UCL INSTITUTE FOR RISK AND DISASTER REDUCTION
PARADOXES AND PERCEPTIONS
- FOUR ESSAYS ON DISASTER David Alexander
IRDR Occasional Paper 2013-01
1
Cover photograph: damage caused by the 6 April 2009 earthquake to vernacular buildings at Onna,
L'Aquila, central Italy (photo: author).
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Paradoxes and Perceptions:
Four Essays on Disaster
Preface
These four essays started life as half-hour talks that I had intended to record, in the
contemporary mode, as audio podcasts. I found that there is little appetite for recordings that lack a visual side and hence I transformed them into essays—an easy
task, as that is exactly what they were in gestation.
In writing these four meditations my aim was to distil my experience of 33 years as
a student of disasters (hence, I began the first essay with a meditation on how I
started out in the field—which was as the result of a disaster, naturally!). The tone
of my writing is personal and non-specialist. I hope the reader will be stimulated, if
not captivated, by the journey through various and sundry aspects of calamity, catastrophe and various forms of emergency and aftermath. As I wrote, I made no
pretence of being comprehensive in my treatment of the subject, but instead I indulged in the satisfaction of writing about what I personally consider important.
One occasionally meets people who find it odd, or even distasteful, that I or anyone
else should have an enduring interest in a phenomenon as negative as disasters.
Perhaps, but calamities of all kinds need to be understood to be mitigated. In a field
in which there is much "reinvention of the wheel", "discovery of the obvious" and
"making the same mistakes again", it is clear that improving the acquisition, usage,
conservation and sharing of knowledge should be one of our greatest imperatives.
Moreover, the increasing complexity and vulnerability of human communities is a
further reason for wanting to understand disasters better.
Disasters are fascinating because they open a window on the inner workings of society. They provide graphic illustrations of the human condition in many of its forms,
plights and manifestations. The essence of academic work is to observe with detachment and to explain in such a way as to throw light on complex problems and
situations. I have tried to do that and, as I point out in the first essay, few other disciplines have such a need for theory that can illuminate practice as the study of disasters, dedicated as it is to assisting emergency responders, contingency planners,
recovery managers, reconstruction specialists and those people who set out valiantly to reduce the risk of disaster. This is my justification for presenting the academic viewpoint.
3
We are a very long way from getting the disasters problem under control at the
global scale and in the various nations around the world. It may be a well-worn platitude to argue that "more research is needed", but there is a strong element of truth
in such a statement. Perhaps one can qualify it by adding that "more creativity is
needed", for this is where the germ of the solution to the disasters problem lies. I
hope therefore that the reader will take my essays as a plea for new, creative solutions to the myriad problems presented by disasters. As phenomena they are frequently misunderstood, and I have tried to help rectify that. Their interpretation depends on how they are perceived, and I have tried to help illuminate the collective
perception, and in so doing impart some of my own for good measure.
Above all, I trust that we can continue a lively debate about what disasters are,
what their significance is to society, and what we need to do about them. Society
looks to those who know about these things for a solution and we should try not to
let it down. However, as runs the epigram of Martial, Sunt bona, sunt quædam mediocria, sunt mala plura quæ legis hic. Aliter non fit, Avite, liber.1
David Alexander
Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction
University College London
david.alexander@ucl.ac.uk
13 July 2013
4
Essay no. 1
There is Nothing More Practical than a
Theoretical Approach to Disasters
I am perhaps unusual in that I can fix the beginning of my interest in disasters to the
nearest tenth of a second. It was the evening of Sunday, 23rd November 1980 at
19.34 hours and 52.8 seconds, local time, when it all started. Instrumental seismology is the source of that perhaps rather spurious accuracy. I was a passenger in an
express train that was slowing down to stop at Pompei (modern Pompei, not the
archaeological site) on route to Taranto, southern Italy, where it never arrived. The
following edited extract from my diary describes what followed:"As we drew near to Pompei the train began to sway and shudder
sideways. It slowed, but continued swaying and trembling, seeming to
hang poised above the rails. A few seconds later it came crashing
down again and again in a series of bone-jarring oscillations. Without
speaking, we clung to the luggage racks. From the darkness outside
came the sound of tens of thousands of voices screaming, shouting
5
and crying. Meanwhile, the train drifted to a stop at Pompei station,
which was in total darkness.
"Outside, there was a furious commotion. Car headlights swept the
sky, horns blared, tyres squealed; there were more shouts and
screams. Groups of people came running across the railway tracks,
seeking refuge away from the shadow of tall buildings. We sat in the
carriage, bewildered and alarmed. After twenty minutes, when the
noise had begun to die away, I clambered down from the train. On the
platform of Pompei station, a dense crowd of people stood in the
moonlight around the signal cabin, where the station-master was vainly trying to establish contact with the rest of the railway system. He
tried number after number on the telephone and pulled lever after lever on the signal frame, but the equipment was dead or unresponsive.
The crowd murmured apprehensively. Suddenly, the station lights
came on; but after a few seconds they flickered and went out again.
As the light ebbed, the crowd gave in to panic. People rushed to the
nearest open spaces, or threw themselves to the ground. A man
slipped and rolled under the train. I began to start running, but
checked myself, realizing that there was nowhere to run to, and running was pointless.
"After an hour and a half I made my way down the street into the centre of Pompei. The darkness was almost complete and, until my eyes
became accustomed to it, I had to feel my way along the walls of the
buildings that lined the street. The roadway was deserted and as soon
as I could see well enough in the dark I moved away from the walls,
as I was acutely fearful that masonry would fall on me. In the main
square, residents had lit bonfires and were sitting patiently around
them wrapped in blankets. Flames cast a bright orange light on the
dense, watery clouds of fog that blew overhead. The mist parted momentarily to reveal a black bronze angel, trumpet in hand and wings
outspread, perched on the white marble campanile of the Sanctuary
of the Madonna."
I have quoted in extenso in order to give some flavour of what it is like to be in a
disaster, unharmed, but scared stiff, and then accompanied everywhere by a lump
in the throat, a tightness of the chest, a heaviness of heart, gut-wrenching tension
and a profound sense of anguish.
