A 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck the northeast shore of Japan’s central island on Tuesday, bringing back memories of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed around 20,000 people, and reigniting the debate around the country’s capacity to safeguard against any future nuclear calamities. It may have also been worse than was thought, as the Japanese weather service is reporting that the earthquake was a magnitude 7.4. The scare did not result in any casualties, but a frozen nuclear campus just south of the Fukushima plant that was hit in 2011 did experience a brief malfunction.

Japan has 54 nuclear plants, most of which have been closed since the Fukushima Daiichi plant was inundated by water in 2011. The plant is still undergoing a clean-up effort, though it was briefly paused on Tuesday. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would like to restart Japan’s reactors, but nearly 70 percent of the Japanese public is against that idea.

#Fukushima
Right now just prayers are needed! #PrayForJapan pic.twitter.com/XYhaa3NnMU

— شادا شرارتی (@shararti714) November 22, 2016

In the aftermath of the 2011 disaster–many Japanese refer to the event as 3/11–the public and advocacy groups have been critical of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, the company that operates three plants, including Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini, the plant that was hit Tuesday. Tepco was quick to assuage any fears after the quake struck this time around, issuing a series of tweets chronicling their progress in responding to the quake.

#Fukushima Daiichi and Daini Units – no abnormalities found, no radiation level changes detected, no injuries reported after the earthquake

— TEPCO (@TEPCO_English) November 22, 2016

Advocates who are against nuclear plants in general responded with cautious optimism in regards to Tepco’s response. The director of the Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition at Nagasaki University, Tatsujiro Suzuki, told The New York Times the response was “decent,” adding: “We should be informed fully whether this operation is reasonably done with cost effectiveness and safety and making sure that the best technology is being used.”

The bulk of Japan’s energy comes from imported natural gas, coal, and crude oil. The Fukushima incident forced Japan to reshuffle its energy portfolio, and today the country sources only one percent of its energy from nuclear power plants. In March, Abe expressed the need to reintegrate nuclear energy, saying Japan “cannot do without nuclear power to secure the stability of energy supply while considering what makes economic sense and the issue of climate change.”

All of that was an afterthought on Tuesday however, when #PrayForJapan was trending on Twitter, and an entire country was on edge, memories of five years ago rushing back like a tidal wave.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Welcome to the RantCrush Top 5, where we take you through the top five controversial and crazy stories in the world of law and policy each day. So who is ranting and who is raving today? Check it out below:

Why Are People Overdosing On Anti-Diarrhea Drugs?

It seems like America’s drug problem has reached a bizarre new low. People are taking crazy high doses of anti-poop meds, like Imodium, to get high. Sounds like the plot of a comedy sketch, I know, but this is serious. The appeal comes from users being able to achieve heroin-like highs from taking 300 mgs of the meds at once. National poison control centers are reporting a 71 percent increase in calls involving anti-diarrhea drug overdoses, but the FDA doesn’t have enough information yet to tackle the issue.

WARNING: It’s a heroin like high, all from taking anti-diarrhea drugs. FDA issues warning. https://t.co/mxXMYoFaMg pic.twitter.com/RRBi8oXY9L

— Tim Williams (@realtimwilliams) June 8, 2016

Rant Crush

RantCrush collects the top trending topics in the law and policy world each day just for you.

The post RantCrush Top 5: June 8, 2016 appeared first on Law Street.

Hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent currently face the risk of deportation from the Dominican Republic. Even though this process is meant to weed out only illegal immigrants, the practice has come under particular scrutiny. The Dominican Republic government has generated a lot of controversy in regards to this sudden deportation effort because many feel it is unjust.

