Great natural disasters are rare, but their aftermath can change the fortunes of a city or region forever. This book and its companion Policy Focus Report identify lessons from different parts of the world to help communities and government leaders better organize for recovery after future disasters. The authors consider the processes and outcomes of community recovery and reconstruction following major disasters in six countries: China, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Post-disaster reconstruction offers opportunities to improve construction and design standards, renew infrastructure, create new land use arrangements, reinvent economies, and improve governance. If done well, reconstruction can help break the cycle of disaster-related impacts and losses, and improve the resilience of a city or region.

Every day, workers are injured, made ill, or killed on the job. Most often, workers experience these harms individually and in isolation. Particular occurrences rarely attract much public attention beyond, perhaps, a small paragraph in the local newspaper. Instead, these events are normalized. This membrane of normalcy, however, is ruptured from time to time, especially after a disaster. This edited collection draws together original case studies written by leading researchers in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, and the United States that examine the politics of working disasters. The essays address two fundamental questions: what gets recognized as a work disaster? And how does the state respond to one? In some instances, it seems self-evident that a disaster has occurred. For example, when a mine explodes killing tens or hundreds of workers simultaneously, the media and politicians recognize that this is not just a personal tragedy for the families of the victims, and that more troubling questions need to be asked about how this could happen. In other circumstances, however, the process that determines what gets recognized as a disaster is much more complicated. "Working Disasters" addresses the politics of recognition in case studies of the long-haul trucking industry, repetitive strain injuries, and lung disease in miners. Once it has recognized that a working disaster has occurred, the state typically goes beyond its routine responses to the daily toll of work-related deaths and injuries. Inquiries may be initiated to review the adequacy of regulatory systems and laws may be amended. Sometimes disasters produce meaningful change, but often they do not. In this text, the politics of response is considered in studies of a factory fire, the loss of an offshore oilrig, lung disease among miners, a mine explosion, and the prosecution of health and safety offences. This book will be of use to occupational health and safety activists and professionals; academics and upper-year students in: industrial relations, labour studies, labour history, law, political science, and sociology.

This textbook describes what nurses need to know about pediatric disaster nursing, including public policy, and addresses preparedness for all types of disasters (natural and man-made) and strategies for hospital, school and community preparedness. The book opens with a brief history of disaster nursing and explains the key differences between pediatric and adult disaster nursing. Recent years have been marked by numerous man-made and natural disasters, which have led nurses to seek new resources to be better prepared, in their role as nurses, for all types of disasters. Responding to this lack of resources, the book focuses on the unique needs of babies and children. It is the first and only textbook on pediatric disaster preparedness to include both the physical and psychological effects of disaster. Key aspects covered include: the psychosocial differences in and how to approach children; family reunification; medications, supplies and equipment; and decontamination. Given its breadth of coverage, the book is well suited as a textbook for nursing classes, while also offering a valuable resource for nurses working in the field.

Extreme weather and climate events, interacting with exposed and vulnerable human and natural systems, can lead to disasters. This Special Report explores the social as well as physical dimensions of weather- and climate-related disasters, considering opportunities for managing risks at local to international scales. SREX was approved and accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on 18 November 2011 in Kampala, Uganda.

'Economic losses from natural disasters totaled $92 billion in 2015.' Such statements, all too commonplace, assess the severity of disasters by no other measure than the damage inflicted on buildings, infrastructure, and agricultural production. But $1 in losses does not mean the same thing to a rich person that it does to a poor person; the gravity of a $92 billion loss depends on who experiences it. By focusing on aggregate losses—the traditional approach to disaster risk—we restrict our consideration to how disasters affect those wealthy enough to have assets to lose in the first place, and largely ignore the plight of poor people. This report moves beyond asset and production losses and shifts its attention to how natural disasters affect people’s well-being. Disasters are far greater threats to well-being than traditional estimates suggest. This approach provides a more nuanced view of natural disasters than usual reporting, and a perspective that takes fuller account of poor people’s vulnerabilities. Poor people suffer only a fraction of economic losses caused by disasters, but they bear the brunt of their consequences. Understanding the disproportionate vulnerability of poor people also makes the case for setting new intervention priorities to lessen the impact of natural disasters on the world’s poor, such as expanding financial inclusion, disaster risk and health insurance, social protection and adaptive safety nets, contingent finance and reserve funds, and universal access to early warning systems. Efforts to reduce disaster risk and poverty go hand in hand. Because disasters impoverish so many, disaster risk management is inseparable from poverty reduction policy, and vice versa. As climate change magnifies natural hazards, and because protection infrastructure alone cannot eliminate risk, a more resilient population has never been more critical to breaking the cycle of disaster-induced poverty.

Initial priorities for U.S. participation in the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, declared by the United Nations, are contained in this volume. It focuses on seven issues: hazard and risk assessment; awareness and education; mitigation; preparedness for emergency response; recovery and reconstruction; prediction and warning; learning from disasters; and U.S. participation internationally. The committee presents its philosophy of calls for broad public and private participation to reduce the toll of disasters.

Disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity across the world, causing significant destruction to individuals and communities. Yet many social workers are ill-prepared for the demands of this field of practice. This book discusses the role of social workers in disaster work, including in disaster-preparedness, during the disaster and in post-disaster practice. It addresses the complexities of social work disaster practice, noting the need for social workers to understand the language of trauma and to respond effectively. The authors discuss disaster theory and practice, drawing out elements of practice at macro-, meso- and micro-levels and at various stages of the disaster. They examine the factors that shape vulnerability in disasters and draw out the possibility of post-traumatic growth. The final section discusses strategies for self-care in disaster practice, noting the organisational and personal strategies that can be adopted to facilitate the wellbeing of workers in the field. With real-life case studies from top scholars in the field, this book is essential reading for social work practitioners working in the field of disaster practice, as well as social work students and academics. It will also be useful to other health professionals who wish to understand this field of practice.