When Disaster Strikes - Part 1: Disasters Don't Create Inequality-They Reveal It

The Myth of the Natural Disaster

On the morning of January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. Within forty seconds, the capital city of Port-au-Prince was transformed into rubble. The official death toll eventually reached over 300,000—though some estimates run higher.

Eight months later, on February 27, 2010, a vastly more powerful earthquake—8.8 magnitude, releasing 500 times more energy—struck Chile. The death toll: 525.

Same year. Same hemisphere. Same tectonic reality of living on unstable ground. Radically different outcomes.

The difference wasn’t geological. It was political and economic.

Chile had building codes. Haiti didn’t—not enforced ones. Chile had emergency response infrastructure. Haiti’s had collapsed decades before the earthquake did. Chile had the institutional capacity to mobilize resources quickly. Haiti depended on international charity that arrived slowly and coordinated poorly.

The earthquake didn’t create these differences. It revealed them.

The Political Economy of Vulnerability

Eric Jones, the economic historian who pioneered the comparative study of disaster response, identified a crucial insight: what we call “natural disasters” are actually the intersection of natural hazards with human-created vulnerabilities.

The hazard—the earthquake, the flood, the drought—is natural. The disaster—the deaths, the destruction, the displacement—is a social and political creation.

The Geography of Risk

Consider who lives in disaster-prone areas:

Floodplains: In wealthy countries, floodplain development is often restricted. In poor countries—and poor neighborhoods of wealthy countries—floodplains are where affordable housing exists. New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward flooded because that’s where Black residents could afford to live after decades of housing discrimination.

Seismic zones: Wealthy neighborhoods have building codes and enforcement. Poor neighborhoods have whatever people can afford to build—often concrete blocks without reinforcing steel, the construction type most likely to collapse and kill.

Coastal areas: Beachfront property in rich countries is expensive and well-protected. Coastal fishing villages in poor countries are exposed to storms with no sea walls, no evacuation infrastructure, no insurance.

The map of disaster vulnerability is not a map of natural geography. It’s a map of political economy.

Building Quality and Enforcement

Building codes exist in most countries. Enforcement is the difference.

In politically connected neighborhoods, inspectors enforce codes. In politically marginal neighborhoods, bribes circumvent codes. In desperately poor areas, there are no inspectors at all.

After every major earthquake, the same pattern emerges: government buildings, banks, and wealthy neighborhoods suffer moderate damage. Poor neighborhoods are flattened. The difference is reinforced concrete versus unreinforced masonry—a difference that costs perhaps 10% more but requires functional governance to mandate and enforce.

The 1999 İzmit earthquake in Turkey killed over 17,000 people, many in buildings that violated seismic codes but had obtained fraudulent inspection certificates. The 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake killed over 50,000—the same pattern of corrupt enforcement, the same predictable outcome.

The Economics of Response

When disaster strikes, who gets helped first?

The pattern is remarkably consistent across time and place: resources flow toward the visible, the valuable, and the vocal.

The Visibility Principle

Aid flows toward disasters that generate dramatic images. The collapsing skyscraper attracts more attention than the slow-motion disaster of chronic malnutrition. The flood that submerges a famous city draws global response; the drought that kills more people in rural areas goes largely unnoticed.

Within disasters, the same principle applies. Urban areas get more help than rural areas. Accessible areas get more help than remote areas. Photogenic victims get more help than anonymous ones.

This isn’t pure cynicism—visibility affects awareness, and awareness enables response. But it means the least visible victims receive the least help.

The Value Principle

Economic assets get protected and rebuilt before people get helped. After Hurricane Katrina, the Port of New Orleans reopened within twelve days. Many displaced residents never returned.

This reflects economic logic: the port generates revenue; displaced poor residents don’t. But it also reflects political priorities. The port had powerful stakeholders who demanded rapid restoration. Lower Ninth Ward residents didn’t.

Insurance compounds the disparity. Wealthy households and businesses have insurance that enables rapid rebuilding. Poor households rely on slow-moving government programs or charity—or simply lose everything permanently.

The Voice Principle

Those who can demand help, get help. Political voice translates into relief resources.

In democratic systems, this means constituencies that vote get more attention than those that don’t. In authoritarian systems, this means regions loyal to the regime get prioritized over those that aren’t.

After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China, the government’s response varied dramatically by political geography. Some areas received massive reconstruction resources. Others—particularly those with ethnic minority populations—received far less.

The Sacrifice Calculus

Every disaster forces a brutal calculation: who do we save, and who do we let die?

These decisions are rarely explicit. No government announces that it will prioritize wealthy neighborhoods over poor ones. But the decisions embedded in infrastructure, zoning, building codes, and emergency planning make the calculation implicit.

Infrastructure Investment

Flood control infrastructure protects some areas and not others. The Mississippi River levee system was designed to protect New Orleans—but the levees were stronger in some neighborhoods than others. The Industrial Canal levees, protecting the Lower Ninth Ward, were built to lower standards than those protecting wealthier areas.

When the levees failed, the failure was not random. It was patterned by decades of differential investment.

Evacuation Planning

Who can evacuate? Those with cars, money for hotels, and somewhere to go. Mandatory evacuation orders assume everyone has the resources to comply.

Before Katrina, New Orleans had no plan for the estimated 100,000 residents without cars. The assumption was that they would somehow find a way out. They didn’t. They went to the Superdome—and the world watched the result.

