The assignment: (2 page paper APA Format)Briefly describe alternative systems of and strategies for communication that might be used during a crisis when normal lines of communication are unavailable. Then evaluate which systems and/or strategies might be

TheNorthridgeEarthquakeCommunitybasedApproachestoUnmetRecoveryNeeds.pdf

Home >Social Science homework help >The assignment: (2 page paper APA Format)Briefly describe alternative systems of and strategies for communication that might be used during a crisis when normal lines of communication are unavailable. Then evaluate which systems and/or strategies might be

The Northridge Earthquake: Community-based Approaches to Unmet Recovery Needs

Robert Bolin Lois Stanford Arizona State University New Mexico State University

The 1994 Northridge, California earthquake has proven to be one of the most costly disasters in United States history. Federal and state assistance programmes received some 681,000 applications from victims for various forms of relief. In spite of the flow of US$11 billion in federal assistance into Los Angeles and Ventura counties, many victims have failed to obtain adequate relief. These unmet needs relate to the vulnerability of particular class and ethnic groups. In response to unmet needs, a number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have become involved in the recovery process. This paper, based on evidence collected from hundreds of in-depth interviews with the people involved, examines the activities of several community- based organisations (CBOs) and other NGOs as they have attempted to assist vulnerable people with unmet post-disaster needs. We discuss two small ethnically diverse communities in Ventura County, on the periphery of the Los Angeles metropolitan region. The earthquake and resultant disaster declaration provided an opportunity for local government and NGOs to acquire federal resources not normally available for economic development. At the same time the earthquake created political openings in which longer-term issues of community development could be addressed by various local stakeholders. A key issue in recovery has been the availability of affordable housing for those on low incomes, particularly Latinos, the elderly and farm workers. We discuss the successes and limitations of CBOs and NGOs as mechanisms for dealing with vulnerable populations, unmet needs and recovery issues in the two communities.

Key words: earthquakes, California, ethnicity, disaster mitigation, post-disaster activities, low-cost housing, federal assistance.

This paper examines organised responses to housing and recovery issues in two ethnically mixed communities in southern California following the 17 January 1994 Northridge earthquake. The discussion is based on two years of research in damaged communities in Ventura and Los Angeles counties. We focus here on the culturally diverse communities of Fillmore and Piru in Ventura County on the north-west border of Los Angeles County. We review the activities of community-based organisations (CBOs)1, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and local government agencies that became involved in assisting households with recovery needs not being met through conventional disaster-assistance programmes. These community-based programmes

Disasters,1998, 22(1): 21^38

ß Overseas Development Institute, 1998. Published by Blackwell Publishers, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

have generally used local knowledge and capabilities and been more flexible and sensitive to local conditions than standard technocratic federal disaster-assistance programmes are able to be. This informality and flexibility have allowed them to provide community-focused services to victims who, for a variety of reasons, might otherwise go without adequate — or any — assistance (cf. Neal and Phillips, 1995).

Using the Northridge earthquake as a focal event, we discuss, as background, how political and economic conditions have produced differential vulnerability to disaster in the two California communities. We show how vulnerable households, because of existing deficits, can have unmet needs in the recovery process. Responding to post- disaster needs, CBOs, NGOs and local (city and county) governmental agencies developed programmes to provide assistance to ethnically and socio-economically diverse households in the two communities. We discuss the effectiveness and limits of local initiatives intended both to help vulnerable people recover and promote community development.

Disasters, vulnerability and unmet needs

Unmet needs after disasters are the result of two usually related phenomena: the depth of already existing social inequalities that create vulnerable populations, and inadequacies in institutionalised disaster-assistance programmes from governments or disaster NGOs. Social inequalities along the lines of class, race, ethnicity, gender, age and national origin are key elements in people’s vulnerability to environmental calamities (e.g., Blaikie et al., 1994; Morrow and Enarson, 1996; Watts, 1992). Vulnerability, as used here, refers to social and material conditions deriving from characteristics of individuals and groups that make them susceptible to harm and loss from environmental hazardsandthat constrain their ability to cope with the adversities of disasters (Cannon, 1994). The vulnerable generally include those individuals and groups who have been marginalised and excluded by the concrete practices of dominant classes and ethnicities, and who thus have difficulty avoiding, coping with and/or recovering from environmental hazards. The historic roots of vulnerability can be traced to the effects of political and economic dynamics in the shaping of social inequalities (Wisner, 1993).

According to Blaikie et al. (1994), disasters are best understood as the outcomes of environmental hazards impinging on vulnerable populations. In this conceptualisation, an extreme hazard event such as an earthquake or flood is the trigger, but the disaster that follows is the product of political, social and economic forces in everyday life (Hewitt, 1995; Hendrie, 1997; Maskrey, 1993; Pettiford, 1995). As Hewitt writes, disasters should be ‘... seen to depend upon the ongoing social order, its everyday relations to the habitat and the larger historical circumstances that shape and frustrate these matters’ (1983: 25). Vulnerability research has demonstrated that ‘natural’ disasters are typically prefigured in the inequalities and processes of marginalisation that are pervasive in given locales (e.g., Kent, 1987; Oliver-Smith, 1994). When those inequalities and their material expression in unsafe conditions and precarious livelihoods are re-established in the post-disaster ‘recovery’ process, then the basis of the next disaster is reproduced (Anderson and Woodrow, 1989; Wisner, 1993).

The access people have to resources, including employment, health-care, social support, financial credit, legal rights and education are part of what makes them

22 Robert Bolin and Lois Stanford

vulnerable to, or secure from, disaster (Blaikie et al., 1994). This access includes both the resources people have as a result of employment, savings and social networks, as well as newly available resources from national or local relief programmes after a disaster. In conceptual terms, the most vulnerable are those households with the fewest choices; those whose lives are constrained, for example, by poverty, gender oppres- sion, ethnic discrimination, political powerlessness, physical disabilities, limited employment opportunities, the absence of legal rights and other forms of domination (Cannon, 1994). These ‘clusters of disadvantage’ (Chambers, 1983: 108) are revealed in actual disasters where the elements of vulnerability play themselves out in the lives of people as they attempt to cope with the additional burdens imposed by the disaster and recovery.