As in any large earthquake, death, injury, destruction and damage proliferated. Daily life went out the window: in fact, I spent the next three nights sleeping on a park
bench, and, once I could bring myself to sleep in a building, I did so fully clothed
with my shoes on and a torch in my hand, ready to react to the slightest tremor.
But the account I have just given is one of chaos and anarchy. In reality, disasters
do not contain quite so much of those qualities. Hence, for me the real epiphany
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was not seeing the orange glow of the flames reflected on the black bronze angels,
it was the moment, days later, when I started to read the literature on disasters and
I realised that there is order amid the chaos.2
Most, perhaps all, phenomena consist of a combination of uniqueness and common
elements. So it is with disasters. Each one is new and to a certain extent different
from those that preceded it. But there is much common ground between one extreme, damaging event and another. It is this that enables us to develop theory.
You will have heard people—especially people with a strongly practical turn of
mind—dismiss something by saying "oh, that's purely theoretical", as if theory were
a dispensable adjunct to what we see and do. It is not so. Theory is the means by
which we make sense of complicated phenomena. It helps us to create a model of
baffling reality; and models, if they are good, are elegant simplifications that help us
to understand complexities and come to terms with them.
In the early 1990s, convocations of people who work in humanitarian relief organisations started talking about the 'complex disaster'.3 This is a crisis situation that
occurs—and persists—in a place where the normal organisation of society has broken down. The pre-eminent examples came from the Middle East and Horn of Africa: Somalia, for instance, where government, security, education and many forms
of commerce had to be reorganised informally if, and where, there was any chance
of them taking place.
Critics of the 'complex disaster' have argued that all disasters are by their very nature complex, whether they occur in Somalia or California.4 If disasters were simple
problems, or so goes the argument, there would be simple remedies and the whole
matter would be under control.
But disasters are not under control. The last sixty years have seen the number of
catastrophes and calamities increase fivefold and their costs increase more that fifteen times.5 In part, this is an artefact of better counting in 2012 than in 1950, more
access to news about distant places, and the inclusion of more indirect costs in the
statistics. (For example, in 1950 banks had no cash machines, but if an ATM is now
put out of action by a disaster the fact that one cannot obtain money from it may
well be factored into the costs.)
There is currently surprisingly little information to show that global warming has increased the power of natural disasters, but the signs are that this is merely a lag
effect.6 In other words, before long it will be abundantly clear that meteorological
disasters are becoming more powerful, more frequent and are lasting longer as a
result of global climate change (and that goes for extremes at both ends of the
spectrum, for example, floods and droughts). In the meantime the same effect, an
increase in the sum total of human suffering, is produced by relentless rises in the
population and the vulnerability of people who inhabit the places most at risk of natural hazards. Moreover, competition for resources, marginalisation, exploitation and
a widening income gap between rich and poor may fuel conflict and thus produce
more of another kind of disaster. Finally, technological development and the relent7
less rise of fixed, physical capital in hazardous areas add to the portfolio of disaster
risk. Technology is ever the double-edged sword, capable of making life safer and
spreading great benefits but at the same time able to create new and enhanced
forms of risk.
So disasters are not under control. What are we going to do about this? The first
task is to study the problem in order to develop a better understanding of it: know
disaster and by "knowing your enemy" learn to conquer him. Thus, back to the
question of theory.
In many fields it is perfectly legitimate to develop theory for its own sake. There is
nothing inherently wrong with a theoretical approach and the ability to see things in
the abstract is a useful attribute, providing we don't all do it all the time. However,
there is something rather special about theory in the study of disasters. In the words
of an eminent sociologist of disasters, Professor Thomas E. Drabek, "theory is our
road-map".7 When a situation is apparently chaotic, theory will help unravel the
strands and make it comprehensible. In so doing, it will help us to satisfy basic
needs for mitigation, response and readiness.
In few fields has a link been so robustly constructed between theory and practice.
When a theorist produces a new hypothesis about hazard, risk or disaster, to be
validated it has to survive a more or less immediate test. For we need theory that is
directly useful. It is all very well to do "blue sky thinking" and produce elaborate, abstract concepts, or descend into the contemporary Baroque of post-modern reasoning, but this is a field in which there are exceedingly strong imperatives. We need
theory that can be applied in the round to help save lives, limit damage, anticipate
adverse events, and so on. The test of theory is its ability to survive a "trial by fire"
in the disaster area.
I hope that these reflections make it clear how important theory is. Far from being
the "peacock's tail" of disasters, it is the means by which a link can—and must—be
forged between academics who study disasters, emergency planners, front-line responders and a host of other practitioners. The accumulation of a body of theory
legitimises a discipline and helps it to become mature. Disaster studies are an
emerging discipline (and later we will deal with the question of how to identify and
characterise it). Theory is the visiting card of this field and the vehicle by which it
will establish itself, grow to maturity and make a strong contribution to human welfare.
Therein lies a problem. The very earliest academic theorists of disasters (leaving
aside the odd general who philosophised on the battlefield, and other ad hoc contributions) produced their initial contributions shortly after the First World War, and in
some cases directly in response to that conflict.8
Samuel Henry Prince was a man of the cloth (whose likeness is now immortalised
in a stained glass window in a church in his home town). In Halifax, Nova Scotia, he
ministered to parishioners after a munitions ship had exploded in the local harbour
and devastated a large area of town, with heavy loss of life. His genius lay in his
8
recognition of the existence of social regularities amid the chaos and destruction.
He codified them in a doctoral thesis that became a book published in 1920 by his
alma mater, Columbia University, and now freely available to be downloaded from
the Internet.9 He was closely followed by a Chicago University geographer, a largerthan-life man physically and in human terms—and a giant of an intellectual—called
Harlan Barrows, whose presidential address to the Association of American Geographers in 1923 kicked off the study, by geographers and anthropologists of 'human
ecology' and the study of humanity's adaptation to environmental extremes.
