When Disaster Strikes - Part 3: The Sacrifice Calculus
When Disaster Strikes 1 Part 1: Disasters Don't Create Inequality-They Reveal It 2 Part 2: Why Some Cities Burn (And Others Don't) 3 Part 3: The Sacrifice Calculus 4 Part 4: Elite Disaster Strategies 5 Part 5: Famine and Political Power 6 Part 6: Earthquakes and Governance 7 Part 7: Pandemic Politics 8 Part 8: Why We Forget ← Series Home Key Takeaways Triage is always happening: Disasters make explicit the resource allocation decisions that are implicit in normal times. Infrastructure is frozen triage: Decisions about levees, evacuation routes, and hospital locations pre-determine who can be saved. The "natural" framing hides choices: Calling disasters "natural" obscures the political decisions that shaped who became vulnerable. Sacrifice patterns are predictable: The poor, the elderly, the disabled, and the politically marginalized consistently bear the highest death rates. The Impossible Choice In the five days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Dr. Anna Pou faced decisions no physician should have to make. At Memorial Medical Center, cut off from evacuation, without power for air conditioning or most medical equipment, she and her colleagues worked to keep patients alive. ...