Recovering from Un-Natural Disasters is a must-read handbook for pastors and church leaders of communities who could or perhaps already have experienced an un-natural disaster, such as gun violence, suicides, or sexual abuse. Unlike natural disasters, un-natural disasters deal with the concept of sin and require a different recovery strategy. In this book, readers will explore the four phases of human-caused disaster Devastation and Heroism, Disillusionment, Reforming, and Wisdom and receive step-by-step suggestions to use with their faith community during the recovery process. Example worship resources, including prayers, music suggestions, and sermons that are appropriate to use during periods of trauma and recovery, are included.

Storms, floods, fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other disasters seem not only more frequent but also closer to home. As the world faces this onslaught, we have placed our faith in “sustainable development,” which promises that we can survive and even thrive in the face of climate change and other risks. Yet while claiming to “go green,” we have instead created new risks, continued to degrade nature, and failed to halt global warming. Unnatural Disasters offers a new perspective on our most pressing environmental and social challenges, revealing the gaps between abstract concepts like sustainability, resilience, and innovation and the real-world experiences of people living at risk. Gonzalo Lizarralde explains how the causes of disasters are not natural but all too human: inequality, segregation, marginalization, colonialism, neoliberalism, racism, and unrestrained capitalism. He tells the stories of Latin American migrants, Haitian earthquake survivors, Canadian climate activists, African slum dwellers, and other people resisting social and environmental injustices around the world. Lizarralde shows that most reconstruction and risk-reduction efforts exacerbate social inequalities. Some responses do produce meaningful changes, but they are rarely the ones powerful leaders have in mind. This book reveals how disasters have become both the causes and consequences of today’s most urgent challenges and proposes achievable solutions to save a planet at risk, emphasizing the power citizens hold to change the current state of affairs.

This book examines how to ensure that the preventive measures are worthwhile and effective, and how people can make decisions individually and collectively at different levels of government.

Disasters can dominate newspaper headlines and fill our TV screens with relief appeals, but the complex long-term challenge of recovery—providing shelter, rebuilding safe dwellings, restoring livelihoods and shattered lives—generally fails to attract the attention of the public and most agencies. On average 650 disasters occur each year. They affect more than 200 million people and cause $166 trillion of damage. Climate change, population growth and urbanisation are likely to intensify further the impact of natural disasters and add to reconstruction needs. Recovery from Disaster explores the field and provides a concise, comprehensive source of knowledge for academics, planners, architects, engineers, construction managers, relief and development officials and reconstruction planners involved with all sectors of recovery, including shelter and rebuilding. With almost 80 years of first-hand experience of disaster recovery between them, Ian Davis (an architect) and David Alexander (a geographer) draw substantially from first-hand experiences in a variety of recovery situations in China, Haiti, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines and the USA. The volume is further enriched by two important and unique features: 21 models of disaster recovery are presented, seven of which were specifically developed for the book. The second feature is a survey of expert opinion about the nature of effective disaster recovery—the first of its kind. More than 50 responses are provided in full, along with an analysis that integrates them with the theories that underpin them. By providing a framework and models for future study and applications, Davis and Alexander seek both to advance the field and to provide a much-needed reference work for decision makers. With a broad perspective derived from the authors' roles held as university professors, researchers, trainers, consultants, NGO directors and advisors to governments and UN agencies, this comprehensive guide will be invaluable for practitioners and students of disaster management.

Smart, occasionally insecure, and ambitious 14-year-old Kelsey Finkelstein of Brooklyn embarks on her freshman year of high school in Manhattan with the intention of "rebranding" herself, but unfortunately everything she tries to do is a total disaster.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana and Mississippi. The storm devastated the region and its citizens. But its devastation did not reach across racial and class lines equally. In an original combination of research and advocacy, Hurricane Katrina: America s Unnatural Disaster questions the efficacy of the national and global responses to Katrina s central victims, African Americans. This collection of polemical essays explores the extent to which African Americans and others were, and are, disproportionately affected by the natural and manmade forces that caused Hurricane Katrina. Such an engaged study of this tragic event forces us to acknowledge that the ways in which we view our history and life have serious ramifications on modern human relations, public policy, and quality of life.

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.