PhD student Tanya Gulliver featured in radio documentary on disaster response and mental health

PhD student Tanya Gulliver was interviewed by freelance documentary producer Tina Pittaway in The Day the Water Died, a documentary about how people in Louisiana and Alabama are dealing with the combined psychological fallout and stress of Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. CBC's The Current featured the documentary June 9: With […]

Professor Jennifer Hyndman: Humanitarian aid can fuel a war if not done carefully

York sociology and geography Professor Jennifer Hyndman knows a little about disasters. She also knows a benign water project run by humanitarian aid agencies can fuel a war if careful attention is not paid to the political and cultural landscape. Hyndman was in Sri Lanka within months of the 2004 tsunami. She saw first-hand not […]

PhD student Tanya Gulliver: Can Canada handle a Gulf-style oil disaster?

If a monster iceberg (like those now being formed from the melting of the Greenland ice shield) was to collide with the Hibernia platform, says Michael Klare, a noted American oil expert, author and academic, it could prove to be far more devastating than last year’s BP spill, which dumped almost five million barrels into […]

Professor Ali Asgary: How the experts calculate the death toll in disasters

The death toll in Japan has continued to climb since last Friday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami, wrote the National Post blog "Posted" March 16 in a Q&A article: Official estimates suggest 10,000 people have died, although the police chief of the hard-hit Miyagi prefecture said this week he expects the toll to exceed that in […]

Leading researchers discuss BP oil spill and potential for Canadian oil disasters March 9

The risk of a catastrophe on the scale of BP’s offshore Deepwater Horizon disaster happening in Canada poses a real threat to people’s health and the economy. At the Oil: Slick Suits and Sinister Scenarios symposium tomorrow, leading researchers in risk, disaster management, ethics and the environment will provide insights into the murky world of oil and […]

What can we learn Haiti's earthquake to better prepare for future disasters?

How can we respond faster and better to disasters such as last year’s earthquake in Haiti? That’s the challenge speakers, first-response practitioners, emergency managers, researchers and educators will discuss at the The Haiti Earthquake of Jan. 2010: Lessons Learned seminar next week at York. The seminar, being held one year after the earthquake, will take place […]

Social Work prof assists healing and cultural restoration in China's earthquake-ravaged Sichuan province

With any kind of catastrophe, such as the recent earthquake in Haiti, helping victims cope and figuring out what to do differently in the future can take years. This is something York social work Professor Renita Wong knows a thing or two about. Following the 2008 8.0-magnitude earthquake in the Sichuan province of China, Wong has […]