/Everything in Its Path, Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek 
Flood/, Kai T. Erikson, 1976, 284p.

Katrina, 9/11, Chernobyl, Holocaust - these are subjects that have been 
of interest to me since 9/11.

There seems to be something very compelling in the desire to help out 
our fellow humans after a tragic disaster. More compelling, and 
difficult I believe when the disaster was largely caused by humans, more 
so our pain and the depth of our confusion than if it is solely a 
natural disaster such as an earthquake or tsunami.

One of the issues that has been of concern to me in work to help folks 
in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region is that we not show up as 
'tourists of disaster'. A problem that we face when we make an attempt 
to arm our own personal selves with the protection of an envelope of 
distance from the danger of finding ourselves swallowed up and 
overwhelmed by communal feelings that can quickly disable us when we 
enter into a place where all things human and community have been made 
detached and horrible.

This book, in making a very human reflection on the sociology of the 
Buffalo Creek flood <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Creek_Flood> 
and the impact on human lives and community gives a very good vantage 
from which to understand and help to manage our levels of human empathy 
and to balance the need of our own mental health and our desire to 
engage our empathy against the self-protective girding of our own 
insensitivities.

As Kai Erikson makes clear when a population that has experienced 
disaster is  absorbed into a larger population the overall impact of 
trauma is reduced. When a very large population is affected, as in the 
Gulf Region, the occasional foray of small groups of the unaffected can 
either be one in which the smaller group is overwhelmed and disturbed in 
their own communal and individual ways, or that the smaller group comes 
across to the region as insensitive to a deeper understanding of the 
pain of the survivors.

This book helps the understanding. The overwhelming message in the end 
is that we are all residents of Buffalo Creek.

][<

On their 2001 release White Blood Cells 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Blood_Cells_%28album%29>, The White 
Stripes <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Stripes> song "This 
Protector" alludes to the Buffalo Creek Disaster from the federal mine 
inspector point-of-view, through lyrics such as "300 people living out 
in West Virginia/have no idea of all these thoughts that lie within ya".

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