Natural disasters can bring out more kindness than selfishness.
In the days that followed the Great Alaska Earthquake small-business owners worked together to salvage what they could from their stores. Associated Press
Just as the sun was setting in Anchorage, Alaska on Good Friday, March 27, 1964 a massive earthquake rocked the town. Within minutes the Main Street was reduced to rubble.
Early the following morning news of the Great Alaska Earthquake reached a small team of sociologists at Ohio State University. Their Disaster Research Center was a new, first-of-its-kind institute with the mission of dispatching social scientists to disaster areas as quickly as possible to dispassionately document the community's response. Before this research center was established the common assumption was that such disasters would lead to "a mass outbreak of hysterical neurosis among the civilian population.” The assumption was that the populace "would behave like frightened and unsatisfied children.”
"But when the disaster researchers started touching down in Anchorage, a mere 28 hours after the earthquake, they almost immediately began discovering the opposite: The community was meeting the situation with a staggering amount of collaboration and compassion."
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