Over the five years following Hurricane Sandy, houses along the New Jersey coastline have become larger and taller than they had been prior to the hurricane. Median home prices have risen, while the percentage of full-time households, as opposed to second homes, has declined. As with many coastal communities across the United States, some measure of population shift and even coastal gentrification was already under way prior the storm, but as often happens, the combination of damage to older structures and the inability of residents living on fixed incomes to fully recover accelerated the trend (Terruso 2017).
Similarly, disparate outcomes, including the permanent displacement and internal migration1 of lower-income and minority residents, occurred following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and continue to occur following large disasters as well as chronic events. In 2017 alone, over one million Americans were displaced from their homes by disasters (Goodell 2018). These outcomes are not solely a result of the disaster2 itself but in fact largely stem from a history of disparities in health and well-being that serve to concentrate vulnerability within minority, working class, and poor communities3—who are then not given full access to resources or socio-political decision-making processes in disaster recovery because their voices and their knowledge are not valued by technocratic recovery processes and their presence is considered undesirable by elites (Allen 2007). For many, the price of adaptation is too high and leaving becomes the only option,4 while others cannot afford to migrate and remain behind in communities that are deteriorating and lack the resources to offer basic services (Goodell 2018).
Climate change is a global problem in which both the harms and the responsibility have been unequally distributed across time and geography. Despite benefiting the least from the global marketplace and development trends that have exacerbated climate impacts, vulnerable groups will be the most adversely impacted (Swim and Bloodhart 2018). Large-scale climate migration is expected in the future, with impacts primarily upon the poor, and it is already occurring in other nations and in areas of the United States. In fact, there is a long history of disaster-influenced migration within the United States, including impacts from the Dust Bowl, and massive African American migration following the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 (Rivera and Miller 2007).
Despite clear evidence of unjust outcomes, and of a system that cannot meet the needs of the entire impacted community, the 2017 hurricane season once again repeated and exacerbated these patterns of injustice. Hurricane Harvey, for example, a record-setting rainfall event for the Houston area, with over 55 inches of rainfall, impacted immigrant populations, minority households, and low-income families in disproportionate ways (Kelly et al. 2017). One study indicated that after Hurricane Harvey, Hispanic and black residents were twice as likely to experience an income shock as their white counterparts and routinely did not receive the assistance they needed (Maxwell 2018).
The direct impacts of Hurricane Harvey were significant, with over 25% of Harris County under water at peak flooding, over 13,000 persons rescued, and over 37,300 in shelters (Norton et al. 2018). The indirect, and cascading, impacts are proving to be even greater, as only 20% of impacted households carried flood insurance (FEMA 2018). One study found that as many as 30% of residents were behind in mortgage or rent payments as a result of disaster losses, or impacts to employment following Harvey, and that around 25% were struggling to pay for food (Goodell 2018).
According to several estimates, losses from natural5 disasters in 2017 were the highest recorded in US history, exceeding $306 billion. Wildfires, alone, led to over $10 billion in damages in Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino Counties in California (Mark 2018). The rising costs of disaster impacts, coupled with several projections of ever-worsening impacts, have been utilized by politicians and others to argue for greater local investment and responsibility for disaster risk reduction and recovery costs, including increased personal responsibility (Pew Charitable Trusts 2018). This narrative is further used to excuse failures in places such as Puerto Rico, which, as a US territory, lacks the political clout of Texas.
Hurricane Maria caused over $90 billion in damages to Puerto Rico, making it the third costliest cyclone in the United States since 1900. The resulting damage to the power grid, water infrastructure, healthcare, and other essential services led to a series of cascading impacts and an ongoing public health emergency. Puerto Ricans, on average, lacked cell service for 41 days, water for 68 days, and went 84 days without electricity (Palm Beach Post 2018). Although the initial death count was set at 64, subsequent studies have set the death count as high as 4645. As of August 2018, the official death count was revised to 2975 (Fink 2018). These deaths were a direct result of lack of water, a faltering power grid, healthcare disruption, and a general lack of essential services (Hernandez and McGinley 2018). Unlike Texas, Puerto Rico lacks any voting power in the US Congress, having only one delegate without an official vote (Palm Beach Post 2018).
This book draws upon an analysis of the official and media reports following Hurricanes Harvey and Maria to illustrate the fact that the challenges described in this text have continued through to more recent events. Examples from Hurricanes Maria and Harvey are included in each chapter, as well as older examples following Hurricane Katrina and other events, where more peer-reviewed research is available.
1.1 Applying a Justice Paradigm
As the preceding examples clearly indicate, there is a clear nexus between justice and disaster recovery outcomes, with an unequal distribution of disaster risk and vulnerability—creating a cycle in which pre-event vulnerabilities are exacerbated by disaster impacts and failure to fully recover is framed as a personal and community failing to be resilient. There has been some exploration by social scientists, and others, of unjust and unfair outcomes in disaster recovery, including a robust literature on vulnerability that dates back several decades. There is a general understanding within the literature that current post-disaster policies and frameworks disadvantage the most vulnerable and lead to disparate outcomes, primarily through the perpetuation of structural inequalities (Wisner et al. 2005; Pelling 2003).
However, the mechanisms by which this occurs, and the extent to which the regulations and agency cultures drive this outcome, are not fully understood. There is also a general understanding that social and economic structures, including land use policies and historic practices, such as redlining, have concentrated hazard risk into vulnerable zones whose inhabitants do not benefit from the very policies that create and increase their risk (Freudenburg et al. 2008; Tierney 2010). This text will synthesize existing research across multiple disciplines, including public administration, political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and economics, in order to improve our understanding of the complexity of interactions between these mechanisms in the context of disaster resilience. This synthesis is coupled with real-world examples from more recent events, where information is available.
To that end, this discussion will bring together existing literature, seeking to integrate the language and theories of justice more fully with the concepts of resilience and vulnerability, including the role of historic practices and systemic racism in the creation of the modern hazard landscape. Some researchers have applied concepts from environmental justice to the challenge of climate adaptation, but this literature remains limited to particular cases such as Hurricane Katrina. Even when a justice framing is applied, there is a lack of clarity regarding the conceptualization of justice being utilized, as described by Allen (2013) in her analysis of justice impacts on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) assistance and outcomes that utilized the framings of distributive justice, procedural justice, cultural justice, representative justice, and capacities justice. In fact, it is often the case that com...