Disability and Disaster:
Victimhood and Agency in Earthquake Risk Reduction1
Chapter for C. Rodrigue and E. Rovai (eds.) Earthquakes,
London: Routledge, 2002, forthcoming
(Routledge Hazards and Disasters Series)
Ben Wisner
Environmental Studies Program, Oberlin College
and
Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics
bwisner@igc.org
http://www.anglia.ac.uk/geography/radix
April, 2002
INTRODUCTION
In the literature of emergency management and disaster planning, ‘disability’ often appears in
check lists and taxonomies of ‘social factors’ or ‘vulnerable groups’ that require special attention
in disaster planning. Sometimes ‘disability’ is subsumed by the broader category of ‘health’
(Cannon 2002). With the aging of the population in more affluent countries and the increasing
prevalence of home health care and nursing homes, conditions such as Alzheimer’s and other
forms of dementia are sometimes lumped together with deafness or spinal cord injuries that
might affect active and otherwise functional young adults. Other authors do not aggregate or
subsume, but break down ‘disability’ into a series of specific conditions or situations (sensory
deficits, e.g. hearing or visual impairments, problems of mobility, mental health problems, and
1
I would like to thank Vera Chouinard for very detailed and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and
also to her for organizing a panel, ‘Why Geography Should be (Dis)abled” at the annual meeting of the American
Association of Geographers, Los Angeles, March 2002, at which this paper especially benefited from remarks by
Chouinard, Gill Valentine, and Michael Dear. Thanks as well to Marla Petal, June Kailes, and Deborah Metzel for
comments. I am also grateful to Maureen Fordham, Ann Norman, Elaine Enarson, Peg Case, Philip Buckle, David
Alexander, and Eugene Williams for sharing thoughts and work with me, and to the late Dr. John Garson, of
Gabriola Island, BC. Canada, former medical officer of health in Calgary, and my sister, Kelleyann Showen Wisner,
for their inspiration.
1
learning difficulties, etc.). This chapter takes up the relationship between disability and disaster.
The conventional wisdom in emergency management seldom goes beyond acknowledging that
people with disabilities need to be ‘helped’ by the able bodied, and by professionals, when a
disaster occurs. I hope to show that this conventional wisdom is only partially true. First, there
are important questions to be asked about how ‘disability’ (and ‘ability’) and ‘normality’ are
defined. Second, the implications of these definitions for practice and policy responses to the
needs of persons with various kinds of impairments or illness vary considerably depending on
whether ‘planning’ is taken to refer to preparedness, warning, response phases of emergency
management, or to the phases of recovery, mitigation, and prevention. Third, it is also important
to acknowledge that in many parts of the world emergency management does not yet even
recognize disability to be of priority concern. Above all, I will show that great benefits can be
expected from full partnership with and participation by people with disabilities and their
organizations in all phases of disaster management and planning.
BACKGROUND: ABILITIES AND DAILY LIFE
The Americans with Disabilities Act, legislation passed in 1990 in the U.S., defines ‘disability’
as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life
activities” (Charlton 1998: 8). An earthquake is likely, at a minimum, to provide additional
difficulties and challenges to daily life for all persons, perhaps especially those with impairments
or chronic illnesses.
People with disabilities may require specific forms of evacuation and
shelter (e.g. location and accessibility of shelters, accommodation available at shelters). An
earthquake may disrupt their social contacts and support network (e.g. home visitors might
normally provide essential personal and/ or medical care, but now their visits are suspended).
2
Essential utilities may be interrupted, affecting electricity required for those dependent on
medical and life enhancing devices at home (ventilators, elevators, stair lifts and dialysis
machines).
Tierney et al. (1988; also see Mileti 1999), in a study of people living in seismically
active areas of California, found that people with disabilities had these additional situational
characteristics that could increase their vulnerability to harm and loss in an earthquake and its
aftermath:2

Lower incomes than nondisabled counterparts

Lived in unreinforced masonry buildings, i.e. older buildings with low-rent
units near urban centers

Lived outside caregiving institutions (nursing homes, halfway houses) with
legislated obligations to prepare for emergencies

Lived inside caregiving institutions which may lack features designed to
enhance the safety of residents (e.g. provisions for safe evacuation,
nonstructural hazard mitigation, reserve water and power supplies, etc.)