For example, on Monday, Yayine Mesilus was snatched off the streets of her small village in the Dominican Republic and taken back to Haiti. She had migrated there eight years ago with her little brother, Clever, to look for work. She stated:

I was thrown back here because I was not carrying my document to prove I was already trying to register. They didn’t even give me the chance to explain what was happening,

Migrant workers were supposed to be given until the night of Wednesday, June 17, to register with Dominican authorities before being deported. If they had not completed the process, but began registration, they were supposed to be given a 45-day grace period. The government promised to open a path to naturalization for those who registered, after claiming to want to get a grip on its migrant work force.

The forthcoming deportation stems from a law passed last year that requires all foreign-born workers to register with the government within a year or face deportation. But this law followed a 2013 court ruling to strip the citizenship of children born in the Dominican Republic to foreign parents. For human rights advocates, this court ruling was viewed as discrimination against Dominicans with darker skin and Haitian migrant workers.

An international outcry resulted in the government later softening its stance. It promised citizenship to children whose births were in the nation’s civil registry, and a chance to nationalize those not formally registered. But with anything less then full citizenship, these people are left stateless, belonging to neither their birthplace nor their family’s homeland.

Nearly 240,000 migrant workers born outside of the Dominican Republic have started the registration process. But there are an estimated 524,000 foreign-born migrant workers in the country, about ninety percent of whom are Haitian. This leaves a huge population of migrant workers at risk for deportation.

Dominican Republic officials claim that providing illegal immigrants a path to naturalization is more generous than the policies of other countries, including the United States. But their mass deportations involve purging a racial group with which there has been a long history of tension.

Haitian workers have been crossing the border for generations to cut sugar cane, clean homes, and care for children. However, there has been racial tension since the massacre of tens of thousands of Haitian laborers ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1937. More recently, the Dominican Republic claims to be tired of bearing the brunt of Haiti’s economic troubles, both before and after the 2010 earthquake that sent Haitians fleeing across the border. The 2013 court ruling on citizenship further solidified the tense situation.

The Dominican Republic economy will most likely experience a large change when the migrants are deported. For generations, Haitians have assumed the jobs that many Dominicans do not want, filling a vital part of the labor market often below market rates. If a large portion of their labor force is removed, production costs could rise.

Moreover, this deportation policy illustrates the lack of empathy the Dominican Republic has for its Haitian born people and migrant workers. The government claims to be doing them a favor by providing them with options that have guidelines, but these options are not necessarily adequate. If the Dominican Republic wants to provide Haitians with a clear path to naturalization, it should do so–the current deportation situation illustrates that this simply isn’t the case.

Angel Idowu

Angel Idowu is a member of the Beloit College Class of 2016 and was a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer of 2015. Contact Angel at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Dominican Republic’s Deportation Policy: Is it Broken? appeared first on Law Street.

The devastating 7.8 earthquake that recently struck Nepal caused untold damage to buildings and has killed thousands of people, with many more missing. Following the devastation, the usual influx of aid began, as did finger pointing over who was to blame for the devastation. However, what this catastrophe has revealed most clearly is the disparate ways in which countries respond to disasters. Read on to learn about the response to the Nepalese earthquake, and the various global responses to disasters.

Responding to a Disaster

Emergency Management

Disasters, natural and man made, have been around since the beginning of time. However, the response to these disasters has not always been the same, and methods have varied as widely as the civilizations that have suffered them.

In the United States for example, we have FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency). FEMA was founded in 1979 when five separate agencies that dealt with disasters consolidated into one. Although it perhaps best known now for its poor handling of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, it has served as the point agency for every natural disaster the United States has dealt with since its inception.

Emergency Management Cycle

While the methods for emergency management vary, one of the commonly accepted tools is the emergency management cycle. The cycle’s origins go back to the 1930s when phases were first used to describe the ideal response to a disaster. The cycle gained its central place in the emergency management lexicon in 1979 when FEMA was created by President Jimmy Carter following recommendations from the National Governors Association, and versions have now expanded to other nations. This cycle is generally broken into three or four parts, although newer variations can include more steps. Usually the four steps are mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. You can see an example here.

