Decades of social science research have taught us much about how individuals, groups, and communities respond to disasters. The findings of this research have helped inform emergency management practices, including disaster preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us—researchers or not—have attempted or are attempting to make sense of what is going on around us. In this article, we assert that we need not examine the pandemic in a vacuum; rather, we can draw upon scholarly and practical sources to inform our thinking about this 21st century catastrophe. The pandemic has provided an “unfortunate opportunity” to revisit what we know about disaster phenomena, including catastrophes, and to reconsider the findings of research from over the years. Drawing upon academic research, media sources, and our own observations, we focus on the U.S. and employ disaster characteristics framework of (1) etiology or origins; (2) physical damage characteristics; (3) disaster phases or cycles; (4) vulnerability; (5) community impacts; and (6) individual impacts to examine perspectives about the ways in which the ongoing pandemic is both similar and dissimilar to conceptualizations about the social dimensions of hazards and disasters. We find that the COVID-19 pandemic is not merely a disaster; rather, it is a catastrophe.

In August 2022, the Pearl River flooded portions of Jackson, Mississippi and temporarily closed the city’s water treatment plant, leaving most citizens without access to safe drinking and potable water for more than a month. This event punctuated an ongoing water crisis that had lingered for decades in this predominately African American city. We employ a social production of disaster approach to reveal aspects of slow violence perpetrated against disadvantaged peoples that increased their collective vulnerability to flood risks and limited their access to safe water. Using survey data collected one year after the flood, we examine event-related psychosocial stress as measured by the Impact of Event Scale and associated risk factors related to Conservation of Resources Theory. Multivariate analysis indicates that resource losses from the flood, health concerns about water quality, and trust in government were significantly related to elevated levels of psychosocial stress. Although the 2022 Pearl River flood can be treated as a discrete event, a social production of disaster perspective situates the flood in terms of its cascading effects and cumulative impacts on the city’s water infrastructure and citizens who depend on it.