Lived on their own (14% in this study lived alone)

Suffered the social distance or stigma associated with being labeled ‘disabled’
or ‘sick’ in a society valuing self-sufficiency and independence.
In considering the disaster – disability relation, it is important to recognize that disasters
often actively disable people as well as placing disabled persons at risk of injury and even death.
2
My thanks to Dr. Elaine Enarson, co-author of an on-going project on social vulnerability to disaster, for this point
summary.
3
Not only are people with disabilities often more vulnerable to an extreme event like an
earthquake, but injuries suffered in such an event can produce permanent disabilities. For
example, of the 3,500 people injured in the 1963 earthquake in Skopje, Macedonia (former
Yugoslavia), 1,200 people had permanent disabilities as a result of injuries received in the
earthquake (UNDRO 1982).
This is just the beginning of the complex relations linking disability and disaster.
The
growth of an international disability rights movement since the 1980s shows that people with
disabilities want more than to be treated as an item to be ticked off a checklist by planners, a
‘problem’ to be ‘solved’.
Some writers (Gleeson 1999; Swain et al. 1993) argue that it is the
ordering and arrangement of ‘normal’ life that actively disables people with impairments –
society’s ‘taken for granted’ architecture, use of space, temporal relations, and forms of
communication. At the heart of the disability rights movement have been legal challenges to the
lack of ‘access’ and ‘equal opportunity’ in a world that had constructed itself around the abilities
and needs of people without impairments in mobility, hearing, sight, speech, stamina, cognition,
mental or emotional stability. A diverse group of people with disabilities began to define
themselves not simply as a lobby or a ‘special needs group’, but as a minority with rights (Hahn
n.d., Hahn 1999).
As members of a minority that are unable to conform to the ‘normality’ of
‘able’ society they suffer discrimination and even stigma and exclusion, just as racial, ethnic,
linguistic, and other minorities do (Independent Living Net 2002; Russell 1998).3 The existence
3
The history of disability in various cultures is little known. Coleridge (1993: 71-72) discusses three models of
disability. The first is ‘traditional’, and he concludes that according to most religions and cultures disability has
been seen as a punishment, hence a reason for social exclusion. The ‘biomedical’, ‘medical’ or ‘individual’ model is
more recent. It is technocratic and sees disability as a departure from ‘normal’ that needs to be ‘cured.’ The third is
a ‘social’ model that, in Coleridge’s words, “starts from the point that integration is ultimately about removing
barriers, not ‘normalization’, or cure, or care.” On the history of the concept of disability see the Disability History
Project, http://www.npr.org/programs/disability/ . ? Also Gleeson (1999: 31) writes: ‘It is politically vital to prove
that disability is a socio-historical construct, an oppressive structure that was built … and which therefore can be
torn down and replaced with inclusive social relations.’
4
of a self conscious and militant minority that has, during the 1990s, won legal rights, should
cause one to question the pervasiveness and unquestioned nature of ‘the normal’ in all areas,
including emergency management. Charlton (1998: 5) believes it is time for an “epistemological
break with previous thinking about disability.” The same is true of the conventional wisdom
about disaster and disability.
In other words, it is likely that a critical view ‘from waist high’ (Mairs 1998)4 of the way
that cities are organized in space and time can provide clues to making everyone safer (Gleeson
1999; Chouinard 1997; Imrie 1996).
A report prepared by the American Society of Civil Engineers on ways that high rise
buildings such as the World Trade Towers can be better prepared for catastrophic events came
up with some results that raise broader questions about the built environment.5 One was that
there should be more stairways for emergency evacuation and that they should be wider in order
to facilitate evacuation. This raises the general question of whether or not a more spacious urban
environment and slower urbanism would also be safer? What is it that dictates the present width
of aisles, corridors, elevators, sidewalks or the length of lunch hours, coffee breaks, or, for that
matter, the working day? These spatial and temporal relations are not part of the immutable
hardware of the universe like the structure of molecules. What is responsible for the ‘production
of space’ (Lefebvre 1991)?
The space and time of daily urban existence are historical
constructions of an economic system. “Time is money!” we learn in childhood. And later we
learn that a square meter of floor space in Manhattan or Tokyo is worth thousands of dollars. At
its most profound, therefore, reflection on the rights of the disabled and their places in society
and space suggests that such taken-for-granted aspects of our environment can and should be
I use Mairs’ expression ‘world from waist high’ because it is so striking. I do not mean to imply that the
discussion of disability mostly concerns people in wheelchairs.
4
5
criticized, and that the apparently immutable (given/ received) order of things should be open to
question. Those questions could result in a more comfortable, humane, enjoyable, and safer way
of life for everyone.6 How many accidental injuries would be avoided by ‘able bodied’ people if
the pace of travel and work were slower? How much less stress, fatigue, and even risk of
catastrophe might we have in a built environment with less crowding, more spacious interior
dimensions, more public space?
Asked by an interviewer if he expected to “remodel the world” in order meet his needs,
disability activist Vic Finkelstein answered, “Yes.” (Finkelstein 1996; cf. Chouinard 1997) It is
an answer easily dismissed as rhetoric or as unrealistic dreaming. But what if we took that
answer seriously?
Global Patterns of Earthquake Vulnerability and Disability
Does a dose of ‘global reality’ cure us of utopian day dreaming about reordering the
space/ time of daily life? Disability activists in more developed countries would deny that such
a vision is ‘utopian’, and I would agree. Yet, when one takes into account the whole world in the
early 21st Century, the numbers are, indeed, somber. The U.N. estimated that in 1995 there were