In the context of less-developed societies of the South, vulnerability often has a clearly identifiable locational dimension where people marginalised by class, politics or ethnicity are driven to the hazardous peripheries of a place (e.g., Oliver-Smith, 1994). Such people occupy a precarious situation between the risks of hazardous physical environments and the inequitable conditions produced by political and economic systems (e.g., Cannon, 1994). In areas such as the Los Angeles metropolitan region, the locational dimension in hazard vulnerability is less clear-cut and disaster losses are often more irregularly distributed across class and ethnic divisions (Stanford and Bolin, 1996).

Large areas of southern California are variously subjected to earthquakes, floods and fires.Generalexposure to such hazards cuts across class, ethnic and racial lines in the region. Lower- income households are more likely to occupy dilapidated buildings and unreinforced masonry structures (URM) because rents are typically lower. But there is no evidence from recent earthquakes that households in these structures were over-represented in the general victim population (Bolin, 1994; Comerio et al., 1996). On the other hand, the very wealthy may occupy (voluntarily) more physically hazardous areas than the poor, particularly those who build their large ‘view’ houses on the steep hillsides and canyons of the flood and fire-prone mountains of the Los Angeles basin. These wealthy households may be moreexposedto certain kinds of environmental hazards, but given their accumulated wealth and their privileged access to resources, it would be difficult to characterise such households as vulnerable in the sense delineated by Blaikie and his colleagues (Blaikie et al., 1994). The wealthy may suffer losses in a disaster, but their insurance, financial assets and stable employment secure them against the destitution that could befall a poor family in the same event. While the middle class and the wealthy often experience greater absolute losses than the poor in US disasters, in relative terms the poor typically lose a much larger part of their material assets and suffer more lasting negative effects (Wisner, 1993). Vulnerability in the context of the Northridge earthquake has less to do with people’s unequal exposure to the hazard agent than with people’s varying abilities to cope with the losses and burdens imposed by the disaster.

Background

The 1994 Northridge event was a magnitude 6.7 earthquake, centred beneath the heavily populated San Fernando Valley of northern Los Angeles County. In addition to the collapse of segments of six major freeways and extensive damage to lifelines

Northridge Earthquake: Unmet Recovery Needs 23

and infrastructure, 49,000 housing units were damaged or destroyed in Los Angeles and Ventura counties (Comerio, 1995; SSC, 1995). As the earthquake occurred at 4.31 a.m. on a national holiday, public buildings, highways and commercial structures were largely empty, resulting in a death toll of only 57 people in a two-county area with a population of 10 million. The American Red Cross opened 45 emergency shelters in both counties, housing upwards of 7,000 people per night at the height of the crisis.

Overall, the federal government’s response to the Northridge disaster has been extensive, with a record of more than $11 billion in federal assistance being made available to individuals, businesses and local governments. As the Los Angeles metropolitan area2 has more than 10 million inhabitants and the state economy generates a gross domestic product larger than all but a few nations (Davis, 1992; Soja, 1989), the extensive federal attention is not surprising. Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange counties received presidential disaster declarations, initiating the most costly federal disaster response to date.3 To deliver the relief authorised by the declaration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the California Office of Emergency Services (OES) established 20 Disaster Application Centers (DACs) in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. At all DAC sites victims could get information and apply to the various assistance programmes offered by federal and state governments. Five weeks into the disaster, FEMA/OES began phasing out the DACs. In their place 10 Earthquake Service Centers (ESCs) were opened near heavily damaged districts. The ESCs — never before used in US disasters — were created to support the longer-term recovery and reconstruction activities of individuals and businesses by providing ongoing access to federal and state relief and referral services. FEMA proved responsive to continuing state and local requests for assistance and kept a number of ESCs open beyond the first anniversary of the disaster (January 1996). This extended application period, combined with outreach in one of the largest metropolitan regions in the US, led to the receipt of an unprecedented 681,000 applications to the various individual assistance programmes (OES, 1995). Total costs of the earthquake have been estimated at $25 to $35 billion, $11 billion of which has been covered through a diverse programme of federal grants and loans (Comerio et al., 1996).

FEMA programmes are generally designed to assist householders with basic expenses for temporary housing or home rehabilitation so they may begin a return to their social status quo ante.FEMA programmes are specificallynot intended to improve the situation of an individual over what it was prior to the disaster, irrespective of what that situation might have been (Wallrich, 1996). FEMA individual assistance programmes are most generous for short-term needs such as temporary housing assistance and weaker in the support of longer-term recovery and recon- struction. Victims with earthquake insurance (a minority of primarily higher-income homeowners) are expected to use that as their primary assistance source and only use federal grants or loans if their insurance is insufficient to cover their reconstruction costs4 (cf. Palm and Hodgson, 1992; Comerio et al., 1996). For those who could not qualify for or acquire disaster assistance to cover their needs, other options were available. A variety of programmes, funded by both public and private sources, began to provide assistance that addressed local needs not being met by state and federal programmes (Wallrich, 1996). Those who had to rely on unmet needs programmes were among the most vulnerable to disaster: people who, for a variety of reasons,

24 Robert Bolin and Lois Stanford

lacked the personal resources to cope with their lossesand could not qualify for sufficient federal and state relief.

The research sites

Our discussion draws on ethnographic research on organisations and households conducted over a two-year period in the earthquake-damaged communities of Ventura County.5 Ventura County, with fewer than one million residents, has thus far escaped incorporation into the vast suburban sprawl that characterises Los Angeles County to its immediate south and east (Davis, 1995, 1996). Nevertheless, the proximity to Los Angeles has produced a steady upward pressure on house prices and property values making affordable housing for lower-income people increasingly scarce (Peirce and Guskind, 1993). Ventura County’s restricted housing market was strained further by the earthquake as hundreds of units of lower-cost housing stock were damaged and the remaining more-expensive surplus housing was acquired by earthquake victims who could afford it.

Earthquake damage in Ventura County was concentrated at our two sites, and in the larger suburban community of Simi Valley. We restrict our discussion here to Fillmore and Piru as case studies in recovery and development. Both communities have significant Latino6 working-class populations and both sustained extensive residential and commercial damage in the earthquake. The area in which the two communities are located has a long history of persistent class and ethnic divisions and there are chronic housing problems associated with the presence of a low-income ethnic ‘minority’ population (Bee, 1984; Palerm, 1991; Menchaca, 1995). Both communities have been targeted by NGOs and CBOs with programmes of relief to assist vulnerable groups.

