The fires in Los Angeles, California, are nothing short of devastating. The loss of life and property is on an epic scale. By all accounts, the recovery will take decades. This sad reality of natural disasters isn’t unique to California. The impact of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and flash floods in eastern Spain were catastrophic. Indonesia’s volcanic eruptions will have generational consequences. Earthquakes in Tibet have been cataclysmic. With natural disaster upon natural disaster, one is inclined to focus on the role of climate change, and the question of “Why?” Arguably of more immediate importance to the victims is the question of “How?” How do we recover from this? How do we rebuild our lives? How do we move forward? As is so often the case, sociology offers insights by helping us better understand the social relationships, institutions, and societies involved in recovery efforts.
Family is often the first group we reach for when disaster strikes. Whether connected by blood, marriage, adoption, or agreed-upon relationships, families are socially constructed and historically changing. They include our mothers and our brothers, our lovers, best friends, and pets. Whether two-legged or four-legged, tattooed to the hilt, or in a nun’s habit, ideally our family provides us with emotional support in difficult times. As a primary group, our families house many of our core memories based on their intimate face-to-face, long-lasting associations. In a crisis, they are often the first to look for us, the first to alert authorities that something is wrong and the first we turn to when life falls apart. Families are foundational to society and crucial for society in the face of adverse events.
The people on the front lines of fires, floods, and earthquakes are those who wear uniforms and earn badges. They help us evacuate, carry us to safety, and seek us out under the rubble. Whether it be firefighters, police, or military, they are members of social institutions, structures in society providing the framework for governing the behavior of individuals in a community or society. Over 7,000 firefighters have battled the blazes in California. They include crews from across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Even in the midst of a war with Russia, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy offered firefighters to help battle the blazes. Whether in their homelands or on the front lines abroad, firefighters are members of secondary groups, large-scale, impersonal, task-focused, and time-limited associations. Their actions are coordinated by leaders made up of individuals or groups who help facilitate, guide, and be the representative voice of their members. These groups come to the rescue for a specific time to accomplish a specific task. We may not know them personally, but they see us in our most vulnerable moments by helping us breathe, pulling us from the waters, and offering us a chance to live again.
In times of emergency, the medical-industrial complex plays a crucial role in the recovery process. Broadly speaking, this is a multibillion-dollar enterprise consisting of doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, insurance companies, drug manufacturers, and hospital supply and equipment companies. These are the people who hang stethoscopes around their necks, create the medications that mend our broken bodies, and (ideally) cover our medical expenses. Long-term post-disaster trauma often requires professional help in the form of counseling for varying forms of mental illness, abnormal thoughts, behaviors, emotions, or actions that are a threat to the individual or society. These may include conditions like depression, anxiety, grief, and guilt, as well as physical symptoms and environmental triggers. Sadly, access to many of the physical and psychological services needed to make a person whole again is often limited by larger societal issues of social inequality, a system that unequally rewards individuals based on characteristics such as sex, income, age, race, and ethnicity. We may all bleed the same, but our lives and recovery are often dictated by the money we have in our pockets and the credit we have with the bank.