Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
react, he snatched her purse, hopped back into his car
and sped away. Michaelis (1985) reports that after the
Naples earthquake of November 1980, smartly dressed
people in flashy cars were seen leaving the scene with
orphaned babies and young children, abducted for
themselves or to be sold for adoption. Relief goods in
Naples were also pilfered and resold on the black
market. Holthouse (1986) also reports that during the
1918 Mackay, Queensland, cyclone and subsequent
massive flood, boat-owners were seen offering to
rescue people stranded on rooftops and in trees on
payment of a substantial fee: no fee, no rescue. Follow-
ing Cyclone Zoe, which struck the impoverished
Solomon Islands of Tikopia, Anuta and Fatutaka on
28 December 2002 with winds of 300 km hr
-1
, the
policemen crewing a rescue boat demanded an
allowance of $A1250 before they would leave the
capital Honiara to travel 1000 km with urgently needed
relief supplies. In the longer term, disasters attract
strangers and hangers-on, the type of people you were
warned about as a child. As Hauptman (1984) so aptly
puts it, 'the sort of trashy people who follow disasters
. . . people who could not hold a job any place else'. Just
like vultures flocking to encircle a dying body, these
people flock to victimize survivors, who often let their
guard down following a disaster. They have to because
they are now reliant upon total strangers for assistance.
The worse their financial plight, the more reliant they
become. Moreover, for every honest stranger dispens-
ing cash and materials for relief, there is a dishonest
one disguised as a contractor or household merchant
attempting to steal it back.
Perhaps the most gruesome aspects of human
behavior are those that arise because of severe famine
following drought. Societies have ritualized human
sacrifice on a grand scale in attempts to appease gods
believed responsible for a drought. Couper-Johnston
(2000) describes some of the more elaborate rituals
established by the Aztecs in Mexico in response to
ENSO and La Niña events. In the drought El Niño
years around 1450, the Aztecs were sacrificing 250 000
victims annually to curry favor with the rain god Tlaloc.
Men were beheaded at the tops of pyramids built
especially for such sacrifices, woman danced in rituals
before being slaughtered, and children were drowned
after having their nails extracted so that priests could
interpret the signs of forthcoming weather from their
cries. Another response to impeding death from
famine is to sell your children and yourself into slavery.
Captains of ships recruiting labor for cotton and sugar
cane plantations in Australia, Hawaii, and Fiji in the
nineteenth century would scurry to South Pacific
islands on the news of drought, because they could
either steal a weakened population or coerce them into
slavery with offers of food and water. Indenture is
similar to slavery. In Mexico, successive droughts
found 60 per cent of the rural population locked per-
manently into forced labor by the beginning of the
twentieth century.
Finally, when all else fails, people resort to cannibal-
ism to survive. The behavior is ubiquitous. Following
crop failure in 1315-1317 in western Europe, people
in Ireland waited at the fringes of funerals, then dug
up the bodies from churchyards and ate them. In
Germany, criminals were snatched from the gallows to
be eaten, often before they had died. Couper-Johnston
(2000) describes other examples of cannibalism. In the
drought of 1200-1201 in Egypt, cannibalism became
so rampant that people walking in the streets were at
risk of being snatched by hooks lowered from the
windows above. Doctors ate their patients and guests
were invited to dinner by friends - never to be seen
again. When two parents were caught with a small
roasted child and burnt publicly for their crime, the
populace ate one of the bodies the next day. Cannibal-
ism has often become entrenched in societies experi-
encing repeated drought. For example, during the
drought of 1640-1641 in China, the Ming dynasty
tolerated markets in human flesh.
Rese
ttlement
In almost all cases of a major natural disaster, people
want to go back and resettle in the same place they
were living beforehand. This may seem odd if the place
happens to lie in a major earthquake zone such as
the San Andreas Fault, or a coastal area subject to
recurring tsunami. There are a number of reasons why
people return home, even when that environment has
been shown to be hazardous.
There may simply be no alternative place to live or
occupation to undertake. People cannot go elsewhere if
they are employed in agriculture or fishing and they
do not know any other career. Additionally, they are
experts in farming or fishing in that particular area, and
cannot afford to lose that expertise. For instance,
people farming the rich soils surrounding volcanoes
may want to return after an eruption because they know
that the tephra will increase crop yields. The residents