Fillmore is an incorporated town of approximately 12,000, 60 per cent of whom identified themselves as Hispanic (Latino) in the 1990 US census. Although economically diversified, the town remains tied to agricultural production and distribution with much of its encompassing area owned by local citrus producers. The median annual household income in Fillmore is $33,500, and 13 per cent of the population lives below the US poverty line ($15,000 for a family of four). Piru, 12 kilometres east of Fillmore, is an unincorporated village7 of 1,300, more than 80 per cent of whom are Latino. Census figures indicate that 12 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line (community workers suggest the percentage is considerably greater), and the median household income is $27,000. For Ventura County as a whole, the median household income is $45,000 and 7 per cent fall below the poverty line. Piru historically has been dependent on citrus fruit production, and its low-income, working-class population reflects that dependency. As an unincorporated community, Piru is administered politically by the Ventura County government in consultation with the local Neighbourhood Council.

There is considerable intra-ethnic diversity in the Latino population of the two communities, including differences by country of birth, residency status, length of residency, primary language, employment status and social class. This diversity and resulting fragmentation has historically mitigated against any class or ethnic political mobilisation seeking redress of chronic housing and employment problems (e.g., Menchaca, 1995). The earthquake itself did little to promote any mobilisation to contest worsening housing problems, in contrast to the Latino political actions seen

Northridge Earthquake: Unmet Recovery Needs 25

after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in northern California (Bolin and Stanford, 1991; Schulte, 1991). Recent Mexican immigrants, lacking experience with previous California disasters, and lacking knowledge about federal bureaucracy and their own legal entitlements were reluctant to avail themselves of public resources to assist in their disaster-related needs. The area around the two communities also has a significant Mexican migrant worker population housed in labour camps and other structures near points of production (Palerm, 1991; Vaupel, 1992). This migrant worker population is largely ‘invisible’ in official census and poverty figures, and an unknown number of the workers are in the country illegally.

Disaster assistance and unmet needs

There are three key questions regarding disaster relief:

• What assistance is madeavailable? • What assistance isaccessible(and by whom)? • What assistance do peopleneedto reduce their vulnerability?

In US disasters, relief availability is determined by the overall extent of the federal response, which, in turn, is usually supplemented by NGO and CBO programmes for those with special needs. Accessibility can be considered in the abstract as set by the formal qualification criteria of a given relief programme (for example, damage and loss requirements, appropriate documentation, residential tenure, income, application deadlines, completeness of forms). From the individual’s standpoint, relief accessi- bility is more complex and takes up issues of personal knowledge, cultural and language skills, legal status and physical location, within the mediating effects of social class, ethnicity and gender. People’s needs relate to the extent of their losses and to their particular circumstances at different points in their recovery. However, more fundamentally, people’s needs are grounded in the nature of their lives before the disaster began; specifically, in their employment status, financial resources, social supports, legal entitlements and housing situation. Overall, many of those interviewed in our research felt they didn’t qualify for, shouldn’t use, or were afraid to use programmes that were offered in their communities. According to research informants at our sites, people in the country illegally avoided the assistance programmes altogether. To attract victims legally entitled but reluctant to use the relief network took the efforts of community activists, often working through NGOs and CBOs, in outreach and counselling activities. Establishing trust in the local neighbourhoods was a key element of outreach for community activists.

What people need after a disaster is a complex issue and cannot, in any sense be answered unambiguously (e.g., Blaikie et al., 1994; Kent, 1987). Needs assessments can be conducted, and losses specifically ‘caused’ by the earthquake can be listed and monetised. Yet such an approach is static and fails to consider the dynamic nature of social processes, including those engendered or altered by disaster. Unmet needs, in a general sense, can trouble people’s day-to-day lives, and a disaster generally compounds those needs and troubles. Disentangling pre-existing needs from ‘disaster- caused’ needs and then addressing only those attributable to the disaster, as is the wont of a number of federal programmes, can inadvertently reinforce the structures of vulnerability, however much such disentangling may simplify disaster agency

26 Robert Bolin and Lois Stanford

missions. As Kent (1987: 27) writes: ‘Disasters cannot be divorced from normal life; they are a reflection of it.’ Institutional practices that seek to abstract the disaster out of the everyday lives of people and their histories will do little to prevent the next calamity (Hendrie, 1997).

In examining the particular contours of vulnerability in Fillmore and Piru, we can briefly identify several key elements that have worked to create vulnerable popula- tions as revealed by the Northridge earthquake. First, the marginalisation of Latinos into low-wage agricultural employment has a long history and has produced a relatively large poor ethnic working-class population. Lower-income households, including older people on small pensions, have limited housing options in the area and often occupy substandard, unsafe housing or share such housing facilities with other families. There are persistent features of cultural marginalisation as evidenced in the Fillmore City Council mandating that English is the ‘official language’ of all meetings (Menchaca, 1995). In addition, political vulnerability (e.g., Slim, 1995) was promoted by a successful California referendum (Proposition 187) that has attempted to deny all health, education and social services to ‘illegal immigrants’ in state. Indeed, an abrasive anti-immigrant discourse was (and continues to be) a prominent feature of the California political scene. FEMA, as part of a new federal law, requires all relief applicants to declare their residency status, a declaration subject to auditing by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. As one community worker in Ventura reported, ‘many Latinos around here think the federal government can just load them up in box cars and ship them off to Mexico, no matter how long they’ve lived here.’ Thus, in the two communities, general patterns of vulnerability resulted from a concatenation of persistent factors including political marginalisation of Latinos, limited employment and income opportunities, cultural marginalisation and very restricted housing for lower-income people.

Overview of disaster relief

There is a standard package of assistance programmes made available by the federal government through FEMA following a presidential disaster declaration. Differences in amounts of federal support for various disasters responses reflect the ability of city and state political structures to make successful claims for the allocation of resources. In earthquake matters, California has had considerable success in promoting its political agenda at the federal level over the last 20 years, including overseeing the passage of a National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program with California as a primary beneficiary (e.g., Stallings, 1995). What is notable about Northridge is the extent to which other federal agencies lacking a specific disaster mission were active, and how that facilitated assistance to those with unmet needs.