Progress was relatively slow. In the inter-War years, a Russian, a monacled former
aristocrat called Pitrim Sorokin, was co-opted by the Bolsheviks to help them understand how the masses reacted to social turmoil, as well as how soldiers reacted to
stress on the battlefield, a question that was already preoccupying clinical psychologists in the West. Sorokin ended his days at Harvard University with a comfortable,
if not outstanding reputation. Meanwhile, Professor Barrows's legacy at Chicago
was about to blossom.
In the 1930s the United States had grappled unsuccessfully with the difficult problem of how to bring natural disasters under control, particularly floods. The massive
rivers of the American heartland, the Missouri and Mississippi, were prone to overflow and devastate floodplain communities and agriculture, not once in a lifetime,
but repeatedly year after year. It seemed that the more containment structures that
were built, the worse the flooding became. The answer to the conundrum was provided by a gentle Quaker, Gilbert Fowler White, who, for his efforts on behalf of disaster reduction in the United States, later received the Presidential Medal for Science from Bill Clinton.10
White founded a school of human ecology in which the solutions proposed were
both structural and non-structural. Land use control, emergency planning, insurance
underwritten by the government and other such measures were to be added to the
engineering solutions that had hitherto prevailed. White and his students also
showed that how people perceive hazards has a great impact upon how they deal
with them. In fact, systematic studies of perception took off under White's aegis,
and, such was academic life in cosmopolitan Chicago, the concepts were exported
to the four corners of the world, where, by and large, they took root.
Meanwhile, conflict was once again stimulating academic work. In the countries that
were exhausted by warfare, particularly Germany, France, Britain and Japan, the
end of the Second World War and its early aftermath, were one long draw-out disaster for the survivors. Knowing that they would have to "fight the peace" as much
as the war, even before the end of hostilities, the victors had sent in social scientists
to listen and record (an act that contrasts starkly with the laissez faire attitude to the
aftermath of hostilities in Iraq in the 1990s and 2000s).
Mass Observation survived the end of the 1940s. It did so because of the fears engendered by the Cold War. In the United States, the National Opinion Research
Center was founded, again at Chicago, in 1941 and there it still remains. In the
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1950s NORC made detailed studies of natural disasters—hurricanes, tornadoes,
floods and earthquakes—in an attempt to see whether the intense disruption that
they caused could be considered an analogue for the effects of a nuclear war. In
the end, the answer was a resounding 'no', especially as the megatonnage and
stockpiles of nuclear weapons increased. But the studies remained valid in their
own right, and in terms of social research on disasters, they started the ball rolling.11 (Let us note in passing that the same agenda was pursued at the time by the
US National Academy of Sciences, which, among other initiatives, sent its psychologists to examine the effects of tornadoes on victims and survivors).12
As time progressed, the geographers migrated to the University of Colorado at
Boulder, and the sociologists first to Columbus, Ohio, and then to the University of
Delaware. Gradually the evidence mounted. People react to disasters according to
how they perceive these phenomena, how they deal with risk, and how they perceive the opportunities that are available to them. Faced with hazard, they adapt
their activities and lifestyles—always assuming that they perceive enough of the
risks to adapt to them. Of course, there were plenty of anecdotes about maladaptation. For example, one researcher interviewed a property developer on the banks of
a river in Pennsylvania. She asked him if he realised that the apartments he had
just built were easily floodable. His response was a classic: "There is no flood risk
here, because within six months I will have sold every one of these apartments!"
One thing bothers me about these studies, and that relates to the model individual
that they are based on. The Nobel Prize-winning economist and polymath Herbert
Simon wrote several papers in the 1950s in which he developed the concept of the
rational man, homo economicus.13 This notional person was either an optimiser or a
satisficer. In either case he did the best he could under the circumstances, but in
the former instance he actively sought the best available information about hazards
and risks, while in the latter case he was content with a less-than-complete set of
information. The Chicago researcher's perceiver of floods and droughts, adopter of
mitigation measures and adapter to environmental extremes, the human ecologist
in the round, was a member of the homo economicus tribe.
To begin with, there was no mention of his female counterpart. Would a 'rational
woman' have been more or less rational than the man, and how would her brand of
rationality have differed from his? Furthermore, the word 'culture' did not appear in
the dialogue. The form of rationality under consideration was economic; it was
based on considerations of income and expenditure.
Anthropologists will decry what I have to say next: indeed, they have already severely lambasted me. However, the study of culture is conspicuous by its absence
in a large proportion of disaster research. I accept that it has been central to the
work of anthropologists, and these include some of the most eminent human ecologists (indeed, the synonym for this term preferred by many anthropologists is
'cultural ecology'). Karl Butzer, yet again of Chicago, was one such expert who
looked at disasters. In a more sustained and intense way, so has the very eminent
anthropologist Professor Anthony Oliver-Smith, working in the Andes.14 However,
10
the sad fact is that anthropologists and other cultural ecologists have had relatively
little impact on students of disaster from other disciplines, and there may be as
many as 36 of these.
Culture is something I shall return to later in these essays, because it is as important as it is neglected. (Fortunately there are incipient signs that in the present
decade something is at last going to be done to remedy this situation.) People do
things for cultural reasons, whether they act with or without self-awareness. Perception and interpretation of disaster has cultural roots, even among those researchers
who strive to be totally objective. One can even add that money is spent on the basis of cultural justifications that have little support in the mind of homo economicus.
That, of course, is because homo sapiens sapiens, for better or worse, is endowed
with memory and free will.
But let these considerations not be interpreted as a call for anarchy and liberation
from theory. I am merely arguing that it is time to stop assuming that we are all,
deep down, alike in how we view and react to disasters. However, I do recognise
that many of the social regularities brought to light in acultural studies have proved
remarkably resilient, even when transplanted to radically different forms of society.15
Besides the absence of culture, there has been another problem with disaster theory, which is fragmentation of effort. I have alluded to the difference between geographers, anthropologists and sociologists, but there are, in reality, somewhere between six and eleven different schools of thought. The fault lines between them
may be micro or macro. Psychologists, for example, look at how people internalise
the effects of disaster, while sociologists look at how they share them socially. The
biggest dividing line is between the physical and construction sciences on the one
hand and the social sciences on the other. To this day, the latter are the poor relations.
