This is a pretty good article that could be used in the classroom or in
your promotional material for majors and minors. Is anyone keeping a
compendium of articles, online and offline, that might make for a great
teaching resource -- a substitute for discussions of Titanic perhaps?
---
Chronicle of Higher Education - September 29, 2005
Disaster Sociologists Study What Went Wrong in the Response to the
Hurricanes, but Will Policy Makers Listen?
By DAVID GLENN
In mid-September, John A. Barnshaw, a graduate student at the University of
Delaware's Disaster Research Center, made his way to Houston and spent five
days in the shelters in and around the Astrodome. He wanted to learn how
families from New Orleans were making decisions about whether to return to
their city.
It was not a pleasant week. Some of the 46 families Mr. Barnshaw
interviewed had been through miserable experiences, and told stories of
being forced by floodwaters into their attics or onto their rooftops.
Almost all of them were still trying to locate missing friends or
relatives. "It was emotionally labor-intensive," he said. "These people had
lost their communities, lost their possessions, and were assuming the worst."
Mr. Barnshaw began his research just two weeks after Hurricane Katrina
struck. His university accelerated its usual review process for research
involving human subjects. He also took advantage of the University of
Colorado at Boulder's quick-response program, which provides small travel
grants to researchers who want to gather "perishable data" in the wake of a
disaster.
At least 20 other scholars have also received grants from Colorado to study
Katrina's aftermath. And they are only the advance scouts of what promises
to be an army of social scientists in the regions hit by Katrina and Rita.
(The day after Mr. Barnshaw returned from Houston, seven of his Delaware
colleagues flew to Louisiana.)
http://chronicle.com/free/2005/09/2005092904n.htm
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