Hanna received the award for her work on the “Disruptive Effects of Natural Disasters: The 1906 San Francisco Fire. She uses the example of the earthquake and resulting fires, which killed around 3,000 people, to illustrate the impact of natural disasters on the population. Her study is based on US census data. It looks at residents and their children in the affected areas from 1900 to 1940.
For those affected, the consequences were far-reaching: they lost jobs, were more likely to take jobs in lower-paying industries, moved away from San Francisco, and their children received less education.
Most of these effects normalised over time and were no longer measurable. However, the impact on the self-employment, especially self-employment with own employees, was still significant in 1940. Schwank thus contradicts the ‘reversal of fortune’ theory found in other studies – notably in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She argues: “Disaster relief and its aftermath should be looked at region by region.”