(Un)natural Disasters

ENVS 311

"Natural Disaster" - a phrase used to describe earth processes and events such as earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, hurricanes, fires, floods, etc., all of which affect both our surrounding environment and human communities.  However, the extent of naturalness, and the extent of disaster, are both scaleable and dependent on a number of factors.  For example, the naturalness of an event often refers to aspects of the event that are outside of human control or impact.  Yet our infrastructure, climate change, and community organization all affect the frequency, scale, and damage of different types of disaster.

Examples of this include the location and infrastructure of New Orleans and the Mississippi River delta, city infrastructure increasing risk and damage from earthquakes, climate change increasing frequency of hurricanes, etc.  All of these examples have different types of consequences for humans, even more so when combined with the make up of communities, vulnerability, and resources available.  When all of these components fail, the event is usually labeled a "disaster." If natural earth processes functioned without affecting human settlement, the term disaster would never be used.  Rousseau questioned this in a way that stuck with me:  do we care or talk about an earthquake in the desert?  Acknowledging that both "natural" and "disaster" are circumstantial would provide us a better understanding of how these events affect communities disproportionately and how we can mitigate unequal distribution of destruction and recovery.

An over arching theme of this course is the Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake, commonly referred to as "The Big One."  The likely 9+ magnitude earthquake is estimated to greatly affect the three west coast US states - Washington, Oregon, California - as well as parts of Canada and Mexico.  Coastal cities and towns will be vulnerable to both earthquake and tsunami dangers, and utility access is expected to be unavailable ranging from a few days, months, or even years in some cases.  These availability and hazards are compounded with social vulnerabilities of different communities.  In Portland, these vulnerabilities can be combined with hazard data to help map which communities will likely be most affected by the subduction zone earthquake.

A major component of this class was the planning, implementation, and reflection on a series of outreach events to Lewis and Clark College's students and neighboring community.  The outreach events were split into two courses, and informational open-house and an improvisational skills clinic.  A detailed event description and assessment can be found here.