The first two phases, mitigation and preparedness, actually occur before the potential disaster strikes. In the preparedness and mitigation phases a country plans for a potential disaster through steps such as developing evacuation plans, raising awareness and improving current infrastructure.

Once the disaster actually strikes, there’s a response section of the cycle. During this time, emergency management workers attempt to rescue people, provide basic services, and prevent any further damage. The final phase is recovery. In this final stage, once the disaster has passed, authorities go to work returning basic services to full operational capabilities. Additionally, infrastructure and other institutions that were damaged during the devastation are rebuilt.

While these distinctions seem clear, steps often overlap and become blurred, further complicating the process. In addition, it’s important to remember that these steps apply equally to both man-made and natural disasters. However, maintaining an appropriate balance of preparedness for the two types is important, otherwise one can become neglected at the expense of the other. A chilling example is the focus on defending against terrorism in the United States that left other shortcomings unnoticed. Critics claim this led to an underfunding of the levee system in New Orleans, which ultimately failed during Hurricane Katrina and had devastating results.

The Finger Pointers and the 20/20 Crowd

Unfortunately not every country has such a system or even a plan in place, including Nepal. These programs are very expensive. For example, in 2015 FEMA’s requested budget was $10.4 billion. To put that into context, Nepal’s entire GDP for 2013, the most recent year available from the World Bank, was only $19.3 billion. While no one expects Nepal to have an agency or program on the scale of FEMA given the lower population and wealth gap between it and U.S., in the wake of this disaster, concerns have arisen that the nation was unprepared.

These considerations did not stop the criticism from pouring about the failure of the Nepalese government. These criticisms have come from several high profile sources, including numerous relief agencies, namely the United Nations. Criticisms range from insufficient infrastructure to the difficulty aid groups have delivering supplies to those who need them. Despite the disaster, many protective tariffs are still in place, making it difficult to distribute goods. There are also concerns over widespread corruption and the reported looting of supply convoys by authorities who want to disperse the aid along ethnic lines.

These criticisms should not be entirely surprising given Nepal’s governmental history. The country only just began recovering from a civil war in 2006, which had lasted ten years. That conflict pitted the newly established democratic government against Maoist insurgents. Since the end of the civil war, there have been a succession of ineffectual governments who have been unable to create any sort of a unified front. For example, in January 2015, the current government was unable to agree on changes to its constitution because of political infighting.  The video below depicts many of the issues facing Nepal’s relief efforts:

International Community

When countries such as Nepal and others suffer a horrendous disaster, the international community usually steps up to aid them in their suffering. While variations of aid can be separated into many different branches, the two clearest distinctions are financial and direct intervention.

Financial Assistance

While not every country has an emergency response team to spare to help in a disaster zone, many can offer another valuable commodity: money. As of April 28^th 60 million dollars in financial assistance had already been pledged to the earthquake ravaged area. This type of giving is not surprising, especially following natural disasters such as earthquakes. In fact two other examples, the deadly 2013 typhoon in the Philippines, and the 2008 cyclone in Myanmar (Burma) illustrate that in circumstances such as these, it is not uncommon for the aid a country receives to as much as quintuple from one year to the next.

Although this is good news for Nepal, it may not be enough. While financial pledges can be easily won in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, the ability to continue to elicit them tends to fade as the story does from the headlines. Costs to repair the damage in Nepal have been estimated to be as much as five billion dollars. This massive undertaking is especially difficult for a nation like Nepal whose GDP, as previously mentioned, is only around 20 billion total each year, with a significant portion of that coming from now-lost tourist revenue.

In addition to these considerations, a working paper on the political economy of disaster preparedness by Charles Cohen and Eric Werker of the Harvard Business School also raises additional considerations. While money is useful in dealing with a disaster, giving away large sums reduces the incentive of a government to be adequately prepared in the first place. According to the study, rich countries as well as poor would be better off if more aid was provided for preparedness than response–it’s smarter to be proactive than reactive.

