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I am interested in seeing how social ties and networks have been used to cope with (un)natural disasters. My research focus on places under disasters conditions such as Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria, in which social ties have made the difference between life and death. Furthermore, “natural” disaster has been used to approved austerity measures and unjust policies to impoverished communities like in New Orleans after Katrina. These policies were not new, as they are rooted in structures of power to preserve the status quo. Yet, people have resisted, “through a network of branches, cultures, and geographies” that has stimulated a reflective process of looking within for solutions rather than outside. As often this outside solutions are not only detached from community’s reality but can perpetuate social injustices and inequalities.

McKittrick, K., & Woods, C. A. (Eds.). (2007). Black geographies and the politics of place. South End Press.

Bullard, R. D., & Wright, B. (Eds.). (2009). Race, place, and environmental justice after Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to reclaim, rebuild, and revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Westview Press.

While this article does not really address emergency response, the discussion of violent attacks on humanitarian workers does involve emergency responders and can affect how humanitarians provide care. So while not direct, this article does have implications for emergency responders in those regions. 

1. "Yet, the demands placed on an investigation have as much, or more, to do with defining the dominant investigator and quickly addressing the fears and anger of the press, government, and an outraged public than they do with discovering the definitive technical truths of a catastrophic event."
2. "Blame, memorial, and reconstruction tend to outpace technical consensus."
3. "Notions of public responsibility for private safety were highly evolved by this time, hence the fact that a coroner's inquest indicted Mayor Harrison and a full slate of city officials for complicity in the deaths of the Iroquois victims."
4. "Apparently, despite the technical acumen of the nation's investigators, a lack of funding and authority had rendered the investigators unbelievably 'unable to provide a comprehensive analysis of how well the buildings and their structural elements performed, and as a result, they cannot say if the buildings had specific weaknesses'"

The author supports his argument by first giving the reader a history about immigrant healthcare in France. By using stories of immigrants and showcasing the ways in which physicians dealt with the medical and humanitarian issues, the author provides a social framework for us to see how immigrants were treated. By also providing philosophical insight and statistics, the author is further able to support his argument. 

The main argument made in this article is that the term "chronic disaster syndrome" can be used as a diagnosis of Katrina survivors as opposed to PTSD. They use this term on the basis of factors including: individual suffering (trauma), the workings of disaster capitalism tied to the undermining of public infrastructures of social welfare and their replacement with private-sector service provision through contracts with for-profit corporations, and the ways that displacement functions within disaster capitalism. They make the point that this term can be used in link with disasters. In this case, Katrina caused "chronic disaster syndrome" to most survivors in that they were affected (and still are) socially, politically, and individually. The trauma experienced and the lack of leadership and governmental response created stressful situations for all residents of New Orleans pre-Katrina.