Principle Investigator: Gabbie Fall

Faculty Sponsor: A.J. Faas

In this study, Gabbie examined how aid and recovery were handled after the 2017 Coyote Creek flood in San Jose. To learn about this, she conducted interviews with people impacted by the flood, analyzed media cover-age from the time of the flood and since, and interviewed workers from relevant city offices and non-profits to see how relief and recovery efforts were perceived as well as how they were intended. This articulates with the anthropology of disasters by providing another view of what it means to be prepared; not only prepared to reduce the effects of disasters but also prepared to provide comprehensive aid immediately after the fact, regardless of whether or not the effects of the disaster were reduced in the first place. She found that people were largely dissatisfied, to say the least, because the damage was not mitigated due to the late evacuation and the subsequent relief efforts did not meet the needs of those living in a city with such an expensive cost of living. This shows how diverse needs cannot be met with generic solutions and can be used to avoid the repetition of certain missteps in the future.

Gabbie presented her work in a poster session as part of the SJSU Celebration of Research event on April 23, 2019, and delivered a paper on this study at the Annual Conference of the Southwestern Anthropological Association on April 19, 2019, where she won third place in the student paper competition. She also gave an Ignite Talk on this study as part of SJSU’s Department of Anthropology AnthROX! event on April 26.