WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? SOCIAL CONNECTIONS AND COMMUNITY RESILIENCE

WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? SOCIAL CONNECTIONS AND COMMUNITY RESILIENCE HEALTH Magazine, Winter 2025 Published by the Southwest Utah Public Health Foundation This podcast episode is an AI-generated narration of the HEALTH Magazine article. The full article text is provided below as the official transcript of this episode. WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR: Social Connections & Community Resilience By Daniel P. Aldrich, PhD, Guest Columnist Narrated by David Heaton using AI-assisted voice. We had moved to New Orleans in July 2005, fresh out of graduate school in Boston. We had a new house, new car, and had enrolled our children in nearby schools. Monday, August 29th would be the first day of my new job at Tulane University. That Monday never came, because Sunday morning, at 4 a.m., with a million other people, my wife and I and our two young children got in our van and evacuated just as the rain began to fall ahead of Hurricane Katrina. We drove about 14 hours west to Houston, where we spent several days wandering around in a daze as it began to dawn on us that we couldn’t go back. Our house had been destroyed along with our other car, and all of our stuff was gone. We had some interesting things to think about - what are we going to do next? I’m unemployed now, so how do we get by for the next few months? Having no private insurance, we applied for FEMA aid as soon as we possibly could and anxiously waited for help from the government. The response came six months later, and it was a no. After a big fight over paperwork, we finally received a check to help cover the personal losses. It was during the waiting period, however, that phone calls started coming in, some from people we’d never met before but linked through friends who wanted to help. Children sent us proceeds from a school bake sale. People in Detroit and in New York offered us places to stay. Tuition for the kids to go to school from a community in Tennessee. We were just normal people who soon learned that what was really going to help us, both in the short and long term, were these connections. I had a sort of light bulb moment when I realized I had the wrong set of expectations. I had believed that the government was this fix-all entity, a sort of “white knight” that would swoop in immediately and save us after the disaster. But the reality for us was this: it was friends, friends of friends, family, and people from faith-based organizations and schools who came through for us after that disaster. The devastating 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, not only left damage and casualties from the quake, but many fires started from ruptured underground gas lines. One such fire threatened the adjacent neighborhoods of Mano and Mikura. Narrow, debris-filled streets made it impossible for any firefighters to approach. The residents of Mano had worked together in the past and quickly organized a bucket brigade and put the fire out on their own. In contrast, the people of Mikura didn’t have that type of relationship. They were unable to work together and their neighborhood burned down. It didn’t have to do with how well-built things were or who had insurance, but how well they had cooperated in the past and how well neighbors knew each other. Social capital, which is a fancy way of saying the connectedness we have with other people, is being able to work together as a group. That takes familiarity and trust. Without trust, you’re not going to guard each other’s homes. You can’t form a community patrol if you don’t trust your neighbor to be awake during his shift. Getting to know your neighbors’ names and being able to get along in stable times will pay off in the crisis moments. Social capital also builds mutual aid, or informal insurance, meaning if I need information, equipment, transportation, or a place to stay, we’ve met before, and you trust me. You know I’ll use your resources properly. Shaking someone’s hand for the first time after a disaster is never a good time to say “Hi, can I borrow something from you?” Another barrier to connecting with others is our addiction to virtual life, where we stare at screens as a substitute for building actual human ties. Five hours on social media are five hours not having real conversations and nurturing real relationships, and you can’t get those back. I’m a little worried about how much of our lives take place online. We know fewer of our neighbors’ names and spend less time interacting with them. When technology stops working, that’s the moment when geography becomes destiny. You have to rely on what we call the “sneaker-net”: walking to a neighbor’s house, a store, or a distribution center. If you’ve already made local connections and built that social capital, then it will be easier to get mutual aid and information. You can quickly form a neighborhood patrol or crew to remove heavy debris. It’s dangerous to become over-reliant on virtual connections while ignoring the realities of day-to-day consciousness. Get to know the shut-ins in your community. Organize block parties to get to know each other. Who is on oxygen? Is anyone confined to a wheelchair? Who has pets that will need care? The truth is, the first responders are us. After Katrina, it took almost six days until people were able to get food and water from the Red Cross. It took just as long for official responders to provide relief in the Kobe, Japan quake. Before my own experience, I had thought of myself as a well-informed person. Then, over the next six months, I came to the realization that I had believed in the wrong model for disaster relief. FEMA and other agencies provide a great service, but their mission and scope is limited and often bare bones. True personal and community recovery doesn’t come from the top down, but from within. That vision only comes from people who are willing to talk, work, and cooperate with each other. We are the ones to help and save each other. If disaster should strike your community, may your story be one of people who had cohesion and experience working together beforehand, so that you will have strength when the storms come. Dr. Aldrich is a full professor and Co-Director of the Resilience and Security Program at Northeastern University. He has authored five books, including “Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery”. The original version of this article (titled “Before the Storm”) was published in the Winter 2016 issue of HEALTH Magazine.