Kelvin Tam

Disasters are often studied on the macro scale in media, publications and journals where destruction and devastation is more readily quantified. And in an age of binary ones and zeroes, that seems to be how we are best able to understand the world around us: not through experiences and relationships but through numbers, statistics and trends. Quantifying the natural world has made great strides for society as a whole: we are better able to respond, predict, and accommodate for disasters if and when they strike. But one of the major drawbacks of seeing the world through these lens is that we undoubtedly lose the human aspect of it all. When the news reports that a hurricane caused millions of dollars of property damage our first instinct tells us it's a tragedy, but if the report stated that only several people died, it suddenly doesn't seem to be much of a big deal. And in the context of the September 11th bombings, studying the events that transpired on the macro scales in terms of numbers seems to do injustice to the memories of those who perished.

For this reason, Mary Marshall Clark has chosen to study September 11th