Essentially, it took the period 1990-2005 fully to establish the study of natural hazards. This meant encouraging co-operation among physical scientists (geologists,
seismologists, volcanologists, engineers, and so on) for the study of extreme natural events. The 'products', or outcomes, of this are maps of hazard and susceptibility; studies of energy expenditure leading to damage; surveillance, prediction and
physical warning systems, and so forth.
To take an example, an effective hazard warning system must consist of three functioning subsystems: physical (i.e. scientific), administrative and social. The absence
or inefficiency of any of these components will render the whole system ineffective.
No greater rationale could be advanced for healing the breaches, bridging the gaps,
or returning to a state of interdisciplinary activity—and including the social scientists.
I say 'returning': in the 17th and 18th centuries, Domenico Antonio Guglielmini was
Professor at the University of Bologna, the world's alma mater studiorum, but of
what? He professed geology, anatomy, medicine and mathematics, and he was
adept at discovering the connections between these sciences.16 In the modern age,
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the proliferation of knowledge has made it impossible, or at least very difficult, to be
a professor of several radically different fields at once. But students of scientific progress often forget that the modern idea of disciplines is exactly that: it is of recent
institution, perhaps dating from the 'Scottish Renaissance' of the 1790s. A couple of
centuries later, is it not time to think again about where the boundaries ought to be?
I have long taken the view that the demands of the problem, not the nature of the
discipline, should determine the way in which disaster is studied. No phenomenon
is more transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary—or do I mean non-disciplinary?—than
disaster.
Herein lies another problem, one that began to be serious in 1970 and has grown
and grown ever since. Yes, the early body of theory about disaster did strive to be
interdisciplinary, or at least multi-dimensional. In so doing, it tended to fragment.
The result is that there are many more opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration than actual examples of it, and there are many studies that consider only one
aspect of each multi-dimensional problem. Putting them together is a challenge.
Concurrent to this, the obsolescence of theory about disasters is a developing problem.
The full fruit of Barrows' and White's work on disasters began to be felt in the
1970s. By this time the "hazardousness of place" was a well-established notion,
and so were risk perception and adaptation.17 Proof that these ideas were wellestablished can be discerned in the way that they began seriously to be questioned.
By the mid-1970s (when, incidentally, the United States made its first systematic
effort to assess the nature and magnitude of the hazards that the nation faces)18 the
model was in place, but it was beginning to look too linear: hazards acting upon the
vulnerability of people and their communities and economies, and with disaster impact as the end result.
Research in East Africa began to paint a different picture.19 Here, vulnerability
called the tune. Hazards could be looked upon as merely the 'trigger' to events
whose form and severity were conditioned by the susceptibility of people and their
communities to harm. In point of fact, commentators had been saying for years that
there is nothing very natural about 'natural' disasters—a mere convenience term for
events whose origin is human made. Thus, for instance, earthquakes directly kill
very few people, but collapsing buildings can cause vast numbers of casualties. It
follows that buildings which resist seismic shaking can drastically limit the tolls of
death and injury in major earthquake events.
The so-called 'radical critique' was advanced in a book edited by the eminent AngloCanadian geographer Kenneth Hewitt, in 1983.20 His thesis was that vulnerability is
the heart of causality when disaster strikes. Feedback dominates the linear relationship between hazard, susceptibility and harm. Hewitt and his colleagues argued
that much more time should be spent on looking at the sources and causes of vulnerability than had hitherto been the case in a field dominated by the exponents of
studies of hazards.
12
It took a quarter of a century before that idea was accepted at an institutional level.
The European Commission finally backed it with funding over the period 20072011. The EC then fell into the political elephant trap that disaster so readily creates: it is a negative phenomenon with a negative image. Hence, the next tranche
of funding went to back studies of resilience, practically the opposite of vulnerability.
In my view, this was premature, as there is still plenty of mileage in vulnerability
studies. For instance, one paper published in the early 2000s listed 22 different definitions of vulnerability:21 this is now reckoned to be about half of the number of definitions of the term that are in general circulation. It stands to reason that if we have
trouble defining a term we still have trouble conceptualising the phenomenon it represents.
So where are we now, and what is the problem? The points I have made add up to
the fact that academic and institutional views of disaster seem to change slower
than the phenomenon itself. We are left with theory that is still based upon Simon's
"rational man"; that still lacks cultural resonance; that still places too much emphasis on hazards as the trigger rather than vulnerability as the essence.
The central fact is that the world has changed enormously over the last 40 years
and, with respect to disasters, theory production has not kept pace. For example,
since 1970, the income gap between the world's rich and poor has steadily widened. The demographic question has become more of an imperative; peak oil has
already occurred, but demand continues to rise; resources are scarce, sustainability
is elusive, and so on.
So let us end with a call for a renewed quest for theory that can successfully be applied to severely practical problems associated with risks and disasters. The incentive—and the fact that set me on a 33-year course of studying catastrophe—is that
disasters are extraordinarily revealing phenomena. They open a window on the inner workings of society. They shine a light on the murky corners of the human condition. They etch the patterns of chiaroscuro in a never-ending dichotomy between
the benevolent and malevolent sides of the human character.
When I first started to study disaster many of the debates that are now so familiar
and so quotidian were non-existent. Sustainability is one of these. When I call for
improved theory, I believe that our strategy on disaster risk reduction (DRR—
another relatively new term) must necessarily be integrated with our approach to
sustainable living. In fact, DRR needs both to be sustainable in its own right and
part of the general push to make our living conditions sustainable in terms of resource usage, apportionment and stewardship.22 Climate change and the technological revolution inherent in globalisation are great stimuli to these efforts.
In 1976 the journal Disasters began publication. I have been associated with it
since it was five years old and it continues to flourish under the aegis of the Overseas Development Institute in London. The very first article in Volume 1, no. 1, was
an editorial by the eminent expert on humanitarian relief, John Seaman. Dr Seaman, Chief Medical Officer with Save the Children Fund, has a talent for provoca13
tive writing. He began the journal by fervently hoping that it would cease publication. However, his criterion was that there be no more disasters. Unfortunately, we
are a long way from achieving that end and Disasters is at Volume 37 and going
strong.