300 million disabled people in the world (Charlton 1998).7 Of these 34 million lived in Latin
America and 70 million in Asia.
Considering only large cities in seismically active areas of
Asia and Latin America, I would estimate that there are at least ten to fifteen million people with
5
http://www.asce.org/pdf/3-6-02wtc_testimony.pdf .
It is often noted that physical access provisions, such as curb cuts, are helpful to able bodied citizens such as young
mothers with infants in strollers, as well as persons with various kinds of bodily impairments.
7
Global statistics are not comparable. Depending on different definitions of ‘disability’ there are national estimates
that range from less than one per cent of the population in Peru, Ethiopia, Egypt, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka to 21% in
Austria, and 11% in Australia, Canada, Britain, and Spain (Coleridge 1993: 104). Due to the effort to build political
support for passage of the American with Disabilities Act in 1990, it was estimated that 17% of the U.S. population
had some kind of disability (Mileti 1999: 127). The U.S. in 2002 was given by one source as 54 million persons
with a disability (NOD 2002a).
6
6
disabilities living in cities larger than a million in these two regions of the world. Many of these
disabled people are lucky if they have basic health care, let alone specialist services and access to
rehabilitation. In most of these countries there are profound obstacles to mobility and basic
access to commercial and public buildings and space.8 Transportation and the round of daily
life, the accomplishment of ‘basic life activities’, are a challenge for the able bodied middle class
and an exhausting struggle for the non-disabled working class (Hardoy and Satterthwaite 1989).
In Mexico City, Guatemala City, Bogota, Manila, Jakarta, the potential for catastrophic urban
losses in an earthquake is quite high. In these cities one should not abandon the vision of an
egalitarian and humane urbanism, but the starting point has to be two fold: basic planning for
earthquake risk reduction and basic services for people with disabilities.
In the cities of
Afghanistan – also exposed to seismic hazard – there are many people who have been injured by
land mines.9 Clearly it is premature to focus on the fate of these people in earthquakes when
they do not yet have access to prostheses and rehabilitation.10 First things have to come first.
CURRENT EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT APPROACHES TO DISABILITY
There are three approaches visible in the practice of emergency management and planning today
around the world in seismically active areas with respect to meeting the needs of persons with
For instance, in Leon, a large city in Nicaragua, even the mayor’s office is inaccessible to wheelchairs. There is no
public alternative to expensive taxis (whose drivers sometimes refuse to transport people with disabilities) for
transportation. There is little or no access for wheelchairs to health centers, commercial areas, town hall, and
recreational areas. Sidewalks are in bad repair and have high curbs. (Havens 2002)
9
World wide patterns of disability vary greatly. Landmine injuries and post-polio syndrome are causes of disability
not often seen in Europe and North America. Trachoma – fly born infection of the eye – and vitamin A deficiency
account for much blindness in the Third World, and are both easily preventable. 80 million landmines in 80
countries claim 24,000 new victims every month. Eighty per cent of these are civilians (Landmine Survivors
Network, http://www.landminesurvivors.org/ ). In affluent countries where people are living longer arthritis and
reduced cardio-pulmonary function limit mobility or stamina, while Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias are
more common.
10
I do not want to give the impression that there is no work in the field of rehabilitation or struggles over access in
developing countries. Coleridge (1993) documents a lot of activity. Indeed, as the work of Dr. David Werner in
8
7
impairments or disabilities. First, is to do nothing. This sounds harsh, but in situations where
there are few resources and many needs, the disabled are simply not given priority. In a recent
study funded by the United Nations University dozens of emergency managers were interviewed
in Manila, Mumbai, and Mexico City.11 These were planners and administrators working at the
sub-metropolitan level – at district or ward level. Very few of them singled out disabled people
or people with chronic medical problems as ‘vulnerable groups’ for which they had special
concerns or special programs. They tended to focus their attention on broad categories of people
exposed to risks such as landslide, flood, fire, and explosions: those living in squatter
settlements, for example.
The second approach, common in seismically active parts of the U.S., Canada, Australia,
Italy, Spain, and Greece is to provide special services and arrangements for people with
impairments or disabilities. This planning is for the most part done from the ‘top down’, for –
but not with – the potential beneficiaries.
For example, the U.S. Federal Emergency
Management Agency has information on its web site under the heading “Assisting People With
Disabilities in a Disaster” (FEMA 1998).12 There is valuable information here, but it is in the
form of a long ‘laundry list’ of ‘facts’ or ‘factoids’ aimed at care givers, not the disabled people
themselves. There is no reference to the life circumstances or situation of the disabled person.
This series of short declarative statements often raises questions about actions to be taken, but
there is often no follow up advice. FEMA would have us know, among other things:
Mexico has shown, there are many low cost technologies that can be produced in villages and low income
neighborhoods (Werner 1999).
11
Interviews conducted by Dr. Sergio Puente, El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico City; Dr. Ravi Sinha, Indian Institute
of Technology Bombay, Mumbai; and Dr. Jean Tayag, Philippine Volcanological and Seismological Institute,
Manila. The overall study comprised six megacity regions and was coordinated by the present author. See:
http://www.unu.edu/env/urban/risk-mgmt.html .
12
FEMA has similar advice, although more practical and detailed, concerning home fire safety for people with
disabilities: http://www.usfa.fema.gov/safety/fswy22.htm .
8

