Natural Disasters

After spending five hectic, sleep-deprived days on the Gulf Coast assessing structural damage to buildings in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, engineers from the University at Buffalo's Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) have returned home to start doing the scientific work that they hope one day will help curb structural damage from future severe events.

Media discussion of race and class in the wake of Hurricane Katrina has done the country a great disservice by oversimplifying and distorting what is fundamentally a very complex problem, according to a sociologist who recently published a major study of the residential segregation of jobless black, Asian and Hispanic men in urban communities.

Reestablishment of wastewater and drinking-water treatment facilities is a critical step for rebuilding New Orleans, but it likely will take months to get those systems operational, according to wastewater treatment expert at the University at Buffalo.

Ten days after 9/11, University at Buffalo structural engineers were at Ground Zero investigating the collapse of the World Trade Center and surrounding buildings. Thus began a new era in anti-terrorism research at UB, whichi now has more than $21 million in active federal and state grants to develop and investigate new methods for combating terrorist threats and attacks

Demand for unskilled labor to clean up after Hurricane Katrina will help drive economic recovery in New Orleans, according to an economist at the University at Buffalo School of Management.

The rebuilding of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina gives the city an unprecedented chance to create new city neighborhoods that are economically and racially diverse, says University at Buffalo urban geographer Meghan Cope, Ph.D., associate professor of geography in the College of Arts and Sciences.

"The most critical problems related to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina are related less to the lack of technological solutions than to the absence of a sound national policy for dealing with such events," says Shahin Vassigh, associate professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo.

The hundreds of thousands of refugees from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina join 25 million people worldwide displaced by environmental catastrophes, events and processes, according to Lynda Schneekloth, professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo.

While the victims of Hurricane Katrina have begun to grieve by expressing their anger at the shortcomings of relief efforts intended to help them, they can not yet mourn the losses they have incurred because they themselves are still struggling to survive, says Thomas T. Frantz, a University at Buffalo professor who is an expert on bereavement counseling and grief education.

The media, especially TV media, are clearly uncomfortable discussing issues of race or racism in its coverage of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina, according to Elayne Rapping, a media critic and pop-culture expert at the University at Buffalo.