Social Risks and Vulnerabilities

Part 1: County Demographics 

Disasters have increasingly affected various counties in different states in the United States of America. The impending risks have changed the United States of America's populace in a great deal. Different geographical regions in the country have had mixed disasters. The disasters have also been diverse ranging from those that human beings cause to those that natural happenings create. Some of the catastrophes include hurricanes such as those in various parts of Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina (Cribb & Phillips, 2017). Tornadoes have been experienced in Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Illinois. Floods were experienced in Kansas, Utah, and Colorado. Also, wildfire disasters have affected Tennessee, Washington, and California (Yan, 2017). Snowstorms have affected some parts of the state of New York such as Buffalo (Becker, 2018). More than two decades ago, the earthquake also hit the greater Los Angeles area, California. Ostensively, various parts of the United States have been faced with risks that have left the people vulnerable. 

One of the counties that have been affected by disasters in the United States is Santa Clara. Located in the western part of the state of California, Santa Clara is the ninth most populous county in the state. The county is home to above 1.7 million people. The population was according to the census conducted in 2010 in the United States of America. At first blush, Santa Clara County is home to the renowned Silicon Valley, a center for the global technology industry and business prosperity. The most significant city in the county, San Jose locates the largest area of the Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is one of the regions with the highest gross domestic product in the world, and, therefore, it has contributed to the fame of Santa Clara County in the United States of America and beyond. Just like many other counties in the United States of America, Santa Clara is composed of different racial and ethnic compositions. The whites were the most expansive race in Santa Clara in 2010 (County of Santa Clara, 2018). 

Santa Clara County in California has been known for experiencing earthquakes with some of the highest magnitudes in the world. Just in the recent past, two earthquakes hit the county. However, the U.S. Geological Survey did not state any immediate damage brought about by the pair of earthquakes. The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the two earthquakes hit the San Jose's south bay at night. They also stated that the area had been known for its seismic issues which makes it prone to the earthquakes. The stronger of the two quakes hit at some minutes to eleven at night around five miles northeast of Alum Rock, Santa Clara County. The earthquake was 5.6 miles deep, according to USGS. The smaller of the two quakes hit Santa Clara County at some minutes past seven in the evening. It had a magnitude of 3.1. It hit 5.6 miles northeast san martin. It was 4.4 miles deep (Green & Krieger, 2017). 

Another county hit by a natural calamity in the United States of America is Broward County. Located in the southeastern part of the state of Florida, Broward County also borders the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Being on the southeast coast of the United States of America, the area is known to experience hurricanes from time to time. Broward County had a population of around 1.7 million people in the 2010 census conducted in the United States of America. Regarding population size, the county ranked the second in Florida and seventeenth in the country. The county has almost the same population size as Santa Clara County in California, in the United States of America. The racial composition of the county is mixed up with the Whites taking up the most substantial portion and pacific islanders occupying one of the least populational parts of the county. Broward County is home to the city of Fort Lauderdale, the most populated urban area in the county (Broward County Government, 2018). 

Hurricane Irma hit Broward County, Florida, back in 2017. Hurricane winds with high speeds led to significant destruction in the county in the year with boats sinking in the sea, and power lines were destroyed in the various parts of the county. Moreover, the winds were responsible for blowing off the rooftops of many houses in the affected areas. The Miami's National Weather Service stated that the gusts made the hurricanes more robust as they swept across Broward County in the hurricane Irma's unfortunate occurrence. The speed winds hit somewhere between 74 miles per hour and 130 miles per hour. Several power outages led to the stalling of the wind speed readings owing to the very high storms as a result of hurricane Irma at Florida's southeastern coast. Notwithstanding, Broward County received the effects of the massive hurricane winds despite not being at the core of hurricane Irma. Reports in the county attributed the severe damage to the headlong rushes of wind attacking the various parts of the county (Rabin, 2017). 

Barszewski & Man (2017) attributed the impassability of most of the Broward County's roads to the effects of the hurricane Irma according to the mayor of Broward. The mayor also said that the county was working on the impassable ways as soon as they could. The hurricane floods were responsible for the blockages on the streets. Broward County could return to work, days after the release of the mayor's statement. 

Part 2: Risks and Vulnerability Factors 

Disasters such as those taking place in Santa Clara, California, and Broward, Florida, need a lot of planning to mitigate their implications. Some of the consequences of the disasters over the United States of America are the loss of lives and the damage to property (Xian et al., 2018). The catastrophes have had different magnitudes of effects on the areas they have stricken. For instance, the pair of earthquakes that hit Santa Clara County in 2017 did not have any immediate impact on the people but had following effects on the people. The results of hurricane Irma that struck Broward County were instant as the gusts hit the various parts of the county leading to power outages and blowing away from the rooftops of the houses. Therefore, the counties in the different geographical regions in the United States have to come up with disaster management plans to reduce the effects of the natural calamities striking the areas. 

Social vulnerability is the mental ability of a group of people affected by a particular calamity to heal from the psychological effects that the disaster has caused. Social vulnerability is common among people who have been faced with stresses on their health such as disease epidemics and natural or even accidents created by human beings (M&E Studies, 2018). Had the social vulnerability been reduced, economic losses resulting from a disastrous event would be minimal. At the same time, human suffering would be mitigated by disaster response bodies such as those in the United States of America. Social vulnerability index uses the census variables in the United States of America. At the local levels, the social vulnerability index helps the disaster response services at the grassroots levels to attend to the communities that need disaster responses. For example evacuation from the affected areas by hurricane Irma in Broward County, Florida was quickly done using the social vulnerability index variables (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018). 

