Project: Surviving Storms

On the 18th September 2017, Dominica was struck by category 5 Hurricane Maria. Lives were lost, families traumatized, homes and livelihoods were damaged.

Months later Dominica’s government vowed to make the island the world’s first ‘climate resilient nation’ by strengthening emergency response systems, infrastructure, house building and tourism facilities.

As the years roll on and lives are reassembled planetary warming continues to produce longer and more intense hurricane seasons there. So there is a need to better understand how Dominican people prepared for, survived and recovered from Maria and earlier storms – like David (in 1979) or Erika (in 2015). This site is a transdisciplinary public archive. I reveals how islanders understand the hazards embedded in their mountainous landscape, as well as prepare for and recover from storms.

The site features a map – which contains stories and hazard data – to stand as an archive of risk and repair, an open-source prototype which fellow Small Island Developing States can apply to tell their own stories of, and for, survival in a warming world.