PSYC 431: Psychology of Disasters
Tamey Greene
Jonathan Avenido
July 31, 2016
Lusitania was one of the largest ships to have set sail on the River Clyde. The New York Times stated that the impressive ship was unsinkable, powerful, and the most fastest ship in the world. When War World 1started in 1914, when required Lusitania and her sister ships, Mauritania and Aquitania, were used for war duties by the British. Lusitania was allowed to continue to be used for services for the transatlantic passengers. Before Lusitania sailed from the New York harbor, there was a rumor that the ship was carrying high explosives. On May 6th the Lusitania was hit by several torpedoes that exploded …show more content…
The emotions of grief and loss are strong at this stage, and so is the emotion of heroism. This is when another person puts aside their own trauma experience to help others in need. Depending on the extent of the disaster, the honeymoon phase can happen a few days or three to six months after the disaster occurred. In the honeymoon phase the survivors begin to feel relief that they and their loved ones had survived and they also start to have high expectations on the help that they were promised and expected to receive to rebuild their lives. In this stage volunteers become easier to recruit and communication is the key to helping the volunteers learn how to give the right kind of help. The third phase disillusionment is when survivors begin to feel a strong sense of bitterness, anger, and disappointment of the unfulfilled promises that were made by Government agencies. The Government will give out assistance to the survivors, but with conditions and this can take a few months or up to two years. This is when survivors start to rebuild there live as individuals and not as a community. The last phase of disaster of recovery is reconstruction, this is the longest phase and can last for several years after a disaster. The emotions of this phase is that the survivors have the harsh realization that they are responsible for resolving their own problems in their lives. It is …show more content…
Disaster risk reduction is a very important aspect in disaster management, because without it could lead to significant damage or loss. Cultures have used what they learned from one generation to the next to hand down strategies that are used to survive. Most cultures like to solve their own problems among themselves or their communities on their own. When the Government gets involved with a disaster they tend to overlook the cultural aspects while planning and enforcing DRR strategies (Hoffman 1999; Wisner et al, 2004). This results in foiled government intervention, and this is because they neglected to consider the cultural components of the community. In order for this to change the government would need to to provide awareness to the community about the dangers that they can encounter from strictly following their culture beliefs. For more lives to be saved the community would need to let the government mitigate disaster strategies and evacuations so they can have a better chance for survival and