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Nov 4

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11/11/13 | Superstorm Research Lab: One Year On |Workshops and Panel

On November 11, 2013, join Superstorm Research Lab and our allies in free, open workshops designed to address past, current, and future problems related to disaster and the complexities of justice on the ground. Workshops will be followed by a panel discussion, "A Tale of Two Sandys," that broadly examines the ways one disaster contains multiple crises, how the nature of a single disaster fundamentally changes over time, and how some forms of aid or notions of recovery can cause new crises, all of which can create new or multiple "Sandys."

Nov 4

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SRL on “The Fantasy of Disaster Response: Governance and Social Action During Hurricane Sandy”

SRL members Max Liboiron and David Wachsmuth have recently published an article on “The Fantasy of Disaster Response: Governance and Social Action During Hurricane Sandy,” in the Sandy-themed issue of Social Text Periscope: "Governments make disaster plans. Between municipal, state, and federal level agencies, the amount of planning for potential disasters is enormous. But during Hurricane Sandy, plans that took several years and millions of dollars to produce were thrown out almost immediately. In fact, discarding disaster plans is entirely normal, and may even be desirable....."

Oct 30

SRL on “Housing and mental health from Katrina to Sandy”

Home damage is known to lead to emotional distress, yet it was not until recently that researchers began to understand the complexity of this relationship in disaster-impacted communities. One might assume that as the amount of housing damage increases, so too does the emotional distress of its owner or occupant. In post-Katrina New Orleans, however, we found that residents whose homes were badly damaged but remained standing had higher levels of emotional distress than those whose homes were completely destroyed.

Oct 23

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Tenants: An overlooked vulnerable population in disaster research and recovery

While widespread housing damage from a disaster has happened before in the United States, never has a disaster affected an area so heavily occupied by renters. Almost 70 percent of New Yorkers – double the national average – rent their homes. Yet, they are an often overlooked vulnerable population in disaster response and research. How has this population fared in Sandy’s tumultuous aftermath? And what can we learn from the experiences of renters affected by Hurricane Katrina that can help tenants in New York City recover?

Oct 18

Sandy Mold Remediation

This year's International Day for Disaster Reduction theme, "Living with Disability and Disasters", focused on some one-billion people around the world living with some form of disability, representing one-fifth of the world' population who are often overlooked. In that spirit, this blog post focuses on mold remediation. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to conduct an interview with a first responder, who later became a mold remediator, to learn about the specifics and the importance of mold remediation.

Oct 16

NYU Divest looks for #Sandystories

NYU Divest is a group of New York University students, faculty, alumni, and parents working to freeze any new NYU investment in fossil fuel companies and divest from the top 200 publicly-traded and government owned fossil companies over the next five years. And, not surprisingly, they have made the link between financially supporting fossil fuel extraction and development with Hurricane Sandy.

They are marking the one year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy with a video and community event to highlight the stories of people impacted by the storm and call for action on climate change.

Oct 15

Job posting: Social Scientist, NOAA Office of Program Planning and Integration

I.M. Systems Group, Inc. (IMSG) is looking to hire a Social Scientist for a highly visible office in NOAA: Office of Program Planning & Integration (PPI) in Silver Spring, MD. The incumbent will provide direct support to the NOAA Chief Economist/Social Scientist, Assistant Administrator, and NOAA Senior Leadership. Working with the Chief Economist/Social Scientist, the Social Scientist provides expertise on economics and social science to promote sound analyses for policy and programmatic decision making.

Oct 14

350.org and Alliance for a Just Rebuilding mobilizing for October 27

350.org, an activist NGO dedicated to slowing global climate change, is sending out a message similar to the Alliance for a Just Rebuilding, Faith in New York and other community-based groups in Sandy-hit areas. 350.org and other groups are organizing a march on City Hall for October 27th as part of the continuing "Turn the Tide" Campaign.

Oct 7

Community Voices on the Recovery: Sandy and the Election, Part 2

How has Hurricane Sandy influenced New York City's mayoral race? It's not totally clear. But we do know that voters in communities hardest hit by Sandy mandate a social resilience platform.

Oct 4

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Interview with Respond and Rebuild volunteer

"We started going door to door and kind of collecting as many volunteers as we could, especially who seemed like maybe they maybe had a little know-how with construction or something that would make them feel a little more at home and not completely a fish out of water in a disaster zone, and started talking to homeowners about what they needed to do to clean up and why for health reasons and for the integrity of their building and things like that."

Sep 30

Union of Concerned Scientists call for flood insurance reform

The Union of Concerned Scientists is calling for flood insurance reform. They argue that reforms currently in front of the US congress for October 1 would help coastal homeowners better assess their risks so that they can take steps to reduce them, as well as help reduce the costs to taxpayers from large insurance payouts and disaster relief in the wake of major storms.

