Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T13:45:36.622Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

27 - Heritage-Related Disaster Policy in the United States

from Part VI - Cultural Heritage Protection and Cross-Disciplinary Opportunities for Advancing Disaster Law and Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2022

Susan S. Kuo
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina School of Law
John Travis Marshall
Affiliation:
Georgia State University College of Law
Ryan Rowberry
Affiliation:
Georgia State University College of Law
Get access

Summary

Historic places are vulnerable to a wide variety of threats: neglect, lack of maintenance, demolition, war, and, of course, time itself. No physical or legal intervention will ever be able to make them last forever. Yet, laws can help make historic sites more resilient to the avoidable consequences of obvious threats. This chapter focuses on the legal framework in the United States for fortifying heritage against one particular threat: disasters resulting from natural hazards. Natural hazards include large-scale meteorological and geological events such as hurricanes, tropical storms, tornadoes, floods, blizzards, wildfires, earthquakes, extreme heat, and drought. Climate change has made many of these events more frequent and more intense. Given the increasing risks to historic sites, one might think that planning, mitigation, and recovery efforts are being undertaken with increased urgency. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Without adequate planning and protection, some of our cultural heritage has already been lost or will be lost imminently. This chapter begins by identifying and assessing current policies regarding the protection of historic resources before, during, and after a disaster. It highlights key elements for successful legal protection at each of these three stages. Then it describes our multi-governmental, federalist framework for heritage-related disaster policy. This policymaking takes place at the federal, state, and local levels, mostly through the legislative process and action by executive agencies. Each level of government plays overlapping roles in planning for, mitigating, and recovering from disaster. As the scale of government gets smaller, coordination among historic preservation authorities becomes either less effective or non-existent. This chapter covers each level of government in turn by first describing federal disaster planning and historic preservation requirements. Next, the chapter explores how two states and four local governments have integrated disaster mitigation and historic preservation considerations.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Disaster Law and Policy
Risk, Recovery, and Redevelopment
, pp. 436 - 450
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×