Topic 3: What happens to communities in disasters?
Overview
Disasters can and do impact strongly on individuals in many different ways and with varying degrees of emotional, psychological and physical consequences.
Communities are made up of individuals, and they experience changes and stresses when impacted by disaster. Before examining these impacts, we need to have an understanding of how a pre-disaster community functions. Topic 3 introduces the concepts of bonding and debonding, as expressed by Rob Gordon, a seminal writer in this field.
Learning outcomes
At the completion of Topic 3 you should be able to:
- describe the various changes a community experiences at the impact point of a disaster, immediately following a disaster, and in the longer term.