People with disabilities often need more time than others to make necessary
preparations in an emergency.

Some people who are blind or visually-impaired, especially older people, may be
extremely reluctant to leave familiar surroundings when the request for evacuation
comes from a stranger.

Some people with learning difficulties may be unable to understand the emergency
and could become disoriented or confused about the proper way to react.

Many respiratory illnesses can be aggravated by stress. In an emergency, oxygen and
respiratory equipment may not be readily available.
Implicit in the above statements is a view of disability as an individual medical condition. The
model uncritically accepted by FEMA is the biomedical one that sees disability as an individual
‘condition’, not a social situation.13
In northern California the Collaborating Groups Active in Disaster, groups of nongovernmental, private voluntary organizations that began to plan together for disaster response
after the Loma Prieta earthquake (1989), have developed an elaborate set of resources dealing
with a wide variety of disabilities.14 They provide web links on the following topics:
Physical Disability
Mental Illness
Visually Impaired
Hearing Impaired
Communication / Speech Impediments
Autism
Environmental Illness
Seeing Eye/Guide Dogs.
13
14
See footnote 3 above for a discussion of the three models of disability.
http://www.preparenow.org/
9
However, on inspection, the information is either very general, not disaster or emergency
specific, or it provides the same kinds of compendium of facts for care givers to consider when
attempting to assist a disabled person in a disaster situation. There are more informative guides
for care givers available, however, for example Tierney et al. (1988), Parr (1987), and UNDRO
(1982). However, most of these resources, although they provide more detailed information,
share a deficiency. They presume the dependence of the disabled person upon a care-giver and
disregard situations in which there may not be anyone to assist the person in question. A case
could be made that information on what to do in disaster situations ought to be directly available
to persons with various types of impairments who may well have to ‘cope’ on their own. Advice
could be provided about how a person with a disability could go about developing her own
support system (Kailes 1996),15 and could – for that matter – be in a position to provide
assistance and support to some one else (Kailes, 2002b). In Louisiana, one of the U.S. States that
combines frequent coastal storms and low standard of living, one local service organization
provides information on how a disabled person can go about creating a ‘buddy system’ (TRAC
1997).16
In many countries it is only the Red Cross or Red Crescent (in Islamic countries)17 at the
national level that provides advice and support for family members and other care givers, or the
disabled people themselves, giving brief guidelines on disaster preparation for sufferers from
each of the major disability sub-sets.18
Kailes provides excellent ‘Earthquake Tips for People with Disabilities’, e.g. on establishing a personal support
network, preparing lists of emergency health needs and emergency contacts, conducting an ability self-assessment,
ensuring maintenance of 7-14 days’ medication supply, keeping important equipment and assistance devices in
secure places for quick and easy location, etc. There are also earthquake tips for people with differing specific
disabilities
16
Terrebonne Readiness and Assistance Coalition.
17
There are 178 national societies (Red Cross or Red Crescent) making up the International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies, with its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland (http://www.ifrc.org/ ).
18
http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/beprepared/disability.html .
15
10
Twenty years ago the UNDRO Report (1982: 44-45)19 began to pose vital questions about
the involvement of disabled people when developing or upgrading communities’ emergency
plans, e.g.:

Are services for the disabled included in the community’s emergency plans? Has
information been sought about [the needs of all disabled groups] and how to meet them?

