up to any examination based on consequences; loss of thirteen colonies in 1783 surely outranks even a humiliating defeat in a war British went on to win. But his label framed a generation of scholarship that emphasized contingency: a shallow British gamble on grand strategy was exposed by a Japanese on slaught that underlined how overstretched British Empire really was. The military

The Great San Francisco Earthquake: One of America's Worst Urban Disasters (review)

THE GREAT SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE: ONE OF AMERICA'S WORST URBAN DISASTERS (2005) American Experience, WGBH The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 ranks with Hurricane Katrina's effect on the city of New Orleans in 2005 and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 as one of the worst disasters to befall an American city. This fifty-six minute documentary, produced for WGBH and American Experience, tells the story of the earthquake using still photographs drawn from archives and some rare cinematic footage of San Francisco at this time. The documentary, narrated by Academy Award winning actor, F. Murray Abraham, opens with an explanation of San Francisco's turn-of-the-century charm. The city dazzled visitors, including Rudyard Kipling and President Theodore Roosevelt, as a city of alluring entertainment and as a symbol of the booming Roosevelt referred to it as the of the West. The film shows a clip of Roosevelt's visit to the city, complete with one of his signature boisterous speeches. As the ninth biggest city in the United States, and the biggest city of the West in 1906, San Francisco had a lot to offer visitors and newcomers, and no one felt it was poised for disaster. Immigrants and migrants streamed in; San Francisco was comprised of onethird immigrants and one-third children of immigrants at the time of the quake. Of particular interest were the neighborhoods known as South of Market-made mostly of wood buildings, this immigrant neighborhood was first to burn in the fires following the earthquake-and North of Market, the five block square neighborhood offering a home to the city's 20,000 Chinese. The earthquake hit the city at 5:12 AM on April 18, 1906. Two hundred miles of the San Andreas Fault rumbled, making eight thousand homeless in San Jose and leveling the city of Santa Rosa. But San Francisco felt the earthquake most keenly. The greatest devastation stemmed from the fires that followed the quake. Gas mains ruptured and chimneys collapsed. Fifty fires broke out around the city. A blaze known as the ham and eggs fire began when one family prepared their breakfast relying on a damaged chimney. Twenty-eight thousand buildings were destroyed in the earthquake and resulting fires; San Franciscans filed $170,000,000 in insurance claims. Two hundred thousand people, rendered homeless, took refuge in the city parks. Estimates on death counts vary, yet most likely number in the thousands. Efforts to stop the looting that followed the quake, as well as attempts to quench the fire, often failed. …

Darfur facing even greater horror

As fighting in Sudan’s western region of Darfur escalates once again, the world’s biggest humanitarian catastrophe is poised to become an even worse disaster. Aerial bombardments by the government and ground fighting with rebel forces are displacing yet more villagers and preventing aid workers from getting relief to people in the most insecure areas. “If the humanitarian operation were to collapse, we could see hundreds of thousands of deaths and a man-made catastrophe of an unprecedented scale in Darfur,” UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland warned in late August.

