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I'm interested in better understanding the ongoing geological processes that shape St. Louis and the Mississippi Valley region. So far, I've been looking into the history of seismicity in the region, focusing on the fascinating but little known history of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 -- the most devastating earthquakes to have hit the US east of the Rockies. I've also been exploring how St. Louis and surrounding areas are dealing with the possibility of another earthquake occurring in the future. According to one article I read, one of the biggest uncertainties is what would happen to the heavily engineered Mississippi River in the case of another major tremblor. The shaking could break the levees, flooding wide areas along the river and creating cascading effects. The flow of the river might also reverse completely, as occurred during the New Madrid earthquakes.

On these possibilities and the lack of scientific consensus surrounding intraplate seismicity in this zone, see this article in The Atlantic.

On current efforts to create earthquake hazard maps in St. Louis, see this overview on the US Geological Survey site.

For a deeper dive into the history of the New Madrid earthquakes, see this book by historian of science Conevery Bolton Valencius. 

A brief essay about St. Louis' notorious eminent domain history--

--along with 2 recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch articles about "urban renewal" projects that are scheduled to reoccupy the Mill Flats area, which hosted the most notorious episode of displacement of African-American communities: the Chouteau Greenway project (will it serve or displace low-income St. Louisans?); and SLU's Mill Creek Flats high-rise project, which certainly will, and whose name seems to me an especially tone-deaf if gutsy move...

https://humanities.wustl.edu/features/Margaret-Garb-St-Louis-Eminent-Domain

https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/steelcote-developer-plans-more-apartments-brewery-space-in-million-midtown/article_811eaf96-76e1-5c20-a870-1e79abd3f06e.html

https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/chouteau-greenway-project-aims-to-knit-st-louis-neighborhoods-together/article_55fea4e6-6829-5c80-9168-313305b4e3bb.html

The author contacted both the NRC and the nonprofit Disaster Accountability Project for statements and information on the safety of the plant and if emergency plans were in place. The NRC gave statements and information on their discussions with the Disaster Accountability Project, and the nonprofit described their process of sending freedom-of-information requests to 20 jurisdictions in NY, NJ, and CT located up to 50 miles from Indian Point, in order to determine if they had emergency plans related to the power plant and what they might be

1: Crowding is shown to be common in displaced populations, and local overpopulation/crowding often facillitates the transmittion of disease

2: Natural disasters that do not cause a displacement of a population are rarely associated with disease outbreaks

3: There is little or no evidence that dead bodies, as some believe, pose a epidemic risk for a population of survivors after a disaster has struck

"The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires communities located within 10 miles of nuclear power plants to develop emergency plans. In New York, the four counties within 10 miles of Indian Point—Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Orange—have taken such measures. But the Disaster Accountability Project, a nonprofit organization that monitors disaster response programs and the author of the report, cited the commission’s response to the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, in which it recommended that U.S. citizens within 50 miles evacuate."

"NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the Fukushima site isn’t comparable to any in the U.S. 'Quite frankly, we don’t have any nuclear plant complexes where you have so many reactors packed so closely together.'"

"Those communities are exempt from the NRC’s emergency planning zones, so most haven’t developed such plans or conducted studies. According to several of them, they couldn’t without help from the federal government."

I did further research into what the Disaster Accountability Project is and what they are trying to accomplish. I also looked into the NRC and how they are focused on safety of nuclear power in the US, and what some of their differences are with the DAP. Finally, I looked up the Indian Point Energy Center, in order to find out the size and scope of the plant and some of the concerns people have about nuclear power in their area

The main findings of the article are that the relationship between natural disasters and communicable diseases is not as much due to dead bodies or high trauma as it is to population displacement and a lack of preparredness of the local governing body for the disaster and the crowding of survivors that follows a disaster as this

This article has been referenced in a wide variety of emergency medicine journal articles, ranging from flood protocols, use of cell phones in disaster enviroments, earthquakes and medical complications, to the costs of disaster consequences. Many of the articles referencing this paper appear to go into greater depth for some of the epidemics and diseases that were touched on in the research article. These include hepatitis E, Leptospirosis, cholera, and tetanus.

This article shows how some communities that, in the opinion of the Disaster Accountability Project organization, are within an effective radius of a nuclear incident at Indian Point and have little or no emergency plan for this kind of event. This is primarily due to these communities not having the knowledge that they could be effected by an event of this nature if they are over 10 miles away from the plant. Also, many of the communities that said they had not undergone any studies in relation to the plant's effects on their own community or developed any emergency plans because they cannot without federal aid. These counties and towns are not well-enough informed and are lacking the funding from the government in order to provide for their own safety if a nuclear accident were to occur

Emergency response is addressed in a broad sense of the major risk factors associated with a natural disaster and epidemics. The main points they make are that preparedness, with a focus on availability of safe water and primary healthcare services, along with surveillance for the beginnings of an epidemic, are necessessay for a strong response to a disaster situation