The social vulnerability index has been an essential tool in the disaster management planning. One of the ways it has proved essential to the plan is by integrating the national census statistics to come up with the identification of the specific communities that are in need of disaster management practices such as evacuation in case of a natural calamity such as floods. The communities may also need help in the disaster recovery, which again, is provided by the disaster management's social vulnerability index. The other importance of the index is to show the degree of preparedness for a natural calamity at the county level. Moreover, the index is also useful in coming up with the difference in the counties recovery from the disasters that affect them such as the recovery from the wildfires in the counties located in California and Tennessee. The social vulnerability index is also useful in reducing the social vulnerability among the United States of America's populace due to social risks posed by natural calamities (Adaptation Clearinghouse, 2011). 

In the case of Santa Clara County's earthquakes attack in 2017, the effects were minimal and not immediate. Therefore, the social vulnerabilities to disaster among the residents of the attacked areas were minimal, and the resilience of the populace was expected to be high due to the minimalistic implications of the two earthquakes that hit san martin and Alum Rock areas. In the report of the effects of the quakes, according to Green & Krieger (2017), a resident of Los Gatos area in the county felt a small jolt in the Lexington Reservoir. Another resident in the same location described the earthquake as a good shaker. The mental ability of the people to recover from the calamity was, therefore, higher than it would have been in the case the earthquake was of a higher magnitude than the 3.9 magnitude one that hit Santa Clara, California. The local disaster response services in Santa Clara County were also able to handle the effects of the two quakes that struck the county. 

Conversely, Broward County's disaster in Florida was more severe regarding the effects it brought about compared to the twin earthquakes of Santa Clara County, California. According to the descriptions of Rabin (2017) concerning the attack of the hurricane Irma's winds, the effects of the calamity were pronounced. As mentioned earlier, the rooftops of the houses were blown off, and power lines were affected interrupting the power supply to the county. The aftermath of the hurricane required planning by the government to reinstate the mindsets of the county's residents. For example, the business owners that lost their property in the gust in Broward County, Florida, may have had a difficult time to come into terms with their losses, accept them and probably move on to opening other businesses within the county. In a nutshell, the social vulnerability was high in the case of the disastrous attack of hurricane Irma to the various parts of Broward County in Florida. 

Having an almost same population size, Santa Clara and Broward counties in California and Florida respectively had different levels of social vulnerability among the people due to the different magnitude of the effects of the calamities that struck them in 2017. Hence, the two counties occupied district levels on the social vulnerability index. All the same, the index may have indicated more preparedness in the case of Santa Clara's earthquake attack than that of Broward's hurricane attack. That was not the case though. The disaster in Santa Clara had milder effects than that of Broward. 

References 

Adaptation Clearinghouse. (2011). Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) . Retrieved from http://www.adaptationclearinghouse.org/resources/social-vulnerability-index-sovi.html 

Barszewski, L., & Man, A. (2017, September 11). Hurricane Irma: Broward mayor says many roads still unsafe| Sun Sentinel . Retrieved from http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/weather/hurricane/fl-sb-hurricane-irma-Broward-monday-20170911-story.html 

Becker, M. (2018, March 2). Snowstorm leaves more than 25,000 without power in WNY| Buffalo News . Retrieved from http://buffalonews.com/2018/03/02/thick-heavy-snow-closes-schools-throughout-wny-clogs-area-roadways/ 

Broward County Government. (2018). Welcome to Open Government . Retrieved from http://www.Broward.org/OpenGovernment/Pages/Default.aspx 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018). ATSDR - The Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) - Home Page . Retrieved from https://svi.cdc.gov/ 

County of Santa Clara. (2018). Welcome to the County of Santa Clara . Retrieved from https://www.sccgov.org/sites/scc/Documents/home.html 

Cribb, B., & Phillips, L. (2017). 10 Most Disastrous Hurricanes in U.S. History| Coastal Living . Retrieved from https://www.coastalliving.com/worst-hurricanes-united-states-history 

Green, J., & Krieger, L. M. (2017, December 26). Two earthquakes shake Santa Clara County| The Mercury News . Retrieved from https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/26/magnitude-4-0-earthquake-rocks-south-bay/ 

M&E Studies. (2018). Types of Vulnerabilities - Physical, Social, Economic, Attitudinal Vulnerability | Monitoring and Evaluation Studies . Retrieved from http://www.mnestudies.com/disaster-management/vulnerability-types 

Rabin, C. (2017, September 12). Irma, at least in Miami-Dade and Broward, wasn’t even a hurricane. But the gusts sure were| Miami Herald . Retrieved from http://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather/hurricane/article172964246.html 

Xian, S., Feng, K., Lin, N., Marsooli, R., Chavas, D., Chen, J., & Hatzikyriakou, A. (2018). Rapid Assessment of Damaged Homes in the Florida Keys after Hurricane Irma. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Discussions , 1-7. 

Yan, H. (2017, December 26). The wildfires in California just keep shattering records this year | CNN . Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/26/us/2017-california-wildfire-records-trnd/index.html