The major federal agencies directly involved in Northridge include FEMA, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Economic Development Administration (EDA). For individuals (households), the major assistance programmes from FEMA include grants for temporary housing and to assist in the repair of homes with minimal damage. FEMA also provides direct funding to states to support mental health counselling programmes for disaster victims. This money funds local mental health agencies, which provided a wide range of support services after Northridge. HUD was active

Northridge Earthquake: Unmet Recovery Needs 27

through two separate programmes, neither of them designated specifically for disasters. The Section 8 Housing Certificate Program is a standard federal programme designed to assist low-income households with rent subsidies in approved housing for 18-month periods. After Northridge, a special set of 20,000 Section 8 certificates was made available for low-income disaster victims who were then given priority over 15,000 people already on a certificate waiting-list in the Los Angeles area. HUD also provided Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs) to county and city agencies to support redevelopment projects after the earthquake. HUD waived various statutory limitations so local agencies and NGOs had more flexibility in how the block grants could be used in earthquake recovery programmes.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) is a traditional part of the federal response and offers qualified business owners and homeowners loans to repair struc- tures and replace contents. The loans are typically set at more favourable interest rates than commercial loans, but qualification criteria are generally strict and applicants carefully scrutinised as to employment history, income level and credit rating. The Economic Development Administration (EDA) makes low-interest loans and grants available to agencies and non-profit organisations (not individuals) to support community enhancement and development efforts. It does not have a specific disaster recovery mandate although it has supported projects after other major US disasters (e.g., Dyer, 1996).

At the state level, the major programme administered by the OES (with 75 per cent of the funds from FEMA) was the Individual and Family Grant Programme (IFG). The IFG is a programme of last resort within the federal/state system that makes cash grants available to households who have been rejected by the SBA, cannot qualify for other federal assistance, or have outstanding needs even after receiving assistance from other programmes (including private insurance). While a total individual pay-out of $22,200 (including a special $10,000 Northridge supplement by the state of California) was technically possible after Northridge, the average IFG award at our research sites was under $1,200. Most of the supplemental programmes discussed below required victims to have exhausted their IFG monies before they could qualify for local assistance programmes, which in turn required that they apply to SBA and be refused.

The acquisition of federal grants, particularly from HUD and EDA, depended on the initiative and organisational capabilities of county and city agencies. In Ventura County, active government units included Redevelopment Agencies for both Fillmore and the County, the County Administrator’s Office, the Area Housing Authority and the Area Agency on Ageing. These local agencies were the primary entry points for federal monies that in turn were disbursed as grants to various NGOs and CBOs to assist disaster victims. The traditional first responder NGOs, the American Red Cross (ARC) and the Salvation Army, depend on donations, rather than grants to support their services. Both offered victims emergency relief including shelter, meals, living necessities and short-term housing assistance. The Red Cross does have a ‘continuing assistance’ programme which serves people with remaining needs after they have exhausted their IFG money. Due to funding shortfalls, the ARC continuing assistance programme was very limited after Northridge, and most longer-term unmet needs activities fell to other NGOs.

There is a rough spatial layering to these programmes in terms of geographic areas of influence and concern, from the federal level downwards through county and city

28 Robert Bolin and Lois Stanford

agencies to the NGOs and CBOs. Lower-level programmes (in terms of geographical reach) typically depend on higher-level resource bases, although the different ‘layers’ are not systematically connected. The nature of the connections and resultant resource flows depend on political and social factors in given locales, particularly the skills of local administrators in applying for federal grants. This complex of agencies and programmes from federal to local (and others not mentioned here) is not a totally co- ordinated disaster assistancesystem, but rather a loosely coupled framework with autonomous and sometimes competing elements. To borrow a phrase from Kent (1987: 68), this is essentially a ‘non-system’ of recovery aid as it lacks, in its totality, any integrated recovery plans or long-term goals. FEMA and OES, of course, do conduct elaborate co-ordination activities for their own programmes, but most of the actual recovery activities are in individual hands and are largely market driven. If there is a common base to this organisational ‘superstructure’, it is in the flow of federal dollars into the region and the political factors that allowed local agencies and organisations to acquire resources for their own area’s recovery and development ends. Beyond that, this assemblage of programmes and plans is particular to this disaster and reflects local conditions and political organisation at the research sites.

The county and local reconstruction programmes are examples of success in ‘working the system’ to local advantage. At its most innovative, this involved the coupling of disaster relief with broader efforts at community development (cf. Anderson and Woodrow, 1989; Maskrey, 1989) using ‘non-disaster’ federal funds, made available in this instance, because of the disaster. The prime examples are in the redevelopment projects for both communities that will, when complete, substantially ‘make over’ their respective downtown areas with new buildings which meet current codes, together with new roads, parks and other urban amenities. Federal disaster- assistance agencies currently exhibit new-found flexibility in supporting community- based programmes through various intermediary county and municipality-level funding mechanisms (e.g., Wallrich, 1996). Local organisations, using knowledgeable, locally recruited staff and funded directly or indirectly by HUD and the EDA, were active in promoting development and recovery projects beyond the reach of FEMA’s individual assistance programmes.

Unmet needs and recovery issues inVentura County

The main shock of the Northridge earthquake, combined with several magnitude 5.0 or above aftershocks, destroyed some 329 buildings in Fillmore and heavily damaged another 348, according to Fillmore Building Department figures. Estimated losses to homes and businesses in Fillmore are placed at $50 million. The village of Piru, by comparison, had 16 residences destroyed and another 33 heavily damaged (approxi- mately 15 per cent of the building stock) with total losses estimated at $3 million. Business districts in both towns were significantly disrupted, with 28 damaged commercial structures in Fillmore (housing more than 60 businesses) and 16 in Piru. Piru’s small central business district effectively closed down due to the hazardous condition of the structures and the permanent closure of its bank.

Issues that emerged quickly at both sites were reconstruction of the business districts and the repair/replacement of damaged housing. The existing shortage of affordable housing was intensified by the earthquake as several hundred mostly small

Northridge Earthquake: Unmet Recovery Needs 29

older homes were damaged or destroyed. While the specifics of recovery issues differed in Piru and Fillmore, the same group of NGOs, CBOs and county agencies have been involved in both communities. Fillmore, through its own Redevelopment Agency (in existence before the earthquake) has implemented a business district recovery and development plan. Unincorporated Piru has had to depend on the county to secure federal and state funds for the reconstruction of its business district. To that end, in May 1995 the Ventura County Board of Supervisors formed the County Redevelopment Agency as a funding vehicle for Piru reconstruction. The agency has targeted Piru with funds obtained from both EDA and HUD. In 1996, using $200,000 grants from each agency, it created a comprehensive ‘Piru Enhancement Plan’, which will spearhead major infrastructural and business district improvements in the village. Both Fillmore and Piru are currently having their central business districts rebuilt according to master plans intended to enhance their respective historical characters while providing improved community amenities and better seismic safety.