Of Cannibals and Colonizers: Irony, Gender, and Ecology inRouge Br�sil

[Footnote]NOTES1. The sequel to L'Abyssin, Sauver Ispahan, continues adventures of protagonist, free-thinking doctor, herbalist, and adventurer Jean-Baptiste Poncet. With its multiple disguises, near deaths, and mistaken identities, sequel requires an increasing suspension of disbelief on part of reader.2. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.3. For Lestringant, [t]he destruction of France Antarctique in Rio de Janeiro in 1560 and worse disaster in Florida in autumn of 1565, when a thousand colonists were methodically slaughtered by order of adelantado Menendez de Aviles, figure among most bloody episodes of rivalry between European imperialisms at dawn of modern age (The Philosopher's Breviary 127).4. Villegagnon and Protestant missionary du Pont discuss Thevet's term antarctique, which had been preferred to equinoxiale, for new France of Brazil. As du Pont tries to place Thevet's name, he remembers that friar had been known for trying to give a name to herb he had brought back to Europe and was giving people to smoke: Il nomme cela l'angoumoisine parce qu'il est natif d'Angouleme et se dispute comme un chien avec Nicot, qui pretend la tenir avant lui des Portugais (He calls it l'angoumoisine because he is a native of Angouleme. He's involved in a harsh dispute with Nicot, who claims to have found this herb earlier among Portuguese; Rouge Bresil 315).5. As Lery puts it, Thevet avait envie de pousser et mentir ainsi cosmographiquement, c'est-a-dire a le monde (had an itch to push on and to lie 'cosmographically': that is to say, to whole world; Rouge Bresil 67; Whatley trans. xlviii). Lery plays on French expression tout le monde, which literally means the whole and idiomatically means everybody.6. See Stradanus (Jan van der Straet), New Discoveries Pl. 1.7. As Crosby observes, invaders and their descendants have consulted their egos, rather than ecologists, for explanation of their triumphs and, it could be added, of their failures (Germs 41). See Ecological Imperialism, for Crosby's muchdiscussed, deterministic theory of establishment of Neo-Europes throughout world during medieval and early modern periods. For Crosby, European global dominance was result, not just of human endeavor, but of microbes, plants, and animals that people (only sometimes knowingly) brought with them to different continents.8. Similarly, in Rufin's L'Abyssin, Poncet's herbarium is a place where culture and nature intersect, without creating a relationship of absolute control or domination; what could be called Poncet's botany of desire involves receiving influence of plants along with exerting influence on them (79-80, 128; see also Pollan, passim).9. To cite title of Adams and Mulligan's recent collection, Rufin's account can be considered a narrative way of Decolonizing Nature.10. Indeed, Rufin invites us to situate novel in this contemporary context when he writes in an appendix of l'envie que j'avais de raconter cette histoire a ma maniere, en resonance avec ma propre vie, mes idees, mes reves et surtout en tissant les liens necessaires avec l'epoque presente (the desire I had to tell this story in my own way, so that it may resonate with my own life, my ideas, my dreams, and above all so that I may connect these events to present time; Rouge Bresil 550). …

New Orleans: A Right to Return?

New Orleans has been challenging the limits of taste for over a century now. It is the city of Mardi Gras, of decadence, romance, stylish bohemianism, and, on Bourbon Street, unadulterated raunchiness. One might think that nothing could offend the residents of New Orleans. But many are offended by the spate of disaster tours currently available from local tour companies. You'll find brochures for them in the lobbies of upscale motels in the French Quarter and the Central Business District. Alongside flyers for the ubiquitous jazz and voodoo tours, there are foldouts blazoned with such headings as "Katrina: America's Worst Disaster." Open one of these, and the ad copy invites you to reexperience the tragedy, to share the pain.

Lessons learned from tsunami damage in Sri Lanka

Around 300 000 people were killed by the tsunami that followed the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake on Boxing Day 2004, making it one of the worst disasters in modern history. Up to 40 000 died in Sri Lanka alone, where around 80 000 houses were also destroyed when waves up to 15 m high swept ashore. This paper reports on how coastal buildings and infrastructure in Sri Lanka behaved under various tsunami wave heights and the many lessons learned for reducing vulnerability to future events. In particular, newly published national guidelines for reconstruction emphasise the importance of tying down structures against upward and lateral loads as well as the need to anticipate and reduce soil scour around foundations, especially of backfilled earth.

Different modes of disaster management in response to the tsunami in Southeast Asia

The tsunami of December 26, 2004, can be described as one of the worst disasters medical systems have ever had to face. This paper will describe the geophysical properties of tsunamis and their disastrous impact on human beings and infrastructure. Finally, we will present three different modes of response to the tsunami that were present in different provinces in Thailand. These three modes represent different strategies of disaster management, and analyzing each will help to begin understanding how best to respond to the next large-scale natural disaster.

Impact of Tsunami Disaster on the Water Environment

Impact of Tsunami Disaster on the Water EnvironmentThe earthquake that generated the great Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 is estimated to have released the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The earthquake occurred on December 26, 2004 was an undersea earthquake originated in the Indian Ocean off the western coast Indonesia and generated tsunamis that were among the worst disasters in modern...Author(s)Viraj de SilvaDilrika WeerapperumaSourceProceedings of the Water Environment FederationSubjectSession 83: International Issues: Recovery of Water and Wastewater Systems from Natural Disasters – Lessons LearnedDocument typeConference PaperPublisherWater Environment FederationPrint publication date Jan, 2006ISSN1938-6478SICI1938-6478(20060101)2006:5L.6526;1-DOI10.2175/193864706783761536Volume / Issue2006 / 5Content sourceWEFTECFirst / last page(s)6526 - 6532Copyright2006Word count544

