Long-Term Disaster Trauma Is Common

An urban disaster--like a death in the family--can continue to wreak misery on its victims many years after the initial trauma is over.

This is true not only for Los Angeles but for other cities that have recently suffered from an urban disaster, said Mary C. Comerio, a UC Berkeley researcher who has written a book on urban disasters, including the Northridge earthquake.

In the Bay Area, many public buildings remain in disrepair--including San Francisco City Hall--more than eight years after the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Scores of brick buildings throughout San Francisco remain in danger of collapse because required seismic safety work has not been completed--or, in some cases, even begun.

“It has taken until last year, seven years after the Loma Prieta quake, for Oakland to rebuild 1,300 units of low-income housing” lost in the disaster, Comerio said. “A lot of housing in San Francisco has still not been replaced.”

Recovery in the Bay Area has taken so long that it was only six months ago that Caltrans finally reopened a stretch of the Cypress Freeway, which collapsed in the quake, killing 42 motorists. Caltrans officials say another half a dozen freeway projects in the Bay Area will be completed in the next year.

In South Dade County, Fla., Congress put Homestead Air Force Base on its base closure list not long before Hurricane Andrew hit the area in August 1992, making the closure immediate. The double economic blow caused the area to lose more than 8,000 jobs and displaced about 353,000 residents.

Today--more than five years later--most of the jobs and many of the displaced residents have yet to return.