The development of new housing for low-income households has been much more contentious than the elaborate business district reconstruction plans. Low-income housing, particularly housing designated for (Latino) farm workers has been a historically volatile issue in Ventura County (e.g., Bee, 1984; Palerm, 1991; Vaupel, 1992). The last 20 years have seen occasional political conflict in the county between farm labourers and their employers over both working conditions and housing (Menchaca, 1995; Peirce and Guskind, 1993). Low-cost housing for the working poor raises community development issues that lie outside of market logic. Developers want to use the limited land available in Ventura County to build higher-priced homes that will generate acceptable profits. (Strict zoning in the county seeks to preserve most of the land for agricultural uses.) Decent and secure housing for low-income people cannot generate significant returns on investments and is not consequently of interest to commercial developers.

The ‘profits’ from affordable housing derive from contributions to the moral economy of the communities, not to the political economy. Rather than enriching landlords and developers, the availability of such housing improves the lives of people in ways that are not calculable in monetary terms. Affordable housing available to those with limited means can promote place-based collective identities and solidarities among residents and provide more secure homes for people whose lives are often in precarious balance between limited resources and their basic needs.

Support for low-cost housing has come mainly from various CBOs and NGOs seeking to assist low-income households, older retirees on fixed incomes and Latino farm workers with their housing needs. While several projects have been undertaken by CBOs in the Fillmore area in the recent past to build low-cost, co-operatively owned housing (Bee, 1982; Menchaca, 1995; Peirce and Guskind, 1993), these efforts have consistently met with resistance from local political interests representing middle-class Anglos. This historical resistance to housing farm workers has produced a spatial peripheralisation of farm worker housing. What little housing that has been built has been located in the spaces between communities and away from the Anglo middle class, in an example of what Sibley (1995) has called the ‘geographies of exclusion’.

The Northridge earthquake created renewed pressure to respond to these long- standing housing problems, this time as part of the reconstruction effort. While political support for low-income housing has been weak, particularly in Fillmore

30 Robert Bolin and Lois Stanford

(Menchaca, 1995), the earthquake shifted the political terrain enough that the affordable housing problem is now being addressed. Two CBOs that have been active in developing housing for poor households in Ventura County are Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation and Affordable Communities, Incorporated. Both have used the earthquake and the subsequent resource availability to promote low-income housing developments, albeit with mixed success.

Cabrillo was originally established as a non-profit organisation in 1968, committed to the construction of affordable housing for agricultural workers in Ventura County (Menchaca, 1995). Following the 1994 earthquake, Cabrillo used political openings and resources generated by the crisis to propose a low-income housing project in Fillmore. In May 1994, Cabrillo received a grant of $400,000 from the Fillmore’s Redevelopment Agency as part of $4.3 million in HUD block grants to Ventura County. This money was designated to fund Cabrillo’s project for an 81-unit housing development in Fillmore. The project was to include 30 units of farm worker housing, 30 units of apartments for very low-income families and 21 units of ‘affordable’ single-family homes. Priced at approximately $139,000, these homes are close to $100,000 under the median for the Los Angeles region. Earthquake victims were to be given priority on both rentals and home purchases in the development. However, Cabrillo’s project, although funded and approved by the city Redevelopment Agency, met with resistance from the Fillmore City Council. Council members and residents expressed concern about the location and potential ‘social impact’ of the proposed development. After a series of negotiations, the landowner who had originally agreed to the sale of land for the development retracted the offer. As of this writing, the project, although funded, has yet to find a location acceptable to city planning authorities. As elsewhere in California, Fillmore residents, including landowners, continue to resist efforts to house farm workers in the very community that depends on wealth generated from their labour (cf. Bolin and Stanford, 1991).

While Cabrillo’s effectiveness has been limited by continuing political opposition, Affordable Communities has been able to negotiate its way past potential opponents, acquire land and begin the construction of low-income housing in Piru. It is important, of course, that Piru, unlike Fillmore, does not have an entrenched Anglo power structure (e.g., Menchaca, 1995). While Affordable Communities’ plans to build a 148-unit low-cost housing subdivision in Piru had been approved prior to the earthquake, the disaster facilitated both funding and speed of implementation. The original plan for 113 houses and 35 apartment units was developed in consultation with the residents of Piru, and it used their input to develop culturally appropriate housing for the larger Latino households that are common in the area. Because of the housing crisis generated by the earthquake, the county streamlined the permit process for the development, allowing construction to begin within a year of the main shock (subdivision permit processing can take up to 10 years). In addition, the county gave an interest-free $275,000 loan to Affordable Communities to pay permit fees. The company was also able to obtain an additional $500,000 as part of a HUD mortgage assistance programme through the county. Those funds will assist low-income home buyers with down payments on the homes being built by Affordable Communities. Six of the 35 apartment units will be set aside for low-income elderly in the area. These will be purchased and managed by the County Area Agency on Ageing through a $360,000 grant from Ventura County block grants.

Northridge Earthquake: Unmet Recovery Needs 31

Community Development Block Grant funds have also been used to support the repair and rehabilitation of homes of low- to moderate-income people that were damaged in the earthquake. People who had exhausted all other sources of FEMA and OES assistance and still had unmet needs in recovery were able to obtain assistance from local programmes funded by the CDBGs. A key CBO in Fillmore active in assisting those with unmet needs was ‘Rebuild: Hand to Hand’, known locally by its Spanish name,Mano a Mano. It was organised and incorporated two months after the earthquake out of a coalition of local churches, businesses and civic organisations from both Fillmore and Piru. Its early effectiveness was spearheaded by a staff of well- known local community members. It facilitated contacts between other NGOs, such as Habitat for Humanity, and disaster victims with unmet recovery needs. From its initial establishment in early March 1994,Mano a Manoprogrammes assisted low-income households with the purchase of materials to repair damaged homes and organised volunteer construction crews to carry out the work. Many of the volunteers came from work crews from the Mennonite Disaster Services who arrived in Fillmore and Piru shortly after the earthquake. As in other disasters, the Mennonites provided free labour for home rebuilding to any who requested it.

