CHAPEL HILL -- Hurricane Floyd's human, economic and environmental effects will be the focus of new studies recently funded by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Odum Institute for Research in Social Science. The institute, which supports and encourages such research, has awarded nearly $30,000 to eight projects related to the storm's impact.
"Service to the state and supporting research on North Carolina's social and economic problems are traditions with us that date back to 1924 when the institute was founded," said Dr. John Shelton Reed, institute director.
Social scientists offer expertise and perspectives that could contribute to Floyd recovery and to more successful disaster relief efforts in the future, said Dr. Kenneth Bollen, who will succeed Reed as director in July.
"The response of our faculty and graduate students to this event has been impressive," Bollen said. "The institute is funding work ranging from Geographic Information System (GIS) assessments of flood damage to oral history investigations of the flooding."
In a project titled "Voices After the Deluge: Oral History Research Investigations of the Great Flood," faculty and students aim to preserve the region's history before the flood and say that "only a sense of what was can inform a full understanding of what has been washed away."
Oral histories are first-person narratives that add new voices to the historical record. Such personal stories record vivid memories and present history to the public in new ways. Without historians' efforts, the stories preserved on tape and in transcripts would eventually be lost.
"Voices after the Deluge" will build on the UNC-CH Southern Oral History Program's recent survey of the flood's impact across eastern North Carolina. Conducted by Dr. Charles Thompson and photographer Rob Amberg beginning late last year and funded by the Carolina Center for Public Service, the earlier project included 22 interviews and documentary photography.
Funding from the Odum Institute and a matching UNC-CH Institute on Aging grant will allow the historians to interview more people about the flood's impact on the elderly.
"By disrupting what was typical and taken for granted, the flooding crisis paradoxically reveals much of a given individual's place in a community and much about the fabric of a given life," said Dr. Joseph Mosnier, associate director of the oral history program. "The flood serves as a point of entry for a wider inquiry into the evolving character of the experiences of the region's elderly across several generations, the rise of elderly-focused social and health services and other issues."
The new project will involve 25 interviews that will become part of the Southern Historical Collection archives. Dr. Jacquelyn Hall, director of the Southern Oral History Program; Mosnier; Thompson, education and curriculum director at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University; and history graduate students Katie Otis and Rachel O'Toole are team members.
Strategies used to help adults with low literacy cope with natural disasters are the focus of another project by communications studies graduate student Tracy Francis. The study grew out of a class that focused on families and disasters and his volunteer work as a reading tutor when he saw an earlier storm's devastating effect on a student. The student was almost killed by Hurricane Fran.
"Her usual roads were blocked, her usual stores were closed and she couldn't read everything written on the sides of trucks offering assistance, so bingo, the project was born," Francis said. "Adult literacy is an often unspoken problem, and the non-reading community often is an unseen community that can be overlooked during a natural disaster. I am interested in what happens when the daily routines of non-readers or low-literate adults are interrupted by disasters."
Francis is developing a six-hour "Train-the-Tutors" workshop designed to prepare a select group of reading tutors and reading assistants to train service providers and others, who in turn will help adult disaster survivors who cannot read. The workshops will be open to adult literacy tutors and educators, literacy agencies, various services providers and lay people whose work requires knowledge of adult literacy and disaster intervention. Lessons learned from Hurricane Floyd will benefit people with poor reading skills after future disasters.
June 9, 2000 -- No.327
Six other new projects involve studying N.C. welfare reform, assessing Hurricane Floyd's impact using GIS, refugee camps, hard-hit Princeville, hurricane flooding, long-term mental health needs and emergency management.
Odum Institute Contact: Jennifer Drolet, 919-962-3062