Fighting “Disaster Fatigue”
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2023
⏱️ 24 minutes
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Summary
It feels like we live in a world of near constant environmental disasters. Whether it’s living through an emergency, or consuming coverage in the media, collective trauma takes a mental toll. What steps can we take to be ready—for ourselves, our communities, and to help the recovery?
Guest: Dr. Tara Powell, associate professor, School of Social Work, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
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Transcript
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| 1:04.3 | Just for a minute, try to tick off all of the disasters you read about over the last few weeks. |
| 1:10.0 | And we are live again tonight from Maui reporting from the fires in Maui, |
| 1:15.4 | because it is grappling with the worst natural disaster in its history. The earthquake in Morocco. |
| 1:21.3 | And now Libya is trying to recover from stunning floods. |
| 1:32.6 | Libya is now coping with major flooding that has wiped out entire villages and reportedly killed |
| 1:40.0 | thousands of people. The pictures are just staggering. There are these eerily silent drone shots |
| 1:47.2 | showing mud-soaked rivers overrunning their banks. Of course, with seeing these images of |
| 1:52.0 | just water everywhere, cars were swept away, people swept away. And here in the US, |
| 1:58.5 | the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association released a report just this week saying that 2023 |
| 2:05.6 | set a record for the number of billion dollar weather events. And the year, it's not over. |
| 2:12.8 | It left me with this question. Did you feel like the summer of disasters to you? Or is it just me? |
... |
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