Who We Are

Chapter two describes the methodological framework and design for this project. The authors present a discussion of the methods used to select persons for both face-to-face interviews and online surveys, along with the follow-up strategies used to talk with civilians and organizational officials involved in the recovery process. This chapter discusses both the approach to the data collection, as well as what specific data the authors were interested in acquiring as it pertained to understanding how displacement and recovery processes varied across individual survivors. Finally, the chapter discusses in detail the numerous strategies employed to tell the survivors’ stories—pictures, maps, tables, charts, and narratives, along with additional data from secondary sources to help characterize the places where survivors were living both before and after the disaster.

Changes

Chapter seven outlines a citizen-centered disaster agenda that empowers and emphasizes the strengths of local residents. Using an ecological approach to disaster intervention, this chapter offers actions that individuals, organizations, communities, and nations can take to address the cracks in resilience, disaster purgatories, and patchworks of preparedness described in previous chapters. At the interpersonal level, the chapter introduces the concept of citizen disaster communication. At the organizational and community level, the chapter stresses the need to involve citizens and civic organizations in the development of disaster management plans, as well as to promote disaster-focused time banking. At the national level, this chapter argues that national disaster policy should emphasize investment in disaster mitigation. The authors offer several takeaways from our experiences and propose some rethinking when it comes to response and recovery.

Who’ll Stop the Rain?

Chapter five draws on testimonials and survey results to describe the event phase of Hurricane Harvey, which consisted of the immediate days and weeks following the disaster. The chapter conceptualizes this phase as a disaster purgatory where survivors’ access to social capital either hastened or stalled individual recovery. Residents were more likely to view local response efforts in a more positive light than they did the US federal response. Chapter five begins by describing the different hassles residents experienced based on their displacement path. Next, the chapter reveals bonding social capital was more prevalent than linking social capital. Implications for the differences in bonding and linking social capital are discussed.

After the Storm

Chapter six addresses survivors’ mental, physical, and behavioral transformations in the post-event phase following Hurricane Harvey. The authors review factors that contribute to disaster mental health reactions, including PTSD and depression symptoms, before explaining how challenging mental health reactions were distributed across the Texas Gulf Coast. Next, the chapter offers narrative accounts that serve as exemplars of growth and positive psychological change. Finally, the chapter describes an association between survivors’ displacement paths and climate risk perception, as well as how people are preparing for future hurricanes. In this description, social and economic factors suggest that the Texas Gulf Coast is becoming a patchwork of preparedness where the poor and socially isolated remain vulnerable to future disasters.

Every Picture Tells a Story

Using maps and other visual aids, chapter three tells a story that describes the region, the communities that were impacted, and the locations and characteristics of the disaster survivors that the authors talked with in this study. A number of important questions are addressed in this chapter: What were the sociodemographic and socioeconomic aggregate profiles of these communities, and how were they related to determining the pathway of displacement and recovery for the survivors? What were the socio-spatial characteristics of specific outcomes among survivors (e.g., displacement options, attitudes about disruption and destruction, resilience perceptions, climate change attitudes, etc.)? Finally, the chapter examines how we can do a better job in the modern Facebook and Twitter world to tell the story of survivors and their disaster experiences.

Anticipation

Using a phase approach to disasters, chapter four is the first of three chapters to guide readers through the Hurricane Harvey experience. Chapter four describes the pre-event disaster phase before Hurricane Harvey made landfall. Through narratives and statistical analyses, this chapter begins by identifying capacities that strengthen community resilience, such as high levels of belonging and civic participation. However, this chapter also reveals how a lack of trust among black and Latinx residents, communication failures between local disaster management and residents, and weak hurricane risk perception presented cracks in the resilience of the Texas Gulf Coast.

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

Chapter one introduces how race and place intersect in such a way as to impact the response and recovery of residents living along the Texas Gulf Coast that were affected by Hurricane Harvey. Harvey was a special storm: it dumped rain like none other in the history of the continental United States, and was one of the costliest storms on record. Providing background and context to the storm, to the study, and to the overall framework of the book is the central focus of chapter one. In addition, the authors discuss the unique circumstances of 2017 as an unprecedented year of disasters for the US, and that uniqueness had specific ramifications for the coastal towns of southeastern Texas.