Internal Displacement and Recovery from a Missouri Earthquake Essay

A major earthquake along the New Madrid fault in SE Missouri could result in at least 42,000 Missouri homes being destroyed with another 83,000 or more suffering at least moderate damage. That figure is just for the state of Missouri, which will be competing for resources after the quake with seven other states in the region that will also sustain damage. The culmination of displaced persons for all eight states, at three days after the event, has been predicted to be as high as 7.2 million due to the lack of utilities knocked out by the earthquake on top of the damages of the quake (Elnashai, Jefferson, Fiedrich, Cleveland and Gress, 2009). The United States will face an unprecedented crippling disaster on the scale of disasters that have only occurred in other countries and the widespread devastation possible from a large New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) event will dwarf even the recovery efforts of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. According to various reports, upwards of 1 million people along the Gulf Coast were displaced by the ravages of Katrina (Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, 2011). Many of the displaced have yet to return to their former homes and communities. Some of them because they have resettled in other areas, many because there is not available, affordable housing to return to and others because their former homes will not be rehabilitated and they lack the financial means to rebuild (Cutter et al, 2006). Hurricane Katrina and the flooding caused by failed levees severely decreased the population of New Orleans and wiped out neighborhoods and sections of the city that housed the most vulnerable populations, the poor, elderly and ill. Many poor, rural residents of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were also af... ... 555-566. Accessed at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2496928/pdf/phr123000555.pdf?tool=pmcentrez Kirgis, F.L., (2005). Hurricane Katrina and Internally Displaced Persons. American Society of International Law (ASIL) Insights. Accessed at http://www.asil.org/insights050921.cfm Lindell, M.K., Prater, C. & Perry, R.W. (2007). Introduction to Emergency Management. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Micale, B.L. (2012). Planning for the worst case for a mid-America quake. Research Magazine. Accessed at http://www.research.vt.edu/resmag/2012winter/earthquake.html Vervaeck, A., and Daniell, J.E. (2012).Japan – 366 days after the Quake†¦19000 lives lost, 1.2 million buildings damaged, $574 billion. Earthquake-Report. Accessed at http://earthquake-report.com/2012/03/10/japan-366-days-after-the-quake-19000-lives-lost-1-2-million-buildings-damaged-574-billion/