The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Solnit, Rebecca. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. Penguin Books, 2010.

On April 18, 1906 at 5:12 in the morning, San Francisco experienced a devastating earthquake. In the face of demolished buildings and fires, two women thrived: Mrs. Anna Amelia Holshouser and Pauline Jacobson. Mrs. Holshauser fed two to three hundred people a day beginning with only one tin can and a spoon, and Pauline Jacobson celebrated a “millennial good fellowship” (32) of all people in the absence of class divisions. General Frederick Funston represented a darker side of the disaster. He led National Guard troops brought in to secure the area, and he believed deeply that the veneer of civilization was very thin, and savagery must be met with force. One of his first orders was to shoot looters on sight.

Disaster struck again on December 6, 1917, soon after 9 a.m. The Norwegian ship Imo collided with the Mont Blanc just off the coast of Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, the Mont Blanc was loaded with explosives on their way to Europe to help with the war effort. The damage was extreme. Young Dorothy Lloyd, only six years old at the time, said to her sister, Dolly, look at the stovepipes flying through the air” (75). The “stovepipes” were actually sailors. In the midst of fires and devastation, generosity abounded. Merchants opened up grocery stores and distributed food to the needy. Volunteers from all over the world offered to care for the many children who were left orphaned in the disaster. The inhabitants of Nova Scotia experienced a disaster utopia, a perfect world in which time seems suspended, and all human needs are met with grace and generosity.

Most disaster utopias do not last long, but the utopia that followed the Mexico City earthquake on September 19, 1985 resulted in fair housing legislation and a powerful seamstresses’ union. The corrupt Institutional Ruling Party (PRI) was supplanted, and the inhabitants of Mexico City were finally allowed to choose their own mayor. Civic engagement remained at an all-time high.

This vast civic engagement was also remarkable during the New York terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The Twin Towers were evacuated quickly and efficiently, and office workers carried out their handicapped office mates. Unfortunately, the elite panic of the George W. Bush administration followed in the subsequent months. The administration touted the war effort in Afghanistan and encouraged citizens to go shopping to support their country.

Elite panic also raced through post-Katrina New Orleans. Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass spread rumors about gang activity and about babies being raped at the Superdome. These rumors were later disproved, but the damage had already been done. The mainstream media painted the survivors of Hurricane Katrina as monsters. The media was also complicit in blatant racism: African Americans were labeled “looters” when they took supplies. White survivors were described as “gathering supplies” (238).

Solnit also unearths the horrendous truth that white vigilantes murdered African Americans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She brings evidence of these murders to light including the ordeal of Donnell Herrington who was shot twice by a white man with a shotgun. The racists that shot African American survivors justified their killings by stating that they were just keeping order. Donnell’s shooter has not yet been brought to justice.

In time, hope returned to New Orleans. Hundreds of families from across the United States offered up their homes to those displaced by the storm. Volunteers—from hippies to white evangelists—arrived in New Orleans and worked alongside storm victims to rebuild all that had been lost.