Concerns also abound over a dishonest government stealing aid money. In some cases, leaders want to reward their constituents first in order to maintain their good graces. Thus, it is also imperative in these types of situations to have a decentralized aid distribution system as much as possible. The video below provides some dos and don’ts in regards to helping following a disaster:

Physical Intervention

Another means to assist an ailing nation is through direct assistance by countries and private organizations. In the case of Nepal, this aid can be divided into three sub-categories. First, countries such as Japan and Australia sent experts and aid teams to help recovery. Relief organizations such as the Red Cross provided money and experts to help, basically serving as microcosms of the nations they represent. Lastly corporations such as Coca-Cola and Kellogg provided bottled water and food to satiate survivors whose access to basic goods may have vanished in the wake of the disaster.

Like financial assistance, direct intervention can also have drawbacks. An example of this comes from the 2010 Haitian earthquake. In that case, relief efforts were hampered and stagnated due to an inefficient infrastructure in place. The United States took full control of the response efforts, at one point legally taking possession of the main airport in the capital Port-au-Prince during the relief efforts. However, subsequent American prioritizing of its own relief planes over other nations’ led to an international row that threatened to divert focus from the main crisis as hand. The accompanying video depicts the controversy:

The Wealth of Nations

Additionally the acceptance of aid either through financial aid or direct intervention can also be influenced by the existing wealth of a nation. For example, while Nepal is basically dependent on other countries for assistance, richer nations who are less beholden may refuse aid when it is offered. A prime example is the United States, which politely declined nearly one billion dollars in aid from allies following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. While part of this was due to government inefficiency in distributing assistance, most offers were simply declined out of hand.

The U.S. declined most of the aid because, while it was adept at distributing aid to other countries, it was less skilled at dispensing aid within its own.  Thus rather than accept more aid that would often spoil or remain unclaimed, it instead declined many offers.  While this stagnation is criticized in other countries as a result of underdeveloped agencies, in the U.S. it was accepted because the U.S. is perceived as being a more capable nation due to its relative wealth.

Conclusion

Although countries such as Nepal and Haiti may serve as examples of how not to handle a disaster, there is no telling how any nation will respond once it actually experiences one. The prime example here is the United States. Even with its large bureaucracy dedicated to disaster relief and readiness, with an equally large budget, the U.S. has repeatedly been accused of being unprepared.

There are numerous examples of these failings, perhaps the two most glaring in recent memory are Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy. Hurricane Katrina essentially wiped out one of the most historic cities in the US, New Orleans, while also killing over a 1000 people and causing over $135 billion dollars in damage. Hurricane Sandy saw a lower fatality count, approximately 100 dead, but saw major parts of eastern states such as New York and New Jersey effected to the point of $50 billion dollars in damages.

Disasters, whether they are man made or natural, can strike anywhere, anytime. While some nations, either through financial means or previous experience are more prepared than others, ultimately no nation is ever ready for something as deadly as Nepal’s earthquake or a massive hurricane. This is a global issue, and one that has no easy answer.

Resources

Primary

FEMA: The Four Phases of Emergency Management

World Bank: Nepal

Ottawa County Sheriffs’ Office: Four Phases of Emergency Management

Central Intelligence Agency: World Factbook Nepal

Additional

Time: These are the Five Facts That Explain Nepal’s Devastating Earthquake

Brookings: Counter-Terrorism and Emergency Management Keeping a Proper Balance

MNMK: Disaster Management – A Theoretical Approach

VOA: Nepal Officials Slammed Over Aid Response

Fierce Homeland Security: 2015 Budget Request

Harvard Business School: The Political Economy of Natural Disasters

CNN Money: Nepal Earthquake Donations, Who’s Sending What

Vanderbilt Center for Transportation Research: The Phases of Emergency Management

Guardian: US Accused of Annexing Airport as Squabbling Hinders Aid Effort in Haiti

Washington Post: Most Katrina Aid from Overseas went Unclaimed

The Data Center: Fact for Features Katrina Impact

Michael Sliwinski

Michael Sliwinski (@MoneyMike4289) is a 2011 graduate of Ohio University in Athens with a Bachelor’s in History, as well as a 2014 graduate of the University of Georgia with a Master’s in International Policy. In his free time he enjoys writing, reading, and outdoor activites, particularly basketball. Contact Michael at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post How Do Nations Respond When Disaster Strikes? appeared first on Law Street.

