Disasters
Psychology gets involved with dasasters. You can go to the American Psychological Association web site and get information on coping with disasters, normal responses to disasters, how to help with the most recent disaster if you are a professional or how to help your child cope. I’m not going to reiterate any of that information here. The Red Cross has similar information as well.
I’m going to talk about how when bad things happen people want to know why it happened. They want to know who didn’t predict in advance that the bad thing was going to happen and keep it from happening. Frequently they want to know who will be responsible for making sure everything will get made as back to normal as possible. I live in California, in an area where there are earthquakes. There is a fault line under my garage. No one knew there was a fault line under my garage. I had no idea either until the Northridge earthquake brought it rudely to my attention. My house survived with minor damage.
Earthquakes happen because the earth rotates. It’s the same reason hurricanes happen. As temperatures of the earth get warmer there will be more hurricanes. In history, there have been big earthquakes and big hurricanes. I was alive for the big hurricane that hit New Orleans previously–Betsy. I remember the Sylmar, CA earthquake. But people don’t remember these things. They rebuilt New Orleans previously and rebuilt the collapsed 5 and 14 freeways from the earthquakes. There were lots of complaints about how slowly everything took to make things get back to normal. Some people published books and magazines showing how damaged everything was. There were waiting lines and lots of questions for officials who never seemed to have answers quickly enough. For the people it was a frustrating experience.
During hurricane Betsy and the Sylmar, CA earthquake there was looting. I don’t remember lots of media coverage of that, but I do remember hearing about it as a child. It was scary hearing that word following the Watts riots, the other big disaster in Los Angeles I had been exposed to. There were lines for food, and shelter, and to get basic supplies.
During the Northridge earthquake, the apartment building 2 blocks away and within vision from my house in a direct line from my garage, collapsed. People in 1/3 of the building were homeless and set up a tent city in a lot. People in the other 2/3 were able to get supplies. People worked together to help one another. FEMA was tied up with Northridge, where a large shopping center had collapsed, a 3 story apartment building had collapsed killing people and lots of home had damage. No one in my city had any illusions that FEMA would be coming to help soon. The estimates were that they would be coming in weeks maybe months and that the help would be for the basics only–food, clothing, and shelter. I was expecting no help from FEMA but I filled out the forms. I moved out of my home for several weeks because basic services like electricity and running water weren’t available and the smell of gas was noticible in the early hours following the earthquake. I was prepared. I had a plan. I’d been in major earthquakes before. I left the city on surface streets. I drove 30 miles away. I got to a hotel prior to lots of people coming from my city. They came hours later with dogs, cats and children in tow seeking shelter.
I decided to stay and make repairs to my house. I looked at other homes in the area and read geological surveys on new homes. The area has lots of fault lines. I can’t blame anyone for the earthquake. I can’t blame anyone for any future earthquake. Hurricanes will happen. I’m responsible for making a decision to live in my house now, knowing there is a fault line here under my garage. I have earthquake insurance. After hurricane Betsy in the 1960s, everyone knew that if New Orleans got hit by a large hurricane that the city would be flooded. It was a matter of time before it happened. When, not if, California gets hit by an 8.0 or larger earthquake, there will be significant devastation. It will take a long time to fix the infrastructure. FEMA will arrive. It will never feel fast enough for the people involved to assess what is wrong, or to fix the problems. There may be looting. There may be explosions and continuing problems. People will die due to the slow process.
The more that people can plan in advance for the basic disasters…fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and cope in the early stages, the better they will do for themselves. The more people sit around and wait for help with no plan it is going to be more of a problem. So what I have been telling people is to look at what happened and use what happened to formulate your own personal disaster plan. What do you need to do? What do you need to think about? Do you need to make plans for animals? Do you need to make plans for disabled people? What are your plans to have food, water and shelter available? Are you going to have to wait for the government to assist you? How will you get word to your family that you are safe if you are separated? Do you have a family disaster plan? If you are answering those questions no, then you need to put a plan together to fix those answers to the best you can.