Were the views of the disabled taken into account in making the plans? If there are
existing organizations for the disabled in the community, always contact these
organizations for advice when developing emergency plans. They also can provide
expertise in creating self-help and awareness programmes.

Does the emergency organization have a way of identifying the disabled during an
emergency? Is it known who the disabled people are, and where they live and work?

How are the emergency needs of the disabled recognised in the community?

Have local shelter areas been checked to see if they will be able to handle disabled
persons?

How can it be demonstrated that meeting the needs of the disabled will improve lifesafety for the entire community?

Disabled persons can be self-sufficient and serve as a valuable resource in emergencies,
and their greater awareness and wider participation in emergency planning will benefit
everyone.

Are the disabled included in community preparedness exercises, and how can they assist
in an emergency?
This section is referenced in the UNDRO Report as being adapted from an article in ‘Emergency Management
Newsletter’ (edition of 6 November 1981) published by FEMA, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
19
11

Do they, and the community, know what to expect in an emergency? Also, what activities
most need volunteers? Which would be suitable for disabled volunteers? Try
communications, incident reporting, and research, among others.
Although these questions may not have achieved the suggested involvement of disabled people
as rapidly as hoped, they could have begun slowly to pave the way for the third approach which
is just beginning to appear. This is a participatory and inclusive approach that actively involves
disabled people and their organizations in the process of assessing their vulnerability to harm and
capability for self protection in the face of hazards including earthquakes.20
TAPPING EXPERIENCE AND LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
In the early 21st Century it should be possible for emergency managers to engage in a dialogue
with disabled people and for the latter to participate in planning for extreme events.
This has
been made possible by increasing organization among people with disabilities and changes in
their own attitudes toward and understanding of their position in society. These changes have to
do with an increased militancy and awareness of their rights. Removal of the considerable
obstacles to inclusionary planning (discussed below) must become a political demand on the part
of the growing disability rights movement.
Lest the preceding sound over optimistic, I should add that there are enormous obstacles
to implementation of participation by people with disabilities, even where there is the will to do
so on the part of planners. There are so many barriers, social and spatial, to inclusion in this and
20
Participatory approaches involving people with disabilities are mostly developing in the context of work by nongovernmental organizations, sometimes in partnership with municipalities. There is little academic work so far, but
I should mention the work of Dr. Maureen Fordham and her graduate student Ann Norman at Anglia Polytechnic
University (http://www.apu.ac.uk/geography/dsp/ ).
12
other aspects of citizenship.
Among these are poverty and lack of income, reductions in
eligibility for services such as paratransit and homecare, discrimination and exclusion of disabled
people in progressive movements such as feminism. Just to make the point more concretely,
Chouinard (2002) recounts conversations with women with chronic illnesses in cities such as
Hamilton, Ontario in Canada, who are literally trapped in their homes for months at a time
because of reductions in services that would help them to participate in local life (e.g. even for
essentials such as getting to a doctor).21
‘Empowerment’ is a key concept in social movements of minorities. Coleridge (1993:
50-54) discusses empowerment in the context of disability.22 He notes that it is partly to do with
having a voice and role in decisions that affect one’s life. Coleridge uses the example of
demands beginning in the early 1980s in UK by disabled people that they have seats on the
boards of professional organizations dealing with disability (p. 51). However there is more to
the notion and experience of empowerment. In psychological terms it breaks down the isolation
felt by a person with disability as she learns the root causes of her isolation and lack of power.
She locates the root causes in society and space rather than as a ‘lack’ in herself. Coleridge
draws on the foundational work of Brazilian adult literacy innovator and philosopher, Paulo
Freire (1984) in juxtaposing the characteristics of the ‘empowered’ and ‘not empowered’
individual (p. 52) (see Table 1).
TABLE 1 NEAR HERE
21
The obstacles to including people with disabilities in the planning process is further complicated by a tendency to
reject some people with disabilities as valid interlocutors, as has been pointed out by Clapton (2002: 1) : ‘… people
… with intellectual disability are most likely to be rendered… profoundly irrelevant or disqualified within bioethical
conversations because they are deemed incapable of being rational, competent, independent beings.’
22
See also the notion of ‘emancipatory disability research’ (Barnes 2001).
13
Disabled people who are empowered spontaneously engage in vulnerability and capability
assessment because they are more aware and critical of their physical and social environments.
They are more open to connecting with others as part of a social movement or local self-help
group. These groups, in turn, are the perfect partners for planners who accept the value of
participatory action research.
The use of participatory action research in hazard identification and assessment of
vulnerabilities and capabilities is not new. In many parts of the world groups of people meet to
map the hazards that they are most likely to face, to assess their own capacities to cope, and to
liaise with municipal authorities about plans to increase local capacities to cope. Elsewhere in
this volume there is a review of community based efforts along these lines (Chapter XX). It is
therefore not surprising that in 1995 the Annenberg Washington Program published a report
calling for ‘a new dialogue’ with disabled people as the basis for disaster mitigation (Blanck
1995). The new dialogue would be based on the following principles (Spodak 1995):

