When a disaster befalls a society, inevitably the event becomes charged with emotional consequences of how one, or a community deals with the devesation of the situation. Behind the conseqences are reasonings that are able to justify the outcome of the event and gives it cause, context, content, and meaning. Disasters that occur within a cultural atmosphere can be classified into subsections: that of natural disaster, and of man made disaster; both posing as different problems, but resulting with the same degree of traumatic impressions left within a communitity.
             No one can calculate when these catastrophies will strike or when they are scheduled on the calendar, both forms of disaster are unpredictable and are able to catch civilizations completely off gaurd. They counteract the harmony and disturb the flow of societies, uprooting any means of establishment and community. In this paper I will asses a comparason between two major disasters in United States history. The disaster in 1976 at Buffalo Creek, in West Virginia, and a more well known disaster: The World Trade Center Bombing on September 11th, 2002. I will examin how two events, staged in completely different settings and with different stories, result in similar impacts within the cultures, harping on the negative consequences that scarred the lives of people who lived within these two seperate communities.
             It will examin these two traumas, one from the big city of New York, the ther from a little town in West Virginia, for the similiar insights they provide about the role that culture plays in the shaping of the experience of collective trauma, and the facilitation of recovery from these unexpected ruptures in social life
             In Buffalo Creek, Kai Erikson travells to this small area to investigate the sociological impact of the disasterous flood that took place in 1976. Erikson deals with the question of what happens to a community when it is faced with the conse...