Papers of the Applied Geography Conferences (2006) 29: 196-205 196 CALAMITY, CATASTROPHE AND HORROR: REPRESENTATION OF NATURAL DISASTER, 1885-2005 Richard Salkowe Graham A. Tobin Department of Geography S. Elizabeth Bird Department of Anthropology University of South Florida Tampa, 33620-5250 1. INTRODUCTION When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and vicinity in 2005, it deservedly became one of the media events of the decade. Yet in spite of the blanket coverage of the disaster, much of the early reporting reflected (and ultimately reinforced) existing stereotypes, rather than providing a factual account. Reporters, who were often unable to see the events for themselves, relied on rumor and hearsay; many widely circulated stories were later discredited. Indeed, while academic scholarship on disaster response has become increasingly complex, popular discourse seemed to return to the historical rhetoric of “calamity,” “catastrophe,” and “horror.” In attempting to interpret how and why this happened, we found it valuable to return to an earlier age of disaster reports, many of which used similar language, describing natural disasters in terms of catastrophes that led to lawlessness, panic, and the kind of social disorder that required military intervention. Through a comparison over time, we hope to shed light both on the persistence of entrenched cultural attitudes to disasters, as well as on how some of those attitudes can be challenged. The practical value of such analyses is that they offer insight to disaster response planners, who often find it difficult to understand why both individuals and the media do not always respond in what planners define as a “rational” manner. 2. METHODS By way of a pilot comparative exercise, we turned to a selection of publications, dating from 1885 to 1931, pertaining to natural disaster events and geography. Most were trade books offering semi-popular accounts of natural disasters. A formal content analysis was not attempted; rather we looked for themes that appeared in the texts, especially in terms of how they framed perception and risk, emergency response, recovery and vulnerability, with particular reference to issues of race and ethnicity. The selection was opportunistic rather than systematic, representing those publications in the authors’ private collections. If this research were to be extended, it would be important to conduct a more systematic analysis, and to include journalistic accounts from the period. The focus of the analysis is not on whether the accounts are factual, but on the way they are linguistically framed. Some of the guiding questions included: How did people account for or explain natural disasters? How did the texts