The nature of the debate and the science it publishes has changed and continues
to do so. My thesis is that it needs to change yet more radically. I invite you to join
me in thinking about how that might occur, keeping in mind our ultimate goal, that
ever-so-theoretical world that has, miraculously, been freed from the scourge of disaster.
14
Essay no. 2
Disasters Create Their Own Mythology
Few phenomena are as easily misunderstood as disasters. As a result, there is a
large catalogue of misconceptions that remain dearly held and reluctantly abandoned. Now one would suppose that the experts and professionals in the disasters
field (first responders, emergency managers, medical specialists, and so on) would
be the first to try and dispel the misconceptions, but this is not always the case.
Such people are also members of the general public, and consumers of mass media products. Many of them have not been disabused.23
For years, an eminent Belgian medical expert, Dr Claude De Ville De Goyet, has
been conducting a campaign—I nearly said "waging a war"—to get the mass media
to renounce its faith in misconceptions about disaster.24 Dr De Ville, or "Doctor
Claude", as he is affectionately known by his many admirers (of whom I am one) is
not a lightweight player in this field: he is retired from a distinguished career as the
World Health Organisation's western hemisphere leader on disaster response,
courtesy of the Pan American Health Organisation. And yet even the supposedly
responsible mass media, the New York Times, Washington Post and so on, were
not interested in responding to Dr Claude's challenge and getting the story right. Evidently, they view the stereotyped story as more attractive to their readers.25
For convenience, the misconceptions are often referred to as 'myths'. This is reasonable according the the Oxford English Dictionary's second definition of the term,
namely: "a widely held but false belief". However, one should bear in mind that
many of the misconceptions are better described as statistical inaccuracies rather
than outright falsehoods.
My empirical research suggests that the 'myth' which is most dearly and tenaciously
held is that "panic is common and widespread in disasters." Why should this be? In
my previous essay, I discussed the role of theory in "making sense of apparent chaos". If one is unaware of the available body of theory, and thus unable to interpret
the complexity of disaster, all that is left is chaos. And chaos is easily equated with
panic, especially if one doesn't adopt a particularly rigorous definition of the latter.
The word 'panic' comes from the Greek Pānikos, of Pan, the goat-like shepherd
god. In 490 BC at the battle of Marathon he is said to have shouted so loud that the
echoes of his voice as it rebounded from the surrounding mountains convinced the
Persians that the Athenian forces were much more numerous than was actually the
15
case, causing tumultuous dread to proliferate among the invaders. Pānikon deima
became synonymous with a sudden accession of fear by travellers in lonely places.
In the modern world of science, the trouble with the term 'panic' is that it has several
definitions and, as they do not fit well together, it is easily misinterpreted. Sociologists see panic as a social reaction, or more properly an asocial one, involving the
spontaneous withdrawal of social contact in favour of an innate self-protective reaction to the sudden manifestation of apparent danger.26 I am sorry if this definition
sounds as if it were written as part of an insurance policy, but the whole concept of
'panic' is hedged around by controversy, and it pays to be cautious when discussing
it. There does not have to be a real danger; it is sufficient that one be perceived.
The 'self-protective behaviour' need not have a positive, tangible result: indeed,
panic can easily lead the panicker into danger, rather than out of it. Moreover, despite its connection with the sudden abandonment of social relations, rather paradoxically, panic can be contagious and result in mob behaviour.
The other group of scientists to have studied panic extensively is, of course, the
psychologists. They tend to see it as much more of an innate phenomenon, and as
a result they regard it as more common and widespread in the general population
than do the sociologists.27 The one bridge between the two camps is the idea of
panic as the sudden—one hopes temporary—suspension of rational judgement in
favour of spontaneous reaction. Sociologists have tended to study panic (something
they have done for sixty years) in the context of entrapment and flight. The classic
situation is a crowded indoor setting in which fire breaks out, and the exits are
locked or restricted.
In 1987 Professor Norris Johnson chose panic as the subject of his presidential address to the American Sociological Association.28 He argued, not only that panic as
a common and widespread phenomenon is a misconception, but that panic itself is
a myth. Other researchers with expertise in the field believe that, in order to make a
point, Professor Johnson went "over the top" and panic is rare but not a chimera.
I would tend to agree. At about 6 p.m. on the 14th February 1981 I was in central
Naples in a hotel just off the central square called Piazza Garibaldi. I locked my
room and walked down the stairs to street level. Half way down, I was thrown
against the wall. I staggered out into the street and came face-to-face with an extraordinary scene. Red faced people were howling like wolves or bawling like angry
infants. There was a rumble and part of a building collapsed into the square in a
cloud of dust. I joined about 200 people who were desperately running, no one
knew where or why. After a few seconds I stopped and started to reason. It was the
largest aftershock to follow the 23rd November 1980 magnitude 6.8 southern Italian
earthquake.
In reality, few people had given way to hysterics, and they were rapidly and competently dealt with by others, who restrained them and restored calm. Panic does occur, and in this case I was a party to it. However, the sociologists have rightly and
definitively established that it is a rare and transient phenomenon.
16
In 2003 fire broke out in a heavily overcrowded nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode
Island.29 A disturbing film was taken of the entire incident, which killed 100 people,
almost a quarter of those who were present. The film is very graphic and the company that shot it was later sued for $30 million for allegedly obstructing the entrance
during the evacuation of the locale. This is a classic example of the 'funnel effect', in
which people file in ever increasing numbers through an exit that is too small for
them. Initially, panic was conspicuous by its absence. It only occurred, briefly,
when, in effect "the game was up" and the exit was blocked. The same is true of
many other well-known incidents in which lives were lost because evacuation became progressively less easy.
So in reality panic is much less common than is a rational reaction to danger. However, the classic misconceived attitude is that, faced with an urgent predicament,
"people will panic", and this is used to restrict the supply of information. Indeed, it is
assumed—quite wrongly—that if people are told the truth, they will become so
acutely anxious that they will lose their reason.
