Program Co-Director Lynette de Silva has taken a new look at the Vanport disaster of 1948 through the lens of transformative conflict analysis. In 1948, the community of Vanport, Oregon, home to a large Black community, was washed away by a historic flood event. In her new research, de Silva tests the utility of the transformative water conflict analysis framework in the Vanport context by constructing a situation map and placing the Vanport story into one of the four stages of water conflict transformation. In doing so, she highlights the importance of the agency displayed by Vanport residents. To learn more about how racism, bad weather, community history, and poor urban planning and flood management contributed to the Vanport disaster, read more here.