The death toll from the recent 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Nepal has surpassed 7,000, with at least 14,000. Recovery efforts have been underway for the last week. As people attempt to repair the damage and their lives, we should reflect on the implications of this disaster.

The bulk of the damage, casualties, and relief efforts are centered around the capital city of Kathmandu. Thousands of people have been left homeless and are forced to sleep and wait outdoors, as open spaces seem to be the only places that are safe from aftershocks. Because relief organizations are short on tents by the hundreds of thousands, they are exposed to the rain, cold air, and other elements. Furthermore, hospitals are not designed to accommodate for the scale of injuries. A 120-year-old hospital building was forced to relocate its patients elsewhere for operations.

Another long-term concern is Nepal’s economy. Many temples and historic sites have collapsed from the quake, which not only is spiritually disheartening for the nation’s religious population, but those sites have served as attractions for tourists in the city. In addition, the 2015 climbing season at Mount Everest is over, as climbers died in earthquake-induced deadly avalanches. At least 17 people died there, with dozens more injured and missing. While some climbers have been rescued by helicopter, others were trapped too high on the mountain, beyond the reach of air rescue. Yet they were hard pressed to descend on their own because the avalanches and quakes restricted access to their normal climb and descent routes.

Ongoing aftershocks continue to jar rocks and snow from the mountain, making rescue efforts difficult and dangerous. This disaster has already surpassed last year’s avalanche that killed 16 people as the single deadliest event on Everest, and it is expected to continue to worsen. Furthermore, it is unclear at what point climbing will resume and what form it will take; the damage from the quake and avalanches may have altered the topography of the mountain, which would force a readdressing of climbing routes, number of climbers that can be accommodated, and other details of this nature. Climbing Everest is one of the primary sources of tourism and income for the nation.

Most of the modern structures in the city of Kathmandu, while damaged, remained intact; on the other hand, most of the damage inflicted was on the old, poorly constructed brick buildings in the urban area. The city, region, and nation are generally hampered by poverty and have undergone substantial increases in population, experience poor coordination in building, and often do not adhere to building codes. These things make the region much more vulnerable when disasters of this caliber occur. It is quite similar to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. That one was also quite large in strength, registering at a 7.0 on the Richter Scale, but the death toll is estimated as high as 220,000. This catastrophic figure is due to the extreme poverty, poor building, and insufficient infrastructure that is rampant in Port-au-Prince. Conversely, the strongest earthquake on record, the 1960 9.5 tremor in Chile, resulted in approximately 2,000-3,000 deaths. The difference, journalist Jerry Thompson argues, resulted largely from more sophisticated building techniques, more preparedness on the part of the populace, and better organized rescue services in this more economically developed nation.

Poor quality building in Kathmandu. Courtesy of Oliphant via Flickr.

Thompson has also written about a massive subduction zone fault line near the North American Pacific Northwest coast. He suggests it is overdue for a massive quake, which would induce an enormous tsunami that could cause untold devastation in the area. We might say that Nepal is fortunate to be landlocked; in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, most of the deaths occurred as a result of the latter disaster rather than the former. The Fukushima nuclear meltdown was also spurred by the tsunami and not the quake itself. Understanding the functions of the natural world and that these two events may go hand in hand may lead to more foresighted planning.