At 9.45 p.m. on 13th January 2012 the Costa Concordia, the seventh largest passenger ship afloat, struck a rock off the island of Giglio in the Tuscan Archipelago of
central Italy. Holed, listing and without power she eventually beached on the island.
Of the 4,252 people on board, all but 32 were rescued. It was very fortunate that the
Concordia did not sink in the deep marine trench adjacent to where she beached,
which would have led to heavy loss of life. When the ship hit the rock there was a
booming noise accompanied by rapid deceleration. Loose objects and furniture
were thrown violently around, the lights went out and emergency lighting came on.
The first action by officials on board was to tell passengers to return to their cabins
"while an electrical fault was fixed"—pure expedient fantasy. Fortunately, very few
of them obeyed this order, which would have put them at risk of entrapment and
drowning, and most of them put on their life-jackets and mustered close to the liferafts. Evacuation was technically demanding, as during it the ship listed more and
more. Nonetheless, passengers and crew reached the shore and remained calm.
The order to return to the cabins was a typical example of one given in the interests
of stopping a notional state of panic from developing. In reality, people tend to react
more rationally if they have realistic information: they are, if anything, more likely to
panic without it.30
Incidentally, one of the earliest chronicles of mass panic in modern times was the
supposed reaction to a drama based on H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, as recited
in a radio broadcast by his namesake, Orson Welles. A gullible public in New Jersey were supposed to have believed that the Martians had landed and it was every
man—or woman—for himself—or herself.31 The context of this curious event was
provided by the gathering clouds of a World War, a situation in which public anxiety
was almost universal. Although it is estimated that 1.2 million people "were frightened" by the story, few of them did anything other than pick up the telephone in order to seek official confirmation of whether or not "something was happening". The
17
mass panic was almost entirely an invention of the newspapers, which were locked
in ferocious competition with the radio stations.
But the myth of panic has proved to be remarkably enduring. After the Madrid train
bombings of 2003 the Secretary General of an illustrious and ancient British learned
society went on television to argue for more secrecy in emergency planning. His
rationale was that "people will panic". Besides the fact that this gentleman was a
physicist, apparently with no special knowledge of social science, he was merely
retailing a shibboleth. So in emergency planning please let us have more openness
and less mythology.
The second great misconception is that large disasters inevitably cause epidemics,
especially if dead bodies lie around unburied: they are supposed to poison water
wells, transmit diseases to the living, contaminate people with their putrefaction,
and so on. With an additional eye to the disruption of medical care caused by disaster, after the December 2005 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the world's mass media
confidently predicted that there would be more deaths from disease in the dozen or
so affected countries than from the tsunami itself. It was not so.
Instead, we were treated to the spectacle of the western countries effectively exporting their national health systems to Asia. They set them up on the beach-heads
and they tended to the sick and wounded. It reminded one of an earthquake in Turkey in which, hours after the event, the international community geared up to send
cohorts of doctors to help out: but 2,300 extra Turkish doctors were already at work
in the affected area.
The fear of epidemics often leads to hasty and indiscriminate burial. After the 2001
earthquake in El Salvador, the mayor of the town of Santa Tecla authorised a 200metre-long trench to be dug, and into it bodies and body parts were hastily and indiscriminately flung. When this has been done in the humid tropics, the trenches
have sometimes filled up with water before they could be filled with earth, such that
the bodies floated away out of them. In Thailand after the 2005 tsunami, indiscriminate burial ended in the need for exhumation and identification of the bodies that
had been so hastily and thoughtlessly stashed away.
Indiscriminate burial because of the fear of epidemics has a variety of potential negative consequences. Widows cannot obtain death certificates and may have to wait
years before they can receive their husbands' transferrable pensions. Family members cannot grieve and mourn properly; thus are the living demoralised. Causes of
death are not properly established and death tolls are not accurately compiled. Excellent opportunities for fraud and chicanery present themselves, and all because of
a purely notional fear of epidemics.
The Haiti earthquake of January 2010 killed so many people that the death toll was
never properly established. Courtyards and streets were piled shoulder-high with
dead bodies. But, although there were serious outbreaks of disease in Port au
Prince, they were not caused by the unburied bodies. Indeed, Haiti was the first occasion—after many lost opportunities—in which the competent international authori18
ties (leaders of the Red Cross and so on) stood up in front of the cameras and microphones and categorically stated that epidemics were not going to happen because of any failure to bury human bodies quickly enough.32
There are many 'myths' and misconceptions about disasters: in fact, I estimate that
at least sixty are in common circulation. For instance, one is that the deadly spores
of anthrax appear in the form of a white powder. There were occasions in the early
2000s when mayhem was generated when people found white powders in toilets
and other public facilities. As anthrax is greyish-brown or colourless, they were
probably looking at talcum powder or cocaine. But they all led to reactions worthy of
the response to all-out biological warfare.
There is, of course, a well-known genre of film noire known as the 'disaster movie'.
My favourite example is Dante's Peak, the story of how a cataclysmic volcanic eruption affects a small American community. I like it because it features as many as
five incompatible styles of volcanic activity, as well as a litany of sociological inaccuracies that is enough to make it a textbook example of exactly what does not happen in disaster.
The Hollywood version of catastrophe is one in which the impact of an extreme
event spontaneously unmasks the savage within each of the people involved. They
all respond with violence and individualism. Social relations and "civilisation" break
down or are summarily dispensed with. If the situation is redeemed, it is the work of
a spontaneous leader, a hero in the classic sense of the term, who single-handedly
restores order out of chaos.
Unfortunately, the Hollywood model is far more than a fantasy of the cinema.33 To
begin with, it is equally beloved of television. One recalls Woody Allen's dictum that
"In Beverly Hills they don't throw their garbage away, they make it into television
shows." Worse still, the Hollywood model is also beloved of civil authorities worldwide.
