After the Disaster

Scholars who have studied rural people and places often have focused on a snapshot
in time as they attempt to understand how human beings are impacted by
change at the local community level. Community once was declared dead as a unit
of analysis for social science scholars, yet the citizens who live in these places find
that their attachments to place and to other people in these places are crucial to
their lives. Too often those who study such phenomena fail to examine the longterm
impacts of shocks to place and people. This methodological failing often
leads to exaggerated estimations of the impacts of disasters on communities and
their residents. Human beings and the social structures they create are resilient.
In this book, the author fills some of the gaps in our knowledge when he
returns repeatedly to Buffalo Creek for several years, long after the flash flood departed
in 1972. It is not often that a scholar with empathy for rural citizens returns
to a place for many years to understand the longer term implications of disasters
for individual well-being. This book provides a view of a place long after the tragedy
has taken place. It illustrates how community residents struggle to re-create
community and well-being after a serious ecological shock. The resilience of the
human character and the adaptability of community structures form the core of
this book.

Taking us through the days before the flash flood at
Buffalo Creek, the author paints a portrait of human failings
and of growing environmental danger. He draws on
the voices that were there on the scene. He also gives us a
detailed review of newspaper accounts, government documents,
and research studies, including Kai Erikson's classic
disaster study, Everything in Its Path. From these many
sources, we get a multi-faceted account of how the disaster
occurred and how dozens of local, state, and federal agencies
responded to it.
After the Disaster provides detailed discussions with
local residents, survey data, and a gift for integration that
allows the reader to gain an understanding of how disasters
impact communities in the short term and in the long term.
The latter is one of the most important contributions of this
book.