ABSTRACT
DISASTERS SOMETIMES STRIKE WITH THE SUDDEN IMPACT OF AN EARTHQUAKE or nuclear meltdown. At other times they accumulate over long periods of time with the slowness of a drought or toxic exposure. In whatever manner they arrive, abrupt or subtle, disasters are all-encompassing occurrences. In their wake they sweep across every aspect of human life: environmental, biological, and sociocultural. By their very constitution, disasters spring from the nexus where environment, society, and technology come together-the point where place, people, and human construction of both the material and nonmaterial meet. It is from the interplay of these three planes that disasters emanate, and in their unfolding, they reimplicate every vector of their causal interface.