Now it stands to reason that certain parts of the plans and arrangements for dealing
with emergencies need to remain confidential. This is true, even though no evidence has ever been presented to suggest that terrorists go down to their local public libraries in order to study emergency plans and thus make their actions more effective—they don't need to do anything of the sort. However, there is an uneasy relationship between secrecy and inefficiency. In fact, secrecy is beloved of those
who fear being unmasked because their plans and actions are inadequate, or because they have failed to do their duty. In this respect, secrecy is highly convenient.
Hence, the notions that "people will panic" or "terrorists will profit" are great excuses
for secrecy—but not for any rational response to hazards and threats.
In the 1960s and 1970s, sociologists wrote cogently about the therapeutic community (also known as the altruistic community).34 In this, disaster brings out the best in
people: self-sacrifice, abnegation, social consensus, laudable values, and so on. He
was right, of course, at least with respect to the early stages of a major emergency
19
(although in the later stages the old divisions in society often reassert themselves
with a vengeance).
People do not flee from disaster areas, they converge upon them. Rather than being deserted, the streets of devastated cities throng with relief workers, citizens trying to make the best of things, news reporters, relatives, volunteers and onlookers.
Where official order has broken down, perhaps as a result of damage to structures
or decimation of institutions, a different order evolves spontaneously to replace it.
People discover new, socially valuable roles that they can fulfil. Hence, the impact
of disaster is not always a completely negative experience: some people may find
their inner selves through it; others may rediscover long-lost social values.
So, in fact, disaster can bring out what is best in people, and it often does so. However, in an essay about 'myths' and misconceptions, it would be wrong to imply that
the darker side of humanity disappears completely as soon as the earth quakes or
the torrential rains arrive. One of the most contentious of the misconceptions is that
which relates to looting.
After Hurricane Katrina had passed through New Orleans at the end of August
2005, a couple of photographs circulated around the Internet. Indeed, in current
parlance, they "went viral". They showed people up to their armpits in water, carrying small quantities of food and drink. But one photograph, of two white people, had
a caption that suggested that they had "found" the food and drink. The other, virtually identical, showed a black person who had "looted a grocery store". Such is journalistic perception and prejudice. Looting did take place in New Orleans, albeit on a
much reduced scale compared to what was reported, and, bizarrely, some of it was
carried out by the city's police (who were predominantly white).
Katrina fulfilled perfectly the definition of disaster as a "class-quake".35 Perhaps it is
not coincident that New Orleans is the North American city of carnival. In carnival,
for a day the king becomes a servant and the servant is king. Whereas the deprived
black citizens of the Lower Ninth Ward did not find themselves to be suddenly rich
and powerful (indeed, some researchers claim to have evidence that the hurricane
was followed by forced migration), nonetheless it was singular that Bangladesh donated $25,000 to the United States' relief appeal.
Incidentally, one effect of Katrina on the academic study of disasters was to give a
massive boost to black studies and cultural investigations in this field, both of which
had roundly been neglected since the pioneering work in the 1960s and 1970s by
the eminent black sociologist William Anderson.36 The most startling conclusion of
these studies, and of Spike Lee's film about Katrina, When the Levees Broke, is
that some black people did not feel that they were even citizens of the United
States, a devastating indictment in a country in which school children salute the flag
and pledge allegiance every morning.
So looting does occur in disasters, even if it is not always what it seems to be. I believe that to take place it needs preconditions, especially in terms of the existence
of pre-existing fault-lines in society: particularly, latent social instability, lack of re20
spect for authority and lack of faith in institutions. Moreover, although disasters
tend, in their early stages, to increase the degree of social and moral consensus,
this does not mean that criminal elements simply melt away. Indeed, organised
crime may see disaster as the golden opportunity to profit from chaos.
This begs the question of the role of the illicit economy. It is estimated that about 20
per cent of the world's economy is either informal or illegal. In monetary terms,
slightly less than half of this consists of the international commerce in narcotics; the
rest is made up of trade in armaments, people trafficking, prostitution and illegal
gambling activities. Moreover, about half of legitimate trade is cycled through the
world's 78 tax havens, and the majority of financial transactions take place for the
purposes of short-term speculation. Hence, the small-scale criminal or tax-avoider
has some pretty strong competition from the world's millionaires and billionaires.
In disaster, the black economy is a Janus with two faces. It provides work and income to people who would otherwise be destitute, but it deprives the authorities of
the revenues needed to fund risk-reduction measures.37 Moreover, its activities may
undermine safety and security and debilitate recovery measures. In Phuket, after
the 2005 tsunami, it was estimated that 70 per cent of the local economy was informal. This could not be condemned totally, as it kept so many of the inhabitants
alive. But nevertheless, we should be moving towards greater, more honest and
transparent governance and greater legitimate public participation in risk reduction
activities.38
I would now like to change tack and discuss the medical side of disasters. My own
studies of earthquakes are tending to suggest that women are disadvantaged with
respect to men.39 They suffer a greater death toll and a heavier burden of physical
and psychiatric morbidity. This predicament badly needs investigating further, and
many opportunities to do so have been lost to researchers' ignorance or indifference, or at least to an incompatible set of priorities.
In part, problems like this could be reduced by a more efficient medical response to
sudden-impact disasters. Instead we encounter measures such as mass vaccination and sanitary cordons, which waste resources, restrict legitimate initiatives and
do nothing to ensure the health of survivors. 'Blanket' measures of this kind are seldom likely to be effective: there are too many ways around them. Yet they remain
popular.
Assistance that is indiscriminate or ill-thought-out is the bane of disaster management. In the month after the Armenian earthquake of 1988, 500 tonnes of medicines arrived at Yerevan Airport. Sixteen per cent of them had passed their 'use-by'
date. Very few of them were in any way appropriate to the pathologies that had to
be treated after a major earthquake. Almost none had explanations in Armenian or
Russian of what they were. The net result of this was a month spent vainly trying to
catalogue the supplies and then a considerable problem of how to dispose of
them.40 It reminds me that the Speaker of the UK House of Lords once told me that,
21
in Guatemala City after the 1976 earthquake, she saw crates of medicines marked
'not to be used after August 1934'.