A central component in fundingMano a Manoprogrammes during their first year of operation was a grant obtained from Fillmore CDBG funds. The organisation received $575,000 as part of a joint programme with the Fillmore Redevelopment Agency to buy building materials for low-income victims experiencing recovery problems. By March 1995,Mano a Manohad completed 40 home rebuilding and repair projects. By providing financial resources and co-ordinating volunteer labour, Mano a Manowas able to assist a significant number of households who had failed to receive adequate federal resources to repair their homes. However, by the end of 1995, funding for Mano a Manoran out and it ceased operating. Local staff moved to other CBOs where they have continued to work with needy victims in the area. WhileMano a Manohad important local contacts and legitimacy in the community, its staff lacked the grant-writing skills of more experienced NGOs also working in the area. Thus, longer-term funding for community projects went to those NGOs in Ventura County which had the staff and bureaucratic expertise for acquiring resources.

Habitat for Humanity, an international NGO involved in other post-disaster development projects in the US, worked withMano a Manoduring the first 18 months of recovery. Habitat offered assistance to low- and middle-income homeowners needing to repair their houses in cases where FEMA and SBA money did not provide them with sufficient funds. According to Habitat organisers, there were many cases where FEMA underestimated actual repair costs to homes because inspectors lacked familiarity with California building codes and construction techniques used in the area. Habitat targeted its home repair services towards lower-income households who received little assistance from FEMA. To ensure homeowner participation, recipients of Habitat assistance were required to donate one hour of volunteer service in return for each $100 spent on their home repair materials. By working with volunteer labour, Habitat allowed homeowners to target earthquake relief money for building materials and thus stretch funds further than if they used commercial contractors. As part of their repair activities, Habitat volunteers undertook major rebuilding projects on 15 homes in Fillmore and five in Piru, in addition to numerous small home repair projects for low-income victims in both communities. By 1996, Habitat substantially increased its rehabilitation work with lower-income Fillmore and Piru households. To that end,

32 Robert Bolin and Lois Stanford

Habitat obtained $1.1 million in block grant funds from the County Redevelopment Agency to build 22 new homes in Piru for very low-income households. Interest-free mortgages will be made available to allow poor families to purchase the homes. The Habitat homes project, combined with Affordable Communities’ multi-unit project will increase by 50 per cent the total housing stock in Piru, resulting in a significant transformation of the community over the next few years.

Trends and implications for recovery

Our purpose in this paper has been to examine how parts of an $11 billion federal resource pool were used to meet the needs of the vulnerable in Piru and Fillmore and to address longer-term housing issues. While FEMA and SBA made billions of dollars in grants and loans available, the money was not necessarily accessible to low-income and ethnic-minority households at our research sites. A number of federal programmes are intended for (middle-class) homeowners, and they are most accessible to those who have the knowledge, skills and time to work through the application process. SBA loans, important in allowing higher-income homeowners to finance reconstruction, were largely unobtainable for the poor homeowners and lower-income renters in our study sites. Lower-income residents in Piru and Fillmore were unlikely to qualify for any federal programmes beyond Individual and Family Grants, a programme that can only minimally compensate people with chronic deficits in terms of housing and financial resources. The $22,200 IFG maximum was obtainable only under excep- tional circumstances and average grants at our sites averaged only 5 per cent of that amount. The larger concern with FEMA’s various individual assistance programmes is that they focus on shorter-term issues and do not address problems of long-term vulnerability for historically marginalised groups. For most federal programmes, the assumption is that people’s problems begin with the disaster and therefore only those problems will be addressed with recovery assistance. However, as vulnerability analysis shows, the problems people experience in disasters are frequently traceable to already-existing constraints on their access to resources and livelihoods. While federal programmes were universally available to qualified applicants, they were not necessarily accessible to individuals who, because of a combination of ethnicity, age, nationality or poverty, could not successfully obtain adequate, or any, assistance.

More positively, the federal government exhibited significant flexibility in funding community programmes. This has allowed the combining of recovery, reconstruction and development through an ensemble of localised programmes, offered by both local government agencies and non-governmental organisations. In developing and implementing these programmes, local participation has been encouraged, and planning with citizen input has taken precedence over unrestricted market forces in longer-range development projects. Community-based organisations, if they have the co-operation and fiscal support of political decision-makers at all levels, can be an effective way of responding to the unmet needs of low-income ethnically diverse victims such as those in our study sites (Wallrich, 1996). By developing programmes attuned to specific local needs, particularly those not met by conventional federal programmes, the needs of the persistently vulnerable can begin to be addressed, particularly in the realm of affordable housing that meets current seismic codes.

In Ventura County, sympathetic county administrators, working in concert with

Northridge Earthquake: Unmet Recovery Needs 33

activist CBOs and NGOs and using federal funds (available because of the earth- quake), were able to combine local recovery efforts with longer-range development projects. As such, the county government mediated access to federal resources for vulnerable class and ethnic groups historically under-represented in full economic and political participation. The NGOs, by using local knowledge and expertise, and establishing progressive working relationships with city, county and federal agencies, were able to implement programmes that connected victims with unmet needs to a diversity of resources. By targeting poorer households that were not adequately served by standard FEMA/SBA disaster programmes, they were able to promote timely recovery and in some instances create situations that enhanced the living conditions of poorer households. By beginning to address chronic housing problems for low-income households, including older pensioners and Latino agricultural workers, these efforts are important steps towards increased housing security for the vulnerable. The effectiveness of locally focused programmes, both governmental and NGO, will continue to depend on the organisations’ abilities to work effectively with local residents and citizen groups on the one hand, and with federal agencies to obtain funds, on the other.

Yet, given the growing income polarisation in the state, the substantial migrant flows, and the rapid growth of a large multi-ethnic low-wage working class in California (Davis, 1992; Soja, 1996; Zavella, 1991), vulnerability issues, of the kinds discussed here, are being reproduced throughout the state. Mechanisms should be in place within the federal disaster bureaucracy to guarantee the timely flow of resources into NGOs so they can develop and implement programmes that ensure disaster recovery is tailored to local needs. It would also take pressure off the federal system if new funding approaches were developed that would support local recovery and assistance programmes for individuals that did not first require that they be denied federal grants and loans. The programmes reviewed here required all applicants to have first applied through the federal system and been turned down before qualifying for local programmes. This often produced delays in acquiring any assistance as some, particularly more-recent immigrants, were reluctant to go to the DACs to begin the application process, in spite of FEMA’s considerable outreach efforts.

