We miss the point that the trauma is only within the body and the life of the individual person and what I’m worried about is the trauma has been experienced by the earth itself. There is a risk associated with place — places that are abandoned, places that are physically destroyed, places that don’t have basic infrastructure. … This was greatly exacerbated by the tornado. Unless we pay serious attention to that, … we will create communities at a higher risk for violence and if we continue to blame people, we will simply see an increase in carceral force and we will be overwhelmed in our social, mental and clinical care environments because we will keep trying to intervene at the individual, personal level. This is a communal reality … and we need to treat it as such.
The above excerpt is from the wisdom of Dr. LJ Punch when asked about trauma and the May 16 tornado on my radio program, “The City’s Tornado Response.” Dr. Punch is a local, respected trauma surgeon who has an intimate relationship with trauma from dealing with bullet-related injuries to fentanyl overdoses and everything in between. His analysis of trauma from disasters was affirmed by people who directly experienced the trauma of Hurricane Katrina on a subsequent radio program, “Lessons from Hurricane Katrina.”
It has been over 90 days since the tornado hit us with a vengeance. There is still no convening of political, civic, social and medical minds to develop a comprehensive plan. There remains no unified office to provide tornado victims with information and resources. Instead, responses are reactive and fragmented, undermining effective support…