Disasters are usually occasions for the outpouring of solidarity. This is all too frequently indiscriminate or badly thought out. For instance, donations of used clothes
have included bikinis, dinner jackets, high-heeled shoes, or simply the surplus production of the fashion industry. Apart from the useless garments, local shopkeepers
have begged the authorities not to distribute the clothes and ruin their trade. But is
this solidarity, or is it dumping? Although the therapeutic community may dominate
the local scene, it may not extend quite so readily to the international donors. Fortunately, as experience has mounted, donations have become more effective and
more focussed, but this problem has certainly not gone away.
In part it is encouraged by the dilemma of what to do with monetary donations. On
the one hand, there is nothing as flexible and appropriate as cash, providing it is
used appropriately to stimulate local economic activity and provide welfare where it
is genuinely needed. But there are too many occasions on which the money has
disappeared into the pockets of the rich and unscrupulous, leaving the disadvantaged survivors destitute. Yet mechanisms to counteract this do exist and can be
made use of, and so, for the most part, cash remains a better option than goods.
The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2005 engendered the greatest outpouring
of monetary solidarity ever. Four and a half billion dollars were collected in donations at the same time as a UN-backed appeal for $30 million to help the destitute in
refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan, failed to reach its target. In the world's media, the
Darfur situation was a poor relation to the tsunami-wracked beaches of the Indian
Ocean.
The tsunami rolled across the holiday beaches of the Western tourists, although not
exclusively so. In the mass media of the world's richer countries lent this a sense of
immediacy that most Asian disasters cannot emulate, hence the high level of donation. It confirmed the observation, first made decades earlier, that by shining the
light of publicity—or not—the mass media can turn solidarity on or off like a tap, irrespective of needs on the ground.
There is a small but cohesive body of academic literature on the behaviour of the
mass media in disaster. It concludes that the role of the media is powerful but imprecise. Researchers working in this field appear to suffer from the same malady as
disaster managers: they cannot decide whether the media are allies (or at least potential allies) or the devil incarnate. The consensus is that they are a bit of both.41
Irrespective of the differences between print media, radio and television, there have
traditionally been two kinds of reporting from disaster areas. One is relatively responsible and the journalists involved strive to paint an accurate picture of what is
going on. It seems that one cannot expect them to be entirely wise and knowledgeable about disasters, for there is very little sense that journalists as a group want to
become expert about disaster. However, with certain limitations, they do their best.
22
The other group is completely slapdash and will retail all the usual misconceptions
without making any effort to confirm or deny them. One gets the impression that
their communiques were written in the pub, not on the fault line, and it is probably
true. This usually underlines the distinction between the 'quality' and 'tabloid', or
'gutter', press.
My research on the world media's reaction to the Haiti earthquake of 201042 turned
up a new and disturbing phenomenon. Politically motivated websites are now reporting the news selectively in order deliberately to distort it in order to support a
particular political stance. While it is true that party newspapers have done this for
centuries, there is something particularly sinister and insidious about the current
fashion to use the Internet to propagate distortions.
Generally, the rise of 'citizen journalism' through Facebook, Twitter and Co. is regarded by researchers as a good thing.43 However, it should always be borne in
mind that this exceptionally fluid and amateur form of disseminating news is also
the perfect vehicle for propagating rumour and 'myths' about disaster.
So we live, as the Chinese sage so equivocally said, in "interesting times". After sixty years of intensive study, vast improvements in the speed and efficiency of communication, and the steady march of progress in education, the 'myths' and misconceptions about disaster are still alive and well. Some of them are liable to be
crushed by the steamroller of truth, while others are gaining traction.
In conclusion, I would say that modern disasters offer particularly fertile ground for
the spread of information. But information is not knowledge, still less wisdom. We
should be very careful about what we plant in that ground.
23
24
Essay no. 3
Information and Perception:
Living through a Revolution
We live, in the Information Age, or so it is said. According to the pyramidal diagram
constructed by the eminent geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, information is the second of
four levels of understanding. It renders the base of the pyramid, facts and observations, more powerful by combining them in such a way as to add value, but it lacks
the insight and explanatory power of the higher levels, knowledge or wisdom.
Hence, information is not wisdom: it constitutes the bricks from which we can, if we
want to, build the wall of knowledge, from which, we might, if we are lucky, accede
to the lofty heights of wisdom.44
Professor Henry Quarantelli, the doyen of disaster sociologists, wrote that the current information and communications technology revolution is about as important
for humanity as the invention of printing was in the fifteenth century.45 He noted its
enormous power to transform the way we view the world and hence the way we react to disasters. However, he also listed a dozen unintended consequences that will
need to be dealt with, and that may create problems rather than solve them.
25
We also live in an unstable age, one characterised by vast and profound changes.
Many of their most important implications are currently unpredictable and are likely
to remain so for a long time. We have glimpsed enormous potential, but do we
know how to harness it? The copiousness and unprecedented ease of access that
characterise modern information resources pose severe challenges. The first is how
to appreciate and utilise such a huge amount of information. How to separate useful
from useless information is a pressing problem. So is how to verify the truthfulness
of information and interpret its meaning.
The greatest risk is posed by the fact that, when confronted by avalanches of facts
and data, the easy way out is to treat them superficially. The bombardment of new
information is a sort of solar wind that blows constantly through cyberspace and the
mass media. In reaction, the world's attention span is limited and fickle. It passes
rapidly from one novel incident to the next. As a result, we have developed an attitude to disasters that brings to mind the ice-cream parlour, home of the 'flavour of
the month'. Today as I write, the flavour is 'earthquakes', as two very damaging
ones have just occurred in northwest Iran. Perhaps next month it will be floods, or
terrorism, or nuclear radiation releases. It all depends upon what happens in the
meantime.
Long ago, risk researchers determined that people find it difficult to evaluate risks
concurrently, and hence, despite the fact that we all run multiple risks all of the time,
we tend to think about them sequentially, one or two at a time. Clearly, in the
'flavour of the month' approach, this is also true of the collective psyche of the mass
of viewers, listeners, readers and surfers, the consumers of news (which we all
are).
The survivors of the information age are those of us who know how to adapt to it.
This not only means adapting the way we seek and assimilate information; something that is now radically different from how we