In the public imagination, natural disasters do not discriminate, but are instead “equal opportunity” calamities. Hurricanes may not single out victims by their race, class, or gender, but neither do such disasters occur in historical, political, social, or economic vacuums. Instead, the consequences of such catastrophes replicate and exacerbate the effects of extant inequalities, and often bring into stark relief the importance of political institutions, processes, ideologies, and norms. In the words of New York Times’ columnist David Brooks, storms like hurricane Katrina “wash away the surface of society, the settled way things have been done. They expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and the unacknowledged inequalities.” [...]