Accessible disaster facilities and services

Accessible communications and assistance

Accessible and reliable rescue communications

Partnerships with the media

Partnerships with the disability community

Disaster preparation, education, and training

Universal design and implementation strategies.
After the events of September 11th 2001 in the U.S., this call for partnership and participation
was reinforced by the National Organization on Disability (NOD). NOD’s ‘Disaster
14
Mobilization Initiative’ included a call “to ensure people with disabilities are included at all
levels of preparedness planning” (NOD 2002a; cf. NOD 2002b).
NOD has followed up on its call for participation by people with disabilities by providing
advice about identifying people with disabilities in the community, a first step toward full
integration into the planning process (NOD 2002c):23

Contact national disability organizations and/or their local affiliates – see our list.

Contact your local Center for Independent Living. There are several hundred Centers
for Independent Living (CILs) across the country. CILs are community-based
resource and advocacy centers managed by and for people with disabilities,
promoting independent living and equal access for all persons with physical, mental,
cognitive and sensory disabilities.

Contact your state’s Committee, Commission, Council, etc., concerning disability.
Most state governments have such an entity, often part of the Governor’s office or
cabinet.

Contact your State Vocational and Rehabilitation Agency. Part of their work is to
introduce volunteer and public service opportunities to their clients.
a) View the Federal Consumer Information Center’s online list of State
Vocational and Rehabilitation Agencies
b) Search the internet using a phrase such as “[your state] vocational
rehabilitation”.
c) Look in the Government pages of your local phone book for state or local
listings such as “Rehabilitation Services Administration” or “Rehabilitation
Information”.

Contact your state’s Veterans Administration facilities which serve people with
disabilities.

Contact your community’s commission or committee for people with disabilities, or
local ADA coordinator, which usually can be located through the Mayor’s office or
county government office.

Contact your local congregations, who may know of specific community members
23
However, identification of people with disabilities is a tricky question. Many people with invisible impairments
are reluctant to disclose them because of the discrimination and stigma they will face having done so.
15
with disabilities.

Ask professionals who serve people with disabilities – such as special education
teachers, or occupational, physical or speech therapists – if they can suggest
individuals to participate in emergency planning. You might try contacting the
National Rehabilitation Association.
NOD strongly emphasizes the importance of tapping the knowledge, experience, and opinions of
people with disabilities (2002d):

People with disabilities must be included in preparedness planning for all
emergencies, and all plans must take people with disabilities into account.

People with all types of disabilities must be included: deaf/hard of hearing, blind,
mental illness, physical, and non-apparent disabilities (i.e. cognitive, multiple
chemical sensitivity).

To maintain the dignity and independence that lies at the heart of the disability
movement, people with disabilities must take personal responsibility for their
safety, to the degree allowed by their disability.

In terms of larger policy issues for planning, preparedness, response, relief and
recovery, people with disabilities must advocate, monitor, advise and help
however possible at the local, state and federal levels.

