Why They Stayed and Why They Left—A Case Study from Ellicott City, MD after Flash Flooding

Abstract

Ellicott City, MD was devasted by flash flooding in 2016 and 2018. A lack of qualitative research has been conducted on topics related to sense of place and flash flooding, especially in the United States. In this study, we reveal reasons why some who experienced flash flooding continued to stay the flood zone and why some leave. We utilized a phenomenological approach to answer these research questions. Data were generated through in-depth interviews with 19 participants from the Historic District and adjacent neighborhoods in Ellicott City. The most common reasons participants stayed were: (1) Community Impact, (2) Historical Land, and (3) Financial Burden. The most common reasons participants left were: (1) Emotional Exhaustion and Frustration, (2) Fear/Anxiety, and (3) Financial Burden. The results of our study indicate that reasons individuals who experience flash flooding stay, or leave may include community/historical, environmental, emotional, and economic factors. This reveals the complexity of relocation and sense of place after natural/environmental disasters and supports previous literature that suggests tailored response efforts based on these unique set of burdens. This paper aims to identify burdens and understand flood victims’ decisions to help policy makers improve flood response efforts.

Special Issue: Place, Space, and Mental Health

“…Scrima et al [ 4 ] examined the perspective of employees in a COVID-19 vaccination centre and found that their appreciation of art at the workplace was associated with less work-related exhaustion. Chan et al [ 5 ] examined dilemmas over relocation after a natural disaster, flash flooding, in Ellicott City, USA. Their study showed how leaving one’s home after a crisis is a complex dilemma involving communal, historical, environmental, emotional, and economical considerations.…”

“…Two articles are based on the quantitative assessment of cross-sectional surveys targeting specific groups: university students in Lubin, Poland [ 3 ] and staff of vaccination centres in Palermo, Italy [ 4 ]. Diverse qualitative methods were applied via in-depth interviews with adults who had encountered a natural disaster, i.e., a flash flood, in Ellicott City, USA [ 5 ] and via photo-elicited focus group discussions for young women living in slums of Kampala, Uganda [ 6 ]. Three experimental studies in this collection utilised state-of-the-art technological tools in either developing environmental stimuli (immersive virtual reality scenarios [ 9 ]), processing environmental stimuli (Google Street View images analysed with deep learning algorithms [ 7 ]), or measuring responses to environmental stimuli (brain activity by EEG [ 8 ]).…”

“…The importance of public open and recreational spaces for the promotion of mood and mental health was examined by Bernat et al [ 3 ], Reece et al [ 8 ], and Zhang et al [ 7 ]. Swahn et al [ 6 ] and Chan et al [ 5 ] assessed the role of communities in the wider environmental and social context. Scrima et al [ 4 ], instead, focused on workplaces, where people spend large amounts of their days, and Li et al [ 9 ] on transitional spaces between indoor and outdoor environments where visitors pass several times a day but only for brief amounts of time.…”