Disaster Response and Recovery: Strategies and Tactics for Resilience, 2nd Edition

FOREWORD

Listen to the voices of family members. Listen to them describe the fear they felt and the protective actions they took just prior to their home being ripped apart by the tornado. When? Perhaps it was May, 2014. Perhaps it was a year or two before in Missouri. Or maybe it was Alabama or Tennessee. The locations and dates are less important than the fact that researchers were there to record their experiences and carefully juxtapose them with those of others. And collectively they are added to the scientific knowledge base about disaster response and recovery.

Dr. David A. McEntire has assessed and integrated these types of research findings from hurricanes like Katrina and, more recently, Sandy. We now marvel at the opening of the 9/11 museum dedicated to those who died and were injured during those terrible attacks. This structure, like so many others around the country, stands as a testament to the resilience of our nation, our national character. And as we hear of raging wildfires in California, miners dying again in places like Turkey, or those still struggling all these years after the destruction brought to Haiti, we are reminded again of why Disaster Response and Recovery are so important—so essential to resilience.

For decades, a slowly accumulating knowledge base was being constructed by scholars within numerous academic disciplines, especially sociology, geography, political science, and public administration. And today, those charged with the responsibility ...