The Key To Disaster Survival? Friends And Neighbors

When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, one victim was political scientist Daniel Aldrich. He had just moved to New Orleans. Late one August night, there was a knock on the door. "It was a neighbor who knew that we had no idea of the realities of the Gulf Coast life," said Aldrich, who is now a political scientist at Purdue University in Indiana. He "knocked on our door very late at night, around midnight on Saturday night, and said, 'Look, you've got small kids — you should really leave.' "

The knock on the door was to prove prophetic. It changed the course of Aldrich's research and, in turn, is changing the way many experts now think about disaster preparedness.

Aldrich's findings show that ambulances and firetrucks and government aid are not the principal ways most people survive during — and recover after — a disaster. His data suggest that while official help is useful — government interventions cannot bring neighborhoods back, and most emergency responders take far too long to get to the scene of a disaster to save many lives. Rather, it is the personal ties among members of a community that determine survival during a disaster, and recovery in its aftermath.

When Aldrich visited villages in India hit by the giant 2004 tsunami, he found that villagers who fared best after the disaster weren't those with the most money, or the most power. They were people who knew lots of other people — the most socially connected individuals. In Japan, Aldrich found that firetrucks and ambulances didn't save the most lives after earthquakes. Neighbors did.

"In Kobe in 1995, if you knew where your neighbors slept, because the earthquake was very early in the morning, you knew where to dig in the rubble to find them early enough in the process for them to survive," he says. It's this passion for a local community and granular knowledge about who needs what that makes large-scale government interventions ineffective by comparison.

Governments and big nongovernmental organizations — which are keenly aware of the big picture — are often blind to neighborhood dynamics. The problem isn't that experts are dumb. It's that communities are not the sum of their roads, schools and malls. They are the sum of their relationships.

Instead of practicing earthquake drills and building bunkers, we could reach out and make more friends among our co-workers and neighbors. "Get more involved in neighborhood events," Aldrich said. "If there is a planning club, a homeowners association — if there are sports clubs nearby, PTAs — those groups have us in contact with people we wouldn't normally meet and help us build up these stocks of trust and reciprocity."

jf1acai wrote: I have to disagree - but only slightly.

Rather than:

Instead of practicing earthquake drills and building bunkers, we could reach out and make more friends among our co-workers and neighbors. "Get more involved in neighborhood events," Aldrich said. "If there is a planning club, a homeowners association — if there are sports clubs nearby, PTAs — those groups have us in contact with people we wouldn't normally meet and help us build up these stocks of trust and reciprocity."

I believe it should be:

IN ADDITION TO practicing earthquake drills and building bunkers, we SHOULD reach out and make more friends among our co-workers and neighbors. "Get more involved in neighborhood events," Aldrich said. "If there is a planning club, a homeowners association — if there are sports clubs nearby, PTAs — those groups have us in contact with people we wouldn't normally meet and help us build up these stocks of trust and reciprocity."

FIRST, WE need to be prepared, in order to be in a position to help others. THEN we can be effective in providing that help.

bootlegger wrote: You just don't walk away from a friend in need, period! A friend is just that, someone that would give you the shirt off their back. If they need help, by God you better give them help. When you have nothing left you still have your friends and family. You don't leave them behind, even if it cost you dearly.