Sep 25

Interview with medical clinic volunteers

"When [canvasers] identified medical needs or homebound folks, they would give us a call and we would provide our own care to go climb the stairs and make house calls to folks. Checking on someone or going around making prescriptions. We evacuated some people to the hospital if people needed to go. The main concern when we got here was 'were people dying on the up on the 20th floor because there’s no one checking on them and they can’t get down?'"

Sep 23

Some Sandy-hit homeowners don’t want to “Build It Back”

Since Sandy, the dominant narrative has been that people will want to rebuild their homes regardless of future risk. On Staten Island, however, many residents tell a different story. In the neighborhood of Oakwood Beach, for instance, a group of nearly two hundred homeowners met shortly after Sandy and collectively decided they wanted to move, rather than rebuild. Together, they successfully lobbied for a government buyout of the neighborhood. Governor Cuomo declared their homes part of an “enhanced area” that the state will convert to a public park or wetlands to protect from future flooding and storm surge. Soon after Governor Cuomo’s January announcement of his intention to buy out damaged houses, hundreds of other homeowners along the South and East Shores of Staten Island formed groups to press for buyouts in their own areas.

Sep 16

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Community Voices on the Recovery: Sandy and the Election, Part 1

Community groups have already laid out top priorities—for after-Sandy reconstruction and more general disaster preparedness—that warrant both voters’ and candidates’ attention.

Sep 13

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What Use Is Disaster Planning? Hurricane Sandy’s “Fantasy Documents”

The sociologist Lee Clarke argues that many disaster plans should be understood primarily as “fantasy documents”. They have little probability of ever being implemented, and instead effectively serve to project confidence from the planners—to rhetorically “convince audiences that they ought to believe what an organization says” (Clark 1999: 2). The co-chair of one of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s post-Sandy commissions provided a similar perspective:

"On paper, there’s a lot of things that are written into policies that look like...we do have control over this. So we do have national and local planning documents and frameworks for making those kind of decisions and who’s in charge. I think my conclusion is that all of that is somewhat delusional.... We are basically kidding ourselves when it comes to really defining how we’re going to operate in a disaster. There are just too many conflicting interests—some of which are even constitutionally or legislatively in stone in a sense—and we can’t really adapt well when a disaster comes."

Sep 12

Union of Concerned Scientists: Sandy, One Year Later

One year after Superstorm Sandy made landfall, the Union of Concerned Scientists will co-host a full-day forum to discuss what we've learned and what we still need to do in order to make New Jersey more resilient and help the region plan for the future. The event will be held at Monmouth University and will be webcast live nationwide.

Sep 9

Interview with new resident of the Rockaways

"If you were someone who rented, or someone didn't have, who didn't work, or didn't have much, you were actually cared for, but if you actually did work, and you did, you know, have insurance, it seemed like things were, didn't necessarily work in your favor. So it's almost like, it really, it almost didn't pay to be a hard working person....because we were working, we actually lost assistance because we had flood insurance, we had homeowner's insurance, we worked, and it was because of all that, it seemed like we were limited to any assistance we could get."

Sep 6

Opportunity to join HUD’s Rebuild by Design public conversation workshops: Sept 12- Oct 28

Rebuild by Design is a multi-stage regional design competition that will develop innovative approaches to enhancing resiliency in Hurricane Sandy–affected communities. The competition is looking to learn from direct experience, local perspective, and citizen insights as communities across the region begin to rebuild and renew. At each regional meeting below, we invite you to share your experiences and ideas for your community with the participating teams. Your on-the-ground perspective will help Rebuild by Design develop appropriate solutions that respond to local and regional needs.

Sep 4

Disaster Data and Representations of Superstorm Sandy

How data is collected influences the data received, and thus the conclusions that can be drawn about the nature and extent of the disaster. Results start, in the case of canvassing, before canvasers get to the door. While both grassroots responses such as Occupy Sandy and governing institutions such as the City of New York collected data in an effort to match immediate needs and aid, their canvasing forms and "clipboard politics" differed.

Aug 28

CFP: Risk and Disaster, Society for Applied Anthropology

We would like to begin the process of organizing both panels and papers for the coming meeting in Albuquerque. We are asking colleagues involved in disaster research to submit preliminary proposals for panels or individual papers.

Creative Commons

Superstorm Research Lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. This data may be shared, copied, distributed and used free of charge provided you attribute the source of the data to Superstorm Research Lab within the work you produce.If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one (Creative Commons, CopyLeft, or Open Source), meaning the work must remain free, open, and the data must be attributed to SRL.

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