Keeping Patients Safe When Disaster Strikes

SINCE SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, hospital disaster planning has become a high-profile issue debated in both the professional and popular press. With the disaster to the Gulf Coast caused by Hurricane Katrina, and the virtual destruction of New Orleans' healthcare delivery system, there is even greater scrutiny of disaster planning. The article by Havidan Rodriguez and Benigno E. Aguirre is a theoretical discussion of the resiliency of hospitals during a disaster, while the article by Bovender and Carey describes an excellent example of what was required to maintain Tulane Hospital during Hurricane Katrina, now classified as the single worst disaster that has befallen an American city. At this propitious time, these two articles touch on critical issues of emergency management. In the last five years this country has experienced its most concentrated period of destruction related to natural and man-made disasters. With the increasing concern of the emergence of pandemic influenza, the increasing sophistication and long reach of America's sworn enemies, and the promise of continued natural disasters, now is the time to improve our understanding of disaster planning and harden our healthcare delivery system against such assaults. We must be able to answer the question, When a healthcare system experiences a disaster, what is required to maintain its operations and how can the necessary resources be accessed? Since 2001, beginning with the damage to the Texas Medical Center from Tropical Storm Allison and followed closely by the September 11th attacks in New York City and Washington, DC, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has routinely debriefed hospitals and their communities following natural and man-made disasters. Our aim has been to better understand the effectiveness of hospital and community planning as it relates to maintaining quality and safe medical care under a broad range of disaster conditions. We sought to answer the question, As hospitals attempted to maintain quality and safe patient care during a disaster, what worked and what failed? The ultimate goal was to disseminate lessons learned and eventually modify our existing standards with the hope of mitigating future problems and enhancing successes. Our debriefings to date have included over 200 hospitals facing a wide assortment of disasters: hurricanes, floods, wildfires, widespread power failures, terrorist attacks, and infectious agents (i.e., SARS in Toronto). Often the local or state hospital association has been instrumental in organizing the gathering of affected facilities. The focus of the discussion has been on investigating the issues discussed in these two articles-namely, examining * the resiliency of Healthcare organizations as they face disasters; * what type of advance preparations succeeded; * the ability of organizations to respond as unexpected contingencies emerged; * the recovery from the event; and * the planning for the next event. PATTERNS EMERGING FROM HOSPITAL DEBRIEFINGS A number of patterns have emerged from these debriefings. The first is a set of parameters that appear to be related to a hospital's resiliency. The five parameters noted in the debriefings were communications, utilities, staff, supplies, and security. While a detailed discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this commentary, I will briefly describe each parameter. 1. Communications: Maintain a reliable communications system that allows important information to be communicated to both internal and external contacts so as to stay informed and keep others informed of all critical information necessary to manage the disaster. 2. Utilities: Supply the organization with sufficient amounts of power, adequate water, and sewage removal. 3. Staff: Maintain a sufficient number of competent clinical and non-clinical staff to run the organization 24 hours a day, seven days a week. …

Failures of emergency relief

Failures of emergency relief

Impact of the Tsunami on healthcare systems.

The Tsunami that struck on 26 December 2004 caused one of the worst disasters in modern times. The three papers that follow are based on an ICMH Tsunami Expert Review Committee meeting that took place in Male, Maldives, in April 2005

Impact of the Tsunami on healthcare systems

The Tsunami that struck on 26 December 2004 caused one of the worst disasters in modern times. The three papers that follow are based on an ICMH Tsunami Expert Review Committee meeting that took pl...

Incident, Accident, Catastrophe: Cyanide on the Danube

It has been described as the worst disaster since Chernobyl. In January 2000, a retaining wall failed at the Aurul gold processing plant in Romania, releasing a wave of cyanide and heavy metals that moved quickly from one river to the next through Romania, Hungary, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, killing tens of thousands of fish and other forms of wildlife and poisoning drinking-water supplies. This paper examines how and why the chemical spill at Baia Mare occurred and how responses to it emerged from circumstances at the global, local and immediate levels. The spill demonstrates the importance of the flow of information in framing and interpreting disasters, suggesting that such an event can go unnoticed or be viewed as catastrophic, depending on the political, historical and personal struggles that lead to its publicity. The paper offers a framework for understanding why the spill was alternately perceived as an incident, an accident and a catastrophe based on changing perceptions of culpability.