As many of the ‘recovery problems’ faced in these communities related to housing and resource issues in existence long before the earthquake, effective recovery programmes must address these chronic conditions of vulnerability. By linking recovery funding with broader plans for sustainable and equitable development, more fundamental steps can be taken to reduce socially produced vulnerability. To address substantially the underlying causes of vulnerability for the culturally and socio- economically marginalised would appear to require increases in the availability of resources for, and political commitment to, safe, decent housing and opportunities for secure livelihoods. Obviously the programmes discussed here will not, by themselves, alter the social relations of production that have produced poverty and income polarisation in the region nor the cultural politics that go with that polarisation. Similarly, the fact that Piru, with its majority of poor working-class Latinos, will have the largest low-income housing developments may simply reinforce existing patterns of ‘ghettoising’ poor ethnic groups away from middle-class Anglo populations in the county.

Given the current US political conservatism and the attendant efforts at slashing social spending, federal funding at Northridge levels in future disasters may well be

34 Robert Bolin and Lois Stanford

unlikely. Continuing conservative Republican efforts at eliminating HUD, if success- ful, would essentially eliminate the funding source for all the programmes described here. Thus, the successes of local organisations and agencies in directing Northridge disaster funds towards those with unmet needs, and for enhancing community development, may not be repeated without significant political redirection at the national level. Yet the evidence from these case studies suggests that a combination of informed local activism coupled with financial and organisational support from government agencies and NGOs, can be an effective means of developing and implementing programmes that go beyond simply ‘fixing’ what the earthquake damaged. Identifying and addressing the social and economic conditions that create vulnerable populations should be a key focus of local recovery and development programmes. Our research suggests that participatory and collaborative efforts between government agencies, local non-profit organisations and residents can produce innovative and context-sensitive responses to the needs of vulnerable people caught up in a disaster.

Acknowledgement

Funding for research described in this paper has been provided by the National Science Foundation under grant No. CMS-9415721, Robert Bolin and Lois Stanford, Principal Investigators. The findings and conclusions presented here are those of the authors and are not intended to represent the views of the National Science Foundation.

Notes

1. Both CBOs and NGOs are part of the category of non-profit service organisations. The distinction between CBOs and NGOs is approximate. For our purposes a CBO is a non-profit organisation that has a local or regional base and is not part of a national or international organisation. Thus we consider organisations such as the Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity as NGOs although they may have local branches that deal only with local communities. Some CBOs were formed specifically to deal with the Northridge disaster while others extended their existing operations to deal with disaster-related issues. While NGOs typically have more expertise with national and international systems of disaster relief, CBOs have more local contacts and local knowledge about immediate needs and conditions.

2. The metropolitan area of Los Angeles spans the countries of Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside. It is a highly fragmented political terrain with a complex mix of city and county governments with jurisdictions over a range of cities, municipalities and unincorporated areas. Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles are separate political entities. In addition to the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County houses more than 80 other cities, each with its own city government, as well as 145 named districts and ‘minimal cities’ (Miller, 1981) that contract most of their urban services from the county of Los Angeles. According to Scott and Soja (1996) the Los Angeles metropolitan region is the sixth largest ‘megacity’ in the world. The term southern California is used to designate an area inclusive of the entire Los Angeles metropolitan area in addition to the San Diego metropolitan area to its south, and in total has a population of 15 million (Davis, 1992).

3. Orange County was also included in the federal disaster declaration although it had sustained very little damage. No DACs were opened in Orange County. In our discussion of Northridge we will refer only to Los Angeles and Ventura counties as

Northridge Earthquake: Unmet Recovery Needs 35

the disaster area. Hurricane Andrew, which devastated parts of Miami, Florida in 1992, caused estimated losses in excess of $25 billion. However, because insurance coverage of homeowners and businesses was much greater than in Northridge, the actual cost of federal assistance was less than half of the California disaster.

4. The state of California has recently enacted legislation creating the California Earthquake Authority which will offer earthquake insurance through private insurance companies for all homeowners and renters on their houses and contents. The policies offered are limited to home and contents only and carry a 15 per cent deductible based on the total value of the home. Thus for a $300,000 home the insured would have to pay $45,000 deductible if her home were destroyed by an earthquake. Policies offered through the CEA will cost approximately twice what current earthquake insurance costs in the state, have a 5 to 10 per cent larger deductible and not cover ancillary property on the home site. As Comerio et al. (1996) note, the measure falls far short of providing a private insurance fund to pay 100 per cent of recovery costs. Earthquake insurance remains a viable earthquake recovery option only for higher income homeowners who can afford the premiums and the potentially very large deductibles (cf. Hay, 1996).

5. The research is based on extensive in-depth interviews with agency representatives, key community informants, programme managers, service providers and individual households conducted over a two-year period in both Los Angeles and Ventura counties. A total of 75 agency and key informant interviews were taped and transcribed producing hundreds of pages of text. We identified initial agency and organisational respondents by official position and then relied on referrals to a network of other key actors in the communities. Our household information was gleaned through approximately 55 in-depth interviews with householders and through a series of six focus group interviews, each ranging from five to 10 people. The latter were arranged through the assistance of local community leaders and allowed us to interview different groups representing categories of victims said to be experiencing difficulties in recovering. We also arranged to have interviews conducted with undocumented Mexican workers, but cannot divulge numbers for confidentiality reasons. In addition, our research group attended meetings, constructed historical chronologies of the first two years of the disaster, and collected and analysed hundreds of documents and reports from federal, state and local government agencies, and NGOs.

6. We use the term Latino to refer to people with ancestry from Latin American countries. Because Latino is masculine, it is sometimes presented as Latino/a or Latino/Latina. While we use Latino throughout the paper, we refer to both men and women. In the portion of our study reported here, these are primarily people of Mexican origin. The US Census Bureau uses the term Hispanic to refer to persons with Spanish surnames. We emphasise that there is significant ethnic, national origin and class variation of the Latino population of southern California. The term should not be taken to imply a homogeneous ethnic category nor does it imply that a person is an immigrant, as California was part of Mexico until 1848 and thus has a resident Latino population that has been in the US far longer than most Anglo-European immigrants. The term Anglo is used in the south-western United States to refer the white, non-Latino population, irrespective of actual European ancestry. We use Anglo in this paper as it is conventionally used when discussing ethnic relations between Latinos and ‘whites’.

7. Incorporation refers to a political and legal status of communities by which they establish their own elected local governing structure, usually in the form of a mayor and city council. Incorporated communities have the legal authority to levy taxes and typically provide citizens with police and fire protection as well as other urban services. Unincorporated communities lack autonomous local governance and rely on county governments to provide police and fire protection and related services. In US

36 Robert Bolin and Lois Stanford

census records, unincorporated areas are usually listed as part of data on the county. Unincorporated communities such as Piru can remain virtually invisible in damage reports as the relevant data are folded into the loss data for the county. On most OES maps of damaged areas, Piru does not appear.

