ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the effectiveness of governmental disaster recovery actions subsequent to the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear meltdown in Japan and Hurricane Sandy along the north-eastern corridor of the United States. It focuses on both Japan and the United States routinely face a wide variety of disasters, and they have established fairly elaborate intergovernmental mechanisms for dealing with such situations. The chapter also focuses on the two disaster situations affected large urban populations, raising serious concerns about the ability of governmental response systems in both countries to handle such disasters in a quick and effective manner. Finally, these two situations provide a number of important insights into the determinants of effective government performance during crises and the consequences of these actions for the successful recovery of cities and urban populations when disaster strikes. As such, they demonstrate the vulnerability of large urban areas to major, catastrophic events, as well as the need to develop effective strategies for handling these situations.
