Although natural disasters are typically glanced over as something that can hardly be predicted and, therefore, addressed, they need a closer attention as they affect people in a most drastic way. Creating threats to their lives, natural disasters shape the social, economic, and political environment in which people live.
There are differences in risk perception as far as natural disasters are concerned. For instance, low-income population tends to have a sharper perception of the subject matter, mostly because it affects the quality of their lives to a greater extent. Nevertheless, there is a strong need to raise awareness about the threats that natural disasters pose.
Focusing on the precaution measures and the drilling techniques that will help survive in case of a natural disaster is one of the most common tools for securing the population. The necessity to have essential tools and resources in stock needs to be made obvious to the target population. It is remarkable that the study indicated that there were no differences in the efficacy of preparations, as well as the level of preparedness, between the high-, middle-, and low-income families and residents.
The significance of communication is not to be underestimated, either. It is crucial that the members of the American communities should be able to receive warning messages and respond to them in a timely and efficient fashion. At this point, the possibility that no all groups are capable of receiving these messages needs to be mentioned. Therefore, there is a need to use the communication tools that will enhance the communication process, thus, helping save more people.
Natural disasters leave a powerful impact in terms of both the physical and the emotional damage sustained by the victims. Thus, it is crucial to design the strategies that will help address the emotional issues faced by the people who survived a natural disaster. Similarly, the importance of an emergency response is not to be underrated. Typically defined as the reaction toward the disaster, the identified phenomenon requires a closer attention. The emergency response helps shed light on a range of societal issues, such as the invisibility of poor members of the community.
Finally, the tools for recovery and reconstruction need to be mentioned among the essential steps toward managing the issues related to natural disasters. To help the victims of natural disasters recover from the emotional and the economic shock that they have experienced, one will have to accommodate them in the environment that they will perceive as comfortable and natural. The reconstruction phase, in its turn, will imply that certain societal problems should be addressed. For instance, the poverty issue and the associated problem of poor people’s invisibility must be managed. Similarly, the opportunities for a significant improvement of living conditions has to be considered as the next crucial step in designing an efficient disaster management approach.
The article by Fothergill and Peek (2004) sheds a lot of light on the current socioeconomic issues that the American society needs to manage. Although viewing the problem of natural disaster management as the focus of the study, the article also tackles the essential societal dilemmas that the American community is facing at present. Therefore, the scope of the article and the variety of issues that the authors manage to incorporate deserve being credited as an important step in forwarding the discussion of social concerns. Embracing the community issues that the citizens of the United States have to face nowadays, the article provides a deep insight on the factors that contribute to the mismanagement of the disaster-related issues. As a result, the strategies that will help address the root causes of the problems related to the disaster mismanagement can be created.
It could be argued that the authors of the article could have put a stronger emphasis on the importance of proper communication. Particularly, the article could benefit from a more detailed discussion of the wide range of opportunities that the latest information technology tools could provide. Indeed, the creation of the community network that could serve as the mean of delivering the essential data within the shortest amount of time possible could be viewed as a substantial help in preventing damages that people may suffer as a result of natural disasters.
Nevertheless, the authors have created a very strong article. Keeping the focus on what is important, they managed to make the target audience pay attention to the issue. Furthermore, Fothergill and Peek (2004) encompassed both psychological and physiological effects of natural disasters, therefore, pointing to the fact that the victims require therapy so that their post-traumatic state should not transform into a psychological disorder, such as depression.
References
Fothergill, A., & Peek, L. A. (2004). Poverty and disasters in the United States: A review of recent sociological findings. Natural Hazards, 32(1), 89–110.