References

Anderson, M. and P. Woodrow (1989)Rising from the Ashes. Westview, Boulder. Bee, P. (1984) CUP 4145: Will 100 Units of Farmworker Housing Be Built in Ventura

County. Unpublished thesis, the Consortium of the California State University. Blaikie, P., T. Cannon, I. Davis and B. Wisner (1994)At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s

Vulnerability, and Disasters.Routledge, New York. Bolin, R. (1994)Household and Community Recovery after Earthquakes.Monograph No.

56, Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, Boulder. —— and L. Stanford (1991) Shelter, Housing, and Recovery: A Comparison of US

Disasters.Disasters15(1): 25–34. Cannon, T. (1994) Vulnerability Analysis and the Explanation of ‘Natural’ Disasters. In A.

Varley (ed.)Disasters, Development and Environment. Wiley, London. Chambers, R. (1983)Rural Development: Putting the Last First. Longman, London. Comerio, M. (1995)The Northridge Earthquake Housing Losses.Report to the California

Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, Center for Environmental Design Research, University of California, Berkeley.

—— , J. Landis, C. Firpo and J. Monzon (1996)Residential Earthquake Recovery: Improving California’s Post-Disaster Rebuilding Policies and Programs. California Policy Seminar Brief Series, Berkeley.

Davis, M. (1992)City of Quartz.Vintage, New York. —— (1995) How Eden Lost Its Garden: A Political History of the LA Landscape.

Capitalism Nature Socialism6(4): 1–30. —— (1996) Water Pirates and the Infinite Suburb.Capitalism Nature Socialism7(2): 81–

5. Dyer, C. (1996) The Phoenix Effect in Post-Disaster Recovery: Economic Development

Administration’s Post-Disaster Recovery Programme after Hurricane Andrew. Paper Presented at the Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco.

Hay, I. (1996) Neoliberalism and Criticisms of Earthquake Insurance Arrangements in New Zealand.Disasters20(1): 34–48.

Hendrie, B. (1997) Knowledge and Power: A Critique of an International Relief Operation. Disasters21(1): 57–76.

Hewitt, K. (1983)Interpretations of Calamity. Allen and Unwin, London. —— (1995) Excluded Perspectives in the Social Construction of Disaster.International

Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters13(3): 317–40. Kent, R. (1987)Anatomy of Disaster Relief. Pinter, London. Maskrey, A. (1989)Disaster Mitigation: A Community Based Approach.Development

Guidelines No. 3, Oxfam, Oxford. —— (1993) Los Desastros NO Son Naturales.La Red/ITDG, Bogota. Menchaca, M. (1995)The Mexican Outsiders.University of Texas Press, Austin. Miller, G. (1981)Cities by Contract: The Politics of Municipal Incorporation.MIT Press,

Cambridge. Morrow, B. and E. Enarson (1996) Hurricane Andrew through Women’s Eyes: Issues and

Recommendations.International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters14(1): 5–22.

Neal, D. and B. Phillips (1995) Effective Emergency Management: Reconsidering the Bureaucratic Approach.Disasters19(4): 327–37.

OES (Governor’s Office of Emergency Services) (1995)The Northridge Earthquake of January 17, 1994: Preliminary Report of Data Collection and Analysis.Part A:

Northridge Earthquake: Unmet Recovery Needs 37

Damage and Inventory Data, EQE International and the Geographic Information Systems Group of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, Sacramento.

Oliver-Smith, A. (1994) Peru’s Five Hundred Year Earthquake. Vulnerability in Historical Context. In A. Varley (ed.)Disasters, Development and Environment.Wiley, London.

Palerm, J. (1991)Farm Labour Needs and Farm Workers in California 1970–1989. California Agricultural Studies. Employment Development Department. Sacramento.

Palm, R. and M. Hodgson (1992)After a California Earthquake.Geography Research Paper No. 233, University of Chicago, Chicago.

Peirce, N. and R. Guskind (1993)Breakthroughs: Re-creating the American City. Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Pettiford, L. (1995) Toward a Redefinition of Security in Central America: The Case of Natural Disasters.Disasters19(2): 148–55.

Schulte, J. (1991) The Politics of Disaster: An Examination of Class and Ethnicity in the Struggle for Power following the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake in Watsonville, California. Unpublished MA Thesis, California State University, Sacramento.

Sibley, D. (1995) Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West. Routledge, London.

Slim, H. (1995) The Continuing Metamorphosis of the Humanitarian Practitioner: Some New Colours for an Endangered Chameleon.Disasters19(2): 110–26.

Soja, E. (1989)Postmodern Geographies.Verso, London. —— (1996) Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other Real-and-Imagined Places.

Blackwell, Oxford. —— and A. Scott, (1996) Introduction to Los Angeles: City and Region. In A. Scott and E.

Soja (eds.)The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century.University of California Press, Berkeley.

Stallings, R. (1995)Promoting Risk: Constructing the Earthquake Threat.Aldine de Gruyter, New York.

Stanford, L. and R. Bolin (1996) Constructing Vulnerability in the First World: The Northridge Earthquake in Southern California, 1994. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco.

SSC (Seismic Safety Commission State of California) (1995)Northridge Earthquake: Turning Loss to Gain. Report to the Governor.SSC Report 95-01, Sacramento.

Vaupel, S. (1992)A Study of Women Agricultural Workers in Ventura County, California. Committee on Women in Agriculture, Ventura County, California.

Watts, M. (1992) Capitalisms, Crises, and Cultures I: Notes Toward a Totality of Fragments. In A. Pred and M. Watts (eds.)Reworking Modernity: Capitalism and Symbolic Discontent.Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick.

Wallrich, B. (1996) The Evolving Role of Community-Based Organisations in Disaster Recovery. Natural Hazards Observer21(2): 12–13.

Wisner, B. (1993) Disaster Vulnerability: Scale, Power and Daily Life.GeoJournal30(2): 127–40.

Zavella, P. (1991)Mujeresin Factories: Race Perspectives on Women, Work, and Family. In M. di Leonardo (ed.) Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era.University of California Press, Berkeley.

Addressforcorrespondence: Department of Sociology, Box 872101, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 82287-2101, USA. E-mail: << [email protected] >>

38 Robert Bolin and Lois Stanford