There may be additional non-human damages that result from such problems. For example, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake did not cause as much damage as the fire that followed, which nearly gutted the entire city. The fire sprung up in many areas at once, largely due to a combination of broken and leaking gas pipes interacting with sparking downed power lines, and proceeded to devour the largely wooden buildings. It became clear even to the people at the time that the damage and deaths were due to poor planning on their part; nature was not to blame. Yet nature suffered nonetheless. The poorly built water supply system failed, and a beautiful valley in Yosemite National Park drowned as dams were built to meet the city’s water needs.

We must come to understand that we are a part of the Earth, not occupiers of it. Natural disasters will occur, and there will be fatalities. But they do not need to be as horrific as they are. The massive inequalities in wealth, technology, and living standards throughout the world have reared their ugly heads during disasters like this. It is encouraging to see so many other nations and organizations rallying to assist and support, but addressing the underlying problems that are ever present would be productive for societies’ lived experiences year round as well as in times of crisis. The tragedy in Nepal reminds us of the lesson that we have failed to grasp: since these forces are too powerful for us to control, and to an extent–since tectonic activity is vital to all life and the planet itself–should not be controlled, we must learn to live with them safely and intelligently.

Franklin R. Halprin

Franklin R. Halprin holds an MA in History & Environmental Politics from Rutgers University where he studied human-environmental relationships and settlement patterns in the nineteenth century Southwest. His research focuses on the influences of social and cultural factors on the development of environmental policy. Contact Frank at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Some Cities Survive Natural Disasters Better Than Others For This Reason appeared first on Law Street.

What scares you the most? That’s the question that Chapman University decided to ask America in a recently released study called the “Chapman Survey on American Fears.” In the study, researchers surveyed 1,500 Americans from different walks of life in order to create a strong representative sample. They split the types of fears into four categories: personal fears, crime, natural disasters, and fear factors. They were able to determine the most pressing concerns in each of the categories, as well as overall. Based on this study, Chapman University was able to come up with the five most common fears in the United States:

• Walking alone at night
• Becoming the victim of identity theft
• Safety on the internet
• Being the victim of a mass/random shooting
• Public speaking

The top five worries/concerns in the United States were:

• Having identity stolen on the Internet
• Corporate surveillance of Internet activity
• Running out of money in the future
• Government surveillance of Internet activity
• Becoming ill/sick

The survey also polled people about what kind of natural disasters they would find the most frightening. Tornado/hurricane, earthquake, flood, pandemic, and power outage ranked the highest on the survey. Despite that fact, the survey found that very few people have any sort of emergency preparedness plan in place.

Overall impressions of crime in the United States were also taken into account by Chapman University, and they were very interesting. The fears and concerns really don’t make that much sense. For example, the study discovered that most Americans think that crime rates are going up, and that’s not really the case. As one of the study’s co-authors, Dr. Edward Day, put it:

What we found when we asked a series of questions pertaining to fears of various crimes is that a majority of Americans not only fear crimes such as child abduction, gang violence, sexual assaults, and others; but they also believe these crimes (and others have increased over the past 20 years. When we looked at statistical data from police and FBI records, it showed crime has actually decreased in America in the past 20 years.

There’s really not that much logic to a lot of what people are now fearing if you look at it objectively. Public speaking is uncomfortable for many, but will probably not be life-altering. And while mass shootings are, of course, terrifying, they’re still statistically unlikely. The overwhelming feeling I get from this list is that people are scared of the unknown, and they’re scared of crimes that have been sensationalized. If you really think about things that are dangerous and should incite fear — car accidents, cancer, and obesity — they’re almost so ubiquitous that they don’t get coverage.

That would certainly make sense, given the way that people are panicking about Ebola to the point of failing to employ any sort of logic, or ISIS, or any other issue that never fails to get the talking heads on cable news flailing their arms. While there’s nothing wrong or flat-out incorrect about the concerns that people have, it is an interesting look at how susceptible we are to incensed media coverage.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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