Medical Triage

In extreme circumstances, medical systems make explicit triage decisions. After Katrina, doctors at Memorial Medical Center allegedly gave lethal injections to patients they judged unable to survive evacuation.

These extreme cases illuminate a routine reality: medical resources are always rationed, and the rationing criteria reflect social values. The pandemic revealed this starkly—who got ventilators, who got vaccines first, who could access care at all.

The Elite Response

How do ruling groups navigate disaster? Eric Jones identified a consistent pattern: elites attempt to maintain their position through crisis, using a combination of visible response, blame deflection, and institutional capture of recovery resources.

The Visibility Strategy

Elites perform disaster response. The photo of the leader surveying damage, promising resources, embracing survivors—this is not just public relations. It’s an assertion of control at the moment when control is most in question.

When the 1755 Lisbon earthquake destroyed the Portuguese capital, the Marquis of Pombal famously declared: “Bury the dead, feed the living.” His decisive response consolidated his political power for the next two decades.

When leaders fail the visibility test, they often fall. Hurricane Katrina’s political casualties included not just the FEMA director (“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job”) but ultimately contributed to the Republican Party’s 2006 and 2008 electoral defeats.

Blame Deflection

Disasters require explanations. Those explanations are politically contested.

The religious interpretation—disaster as divine punishment—deflects blame from human decision-makers. The naturalistic interpretation—disaster as random act of nature—does the same. Both avoid the political interpretation: disaster as consequence of policy choices.

After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, Japanese officials blamed the age of buildings rather than the inadequacy of building code enforcement. After the 2005 New Orleans flooding, federal officials blamed state and local government rather than decades of underinvestment in levees.

Capturing Recovery

Reconstruction is enormously profitable. The money flows rapidly, oversight is minimal, and desperation creates opportunities for exploitation.

After Katrina, politically connected contractors received billions in no-bid contracts. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, international aid organizations absorbed huge percentages of donated funds in overhead. After every disaster, the pattern repeats: those positioned to capture recovery resources do so.

This isn’t always corrupt in the legal sense. But it ensures that disaster recovery often reinforces rather than challenges existing power structures.

The Window That Never Opens

Disasters are supposed to create opportunities for reform. The moment of crisis reveals failures. The political space for change expands. The impossible becomes possible.

In practice, this almost never happens.

The Naomi Klein Thesis

Journalist Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” thesis suggests that elites deliberately exploit disasters to implement unpopular policies while populations are disoriented. Whatever the accuracy of the intentionality claim, the pattern is real: post-disaster periods often see policies that benefit elites at the expense of the vulnerable.

After Katrina, New Orleans public schools were converted to charter schools. Public housing was demolished rather than repaired. Both policies had been politically impossible before the disaster; both happened during the recovery.

Why Reform Fails

Several factors explain why the “window of opportunity” usually stays closed:

Speed mismatch: Disasters demand immediate response, but reform requires deliberation. By the time thoughtful reform proposals are developed, the crisis mentality has passed.

Resource competition: Reform requires resources. So does immediate relief. The urgent crowds out the important.

Incumbent advantage: Those who controlled resources before the disaster still control them during recovery. They use those resources to maintain position.

Attention decay: Public attention moves on. The disaster that dominated headlines for weeks becomes yesterday’s news. The political pressure for reform evaporates.

The Exceptions

Genuine reform does occasionally follow disaster. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake led to genuine improvements in fire safety and building codes. The 1930s Dust Bowl contributed to soil conservation policies. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated remote work adoption.

These exceptions seem to require:

• Disasters so severe that existing systems cannot simply restore the status quo
• Pre-existing reform movements ready to exploit the opportunity
• Leadership willing to challenge powerful interests
• Sustained public attention that outlasts the acute crisis

Absent these conditions, disaster is followed by reconstruction of the pre-disaster order—often with the vulnerabilities that made the disaster catastrophic intact.

The Universal Pattern

Across cultures, political systems, and historical periods, a pattern emerges in disaster response:

1. Pre-disaster vulnerability reflects existing inequalities of power, wealth, and political voice
2. The disaster kills and damages selectively, following the patterns of vulnerability
3. Response allocates resources according to visibility, value, and voice—reinforcing existing patterns
4. Recovery is captured by those with resources and connections, often increasing pre-disaster disparities
5. The reform window closes before meaningful change occurs
6. Collective memory fades, and the conditions for the next disaster remain in place

This pattern is not inevitable. But breaking it requires understanding how deeply disaster outcomes are embedded in political and economic structures—and how powerfully those structures resist change.

What This Series Explores

In the posts that follow, we will examine this pattern through specific lenses:

• Why Some Cities Burn: How fire policy reveals urban political economy
• The Sacrifice Calculus: The explicit and implicit decisions about who lives and dies
• Elite Disaster Strategies: How the powerful maintain power through crisis
• The Politics of Famine: Hunger as political event, not just agricultural failure
• Earthquake and Governance: How seismic events reshape political systems
• The Plague’s Political Legacy: Pandemics as political turning points
• Learning Nothing: Why disaster lessons fade faster than disaster memories

Each case illuminates the same core insight: disasters are political events, and understanding them as such is the first step toward creating societies where catastrophe falls less selectively on the vulnerable.