Papers by John Tiefenbacher
A strong F-3 tornado devastated the northwest Wisconsin Village of Siren during the evening of 18... more A strong F-3 tornado devastated the northwest Wisconsin Village of Siren during the evening of 18 June 2001. The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a tornado watch, and severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings for Siren, but the emergency warning siren was inoperative. The survey team traveled to the disaster site several days after the tornado and surveyed the path of the tornado by ground and air. A field study utilizing a questionnaire helped in comprehending the nature of warnings and responses on the periphery of the tornado damage path. Administered through interviews, the standardized survey aided in gathering information on awareness, preparedness, monitoring of the developing extreme event, and perceptions of risk. The team identified common beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes for this "near miss" experience. Though this research utilized a small sample size of 30 individuals, it provided insight into people's responses to a relatively rare and dangerous even...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
EchoGéo, 2013
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Geoforum, 1991
In studying women in local government, the authors argue for giving a greater emphasis to the cha... more In studying women in local government, the authors argue for giving a greater emphasis to the characteristics of places which elect women rather then focusing solely on economic or psychological/anthropological factors. This hypothesis is tested by examining the ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Applied Geography, 1991
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Health & Place
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
ABSTRACT
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Environmental Practice, 2000
Page 1. ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW Persistent, Bioaccumulative, and Toxic Chemicals in the US-Mexico Bo... more Page 1. ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW Persistent, Bioaccumulative, and Toxic Chemicals in the US-Mexico Borderlands: A Regional Assessment of the Situation JohnP.Tiefenbacher Persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic materials are a special ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
... Hazardous materials are used and produced in this transnational economic system (Patrick 1996... more ... Hazardous materials are used and produced in this transnational economic system (Patrick 1996) and increasingly affect populations that ... 59 ated by waste sites, industrial facilities, and accidents (eg Burke 1993; Cu tter and Solecki 1989; Kraft and Scheberle 1995; Perlin et al. ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Environmental History, 2004
... Monuments of progress : modernization and public health in Mexico City, 1876-1910 / by Claudi... more ... Monuments of progress : modernization and public health in Mexico City, 1876-1910 / by Claudia ... dwellers had to change, and therefore public health policies became moral and educational ... Monuments of Progress xv M inspectors used the survey techniques of engineers to ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 1989
Introduction The first National Geography Awareness Week in the United States was held from 15 to... more Introduction The first National Geography Awareness Week in the United States was held from 15 to 21 November 1987. The proclamation, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Reagan, noted the national ignorance of, and the need for, the discipline of geography, ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Annals of The Association of American Geographers, 2005
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Professional Geographer, 2003
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Organization & Environment, 1992
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Environmental Hazards, 2012
Emergency management tends to be planned for legal, resident populations that are responsive to m... more Emergency management tends to be planned for legal, resident populations that are responsive to mainstream channels of communication and enforcement. For many areas prone to extreme events and emergencies, populations are also composed of transitory tourists, temporary visitors and migrant workers. This latter group may be a large population and, while not completely invisible to residents, may prefer obscurity and concealment within the social landscape. Tending towards poverty, technologically disconnected and linguistically isolated, undocumented migrants seek employment and attempt to avoid local law enforcement and immigration officials for fear of imprisonment and deportation. In this context, the behaviours prompted by developing public emergencies will be different for undocumented migrants than for the population at large. We examine the experience of 135 Hispanic undocumented migrants in the coastal zone of Houston-Galveston, Texas to understand the factors and issues that influence decision making and behaviours under region-wide mandatory evacuation conditions. Undocumented migrants’ decisions to evacuate rest upon: the presence (or absence) of family and/or children, their access to risk information that they find meaningful and rational and is in harmony with their pre-conceptions about their circumstances, their openness to information that either confirms their experiences or confronts rumour-generated biases they carry, their familiarity with social groups and governmental agencies and the services they offer, and the outcome of their risk analyses that consider the dangers of remaining in situ against the danger of exposing themselves to discovery as ‘illegal aliens’. The results suggest that emergency management plans ought to promote the dispelling of rumours that weaken the effect of emergency communication, promote non-emergency outreach to peripheral populations through community groups, and promote better, basic, non-technical, Spanish-language media through mainstream conduits (i.e. the most commonly watched non-Spanish television channels) that do not require high-tech devices or advanced understanding of visual media tools.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Geojournal, 2008
This paper compares the news coverage of bridge collapses in the United States and China to revea... more This paper compares the news coverage of bridge collapses in the United States and China to reveal how the cultural, political, and social differences of these two countries influence the ways in which disasters are represented to the public. By applying qualitative and quantitative research methods, the study examines the variations in news articles in different newspapers on bridge collapses. The results of this study indicate that news articles from Chinese newspapers, The People’s Daily and The Shanghai Daily, paid more attention to event description and consequences. News accounts from The Houston Chronicle showed similar patterns as their counterparts in China, but news articles from The New York Times highlighted bridge safety and the responsibility of either the government or specific members of the public in their reports. Chinese reporting may result in more effective risk communication and greater personal awareness of hazards as readers in each country are similarly embedded in discursive contexts that define their roles as consumers of news and as risk managers or decision makers.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Emergency …, 2007
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International Journal of Emergency Management, 2008
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Applied Geography, 2009
More than 200 people have died in automobiles that have encountered flooded roadways in Texas fro... more More than 200 people have died in automobiles that have encountered flooded roadways in Texas from 1950 to 2004. This study examines the geographical processes that create flood hazards associated with automobile travel to discern the most important factors in their genesis. A database of drowning cases caused by motorists' interactions with flooded roadways in Texas was compiled for the study period. We examine the circumstances and spatial patterns of these events by addressing the following questions: where have motorists drowned? How did rates and spatial patterns of accidents change over the study period? To the extent that we can determine, what were the characteristics of the roads, the drivers, and the landscapes when and where deaths occurred? What factors appear to explain the temporal and spatial distributions of hazard? We conclude that roadway familiarity might have emboldened drivers to attempt to surmount water rushing across a road, that time of day was clearly an important characteristic of the accidents, and that roadway characteristics and sex and age of the drivers seem not to be key contributing factors. The most important factors, however, are associated with growth: increases in population and increased automobile registrations drive the propensity for increased automobile-flood hazards.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Papers by John Tiefenbacher