Training people with disabilities to develop expertise in disaster/security/emergency
management will save lives. It also increases the pool of experts on these important
issues as they affect all Americans.
The Northridge earthquake affecting parts of greater Los Angeles in 1994 played a
role in encouraging a participatory approach to disaster/ disability planning. A group was
formed calling themselves ‘Disabled People and Disaster Planning’ (DP2). It met between 19961997 and came up with recommendations to deal with problems identified during and after the
Northridge quake (DP2 1998). Their recommendations (and referrals to resources) are
organized under the following headings:

Prepare for What Will Happen - what to do before an earthquake
16







Shelter Managers Should Know - how to prepare for and work with disabled people
Training Rescue Workers - suggestions to train rescue workers before a disaster
Evacuating Wheelchair Users - tips on assisting wheelchair users after a disaster
Communications After a Disaster - recommendations on how to disseminate
information to people with disabilities after a disaster
Managing Shelters - recommendations on making emergency shelters more
Accessible
Points of Service - recommendations on how to make services accessible after a
Disaster
Related Websites - other websites that have disaster related information for persons
with disabilities.
In the aftermath of the Northridge earthquake June Kailes, who had served as the director of a
Center for Independent Living, also developed guidelines for people with disabilities themselves,
to plan their own disaster preparations (1996; 2002a).24
The tragic loss of life and clear lack of preparedness revealed in the earthquake in the
northwestern urban industrial core of Turkey (Kocaeli earthquake)25 in 1999 has spurred some
attempts to move Turkey rapidly from using management approach number one (neglecting
persons with disabilities) directly to approach number three (participation by persons with
disabilities). For example, a non-governmental organization26 based at Bogazici University in
Istanbul has reached out to the deaf community, and about 2,000 deaf people have
been trained by deaf basic disaster awareness trainers. There is a core group of about 6-8 deaf
people who have passed the Basic Disaster Awareness course this group offers to instructor's.
Having honed their skills, the plan is for these instructors to travel the country and deliver the
program to the rest of the deaf community (Petal 2002).
This is in line with the NOD (2002d) point above: ‘People with disabilities must take personal responsibility for
their safety to the degree allowed by their disability.
25
http://www.disasterrelief.org/Disasters/991201istanbul/ .
26
Istanbul Community Impact Project, http://www.iahep.org/enindex.asp .
24
17
CONCLUSIONS
People with disabilities can experience additional risks in earthquakes and their secondary
hazards such as fires, landslides, release of hazardous materials. They may also have difficulties
obtaining access to resources for recovery. In most of the circum Pacific ‘ring of fire’, that part
of the world where seismic activity is greatest, and other seismically active areas, people with
disabilities receive little or no attention by emergency planners. In some places there is advice
available and some programs and attention, but they are provided from the ‘top down’. In a
small minority of cases a third way is becoming apparent: partnership and participation by
people with disabilities and their organizations.
Elsewhere I have documented the evolution of theory and practice on the topic of social
vulnerability to disaster through four phases (Wisner 2002). First, was its ‘discovery’ as a gap in
prevailing theory and practice in the 1970s (Wisner et al. 1976; Hewitt 1983). In this early
literature social vulnerability is associated with generalized conditions such as ‘marginality’ or
‘poverty.’ In the second phase, from the mid 1980s onward, various non-governmental
organizations began to take on the notion of social vulnerability. They generated check lists
which, unlike the general conditions of the first phase, identified quite specific groups of people
and singled them out for attention by relief and recovery efforts (e.g. children under five, elderly
people with chronic health problems). This phase reached its zenith during the International
Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR -- 1990-1999), a decade that also saw a large
increase in the number of displaced persons and refugees. These checklists were (and are)
especially useful in identifying people with acute nutritional, medical, and mental health needs in
large populations of displaced people or refugees. In academic terms, these checklists were
mirrored by taxonomies of social vulnerability (Blaikie et al. 1994; Morrow 1999; Lavell 1994;
Aysan 1993).
18
During the 1990s a third approach to social vulnerability was simultaneously growing,
partly catalyzed by the influence of post-structural and post-colonial writers (Wisner 1993;
Hewitt 1995; Caplan 2000). This is a situational concept of vulnerability. Taxonomies (and
check lists) are seen as useful, but inaccurate because people have many identities and may move
in and out of more and less vulnerable situations. A non-English speaking single mother in Los
Angeles who is also an undocumented immigrant is in a particularly vulnerable situation with
respect to severe storms or earthquake (Wisner 1999). She is unlikely to understand warnings or
be in a financial or social position (as a renter) to do much about them. She is also unlikely to
benefit from official sources for assistance for recovery because fear of deportation and
difficulties with English keep her away from official ‘assistance centers’ (Bolin and Sanford
1998). However, she may become a legal immigrant. She may obtain education and training,
and a better non-minimum wage job. She may then find reliable day care for her child. In other
words, “no condition is permanent.”
Finally, in various parts of the world in the early 21st Century, groups of ordinary people
are organizing to study their own vulnerability and capabilities (Heijmans and Victoria 2001;
Soto 1998; Turcios 2000; von Kotze and Holloway 1997). This is the fourth, and more recent
phase. It is a proactive and participatory use of the tools of social vulnerability assessment.
Given the rapid development of the disability movement, it is highly likely that the pilot cases of
participatory planning discussed in this chapter could soon become much more common.27
However, in order to fully account for the variety of situations faced in earthquakes by
people with disabilities, more knowledge is needed. Among other topics in need of further
27
Recent recommendations from the World Health Organisation are fully consistent with a radically participatory
approach (see Barnes 2001b).
19
research in partnership with disabled people are the following (see also, chapter XXX in this
volume):

Risk perception – What hazards do people with different disabilities perceive?
Where does an earthquake fit into the hierarchy or pattern of ‘ordinary’ or day-to-day
hazards people with disabilities perceive? Are risk perceptions different for people
who have different kinds of disabilities, impairments, or illnesses (those involving
mobility vs. sight or deafness)? Everyone perceives a ‘landscape of fear’ (Tuan
1980). Is this ‘landscape of fear’ completely individual and idiosyncratic, or are their
risk perceptions that are common to people living with different kinds of disabilities?

Risk communication – How do people with various disabilities communicate with
each other about potential risks in disaster situations? How do they normally get
news and information of importance to them? Apart from use of TV closed
captioning, sign language, and Braille, are there languages, idioms, grammars, and
styles of communication that will reach a greater range of people with disabilities?
What about disabled people who speak language that is not common in the place
where they are living? (NSTC 2000; National Research Council 1999; Mileti and
Fitzpatrick 1993; Turner et al. 1986).

Risk behavior – Beginning in the 1960s sociologists began to debunk myths that
people panic and behave irrationally in. What evidence is there that people with
disabilities and chronic medical problems have experienced extreme anxieties,
disorientation, and panic in emergencies disasters (the impression that some publicly
20
available advice gives the reader)? Is this not a resurfacing of the older myth?
(Lindell and Perry 1992)

Local social organization – To what extent are disabled people already integrated
into local formal and informal social networks? Where they experience exclusion,
what is its cause? Are there local organizations that represent the interests of people
with disabilities? What are the cross cutting interests and differences within the socalled ‘disability community’ (Marsh and Buckle 2001)?

Working with Non-governmental Organizations – How wide spread are national
and sub-national institutions and organizations representing the interests of people
with disabilities?28 How common is disability rights legislation country by country,
world wide? What is the state of compliance with such legislation?
Does this
legislation adequately deal with emergencies? What potential exists for collaboration
between such organizations and such professional groups as engineers, health
workers, sociologists, geographers in various countries and localities? Conversely,
what obstacles hinder or prevent such collaboration? (Anderson and Woodrow 1987;
Bolin and Stanford 1998; Holland and Blackburn 1998; Finkelstein 1999).Whose
Knowledge Counts?
Taking the life experience, local knowledge, as well as
specific professional and personal expertise of people with disabilities as essential to
humane and effective management could open up the horizon of earthquake risk
reduction the way in which taking gender perspectives has (Enarson and Morrow
28
One starting point might be the U.S. and Canadian associations of Independent Living Centers,
http://www.npr.org/programs/disability/ . Another might be the various international networks,
http://www.disabilityworld.org/ , http://www.dcdd.nl/ , http://www.mdri.org/ , http://www.iddc.org.uk/ ,
http://www.Inclusion-International.org/ , and http://www.disability.dk/site/index.php?section_id=1 . There are
other specific regional and country specific links: for example, in Japan, http://member.nifty.ne.jp/shojin/ , India,
http://www.disabilityindia.org/ , and Asia, http://unescap.org/decade/index.htm ; Ecuador, http://www.fuvirese.org/
; Brazil, http://www.saci.org.br/ ; Spain, http://sid.usal.es/ .
21
1998; cf. Chambers 1997; Eade 1997; Chouinard 1997; Wisner 1995).
The
knowledge and experience of people with disabilities help to provide a totally new
perspective on safety. Partnership of planners with the disability community can
build on and increase empowerment – transcending a mere clinical, biomedical, and
individualized approach to disability and disaster.29
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27
Table 1
Psychological Effects of Empowerment
Empowered
Not Empowered
Open to change
Assertive
Proactive
Self-accountable
Self-directed
Uses feelings
Learns from mistakes
Confronts
Lives in the present
Realistic
Thinks relatively
Has high self-esteem
Closed to change
Aggressive
Reactive
Blames others
Directed by others
Overwhelmed by feelings
Defeated by mistakes
Avoids
Lives in the past or future
Unrealistic
Thinks in absolutes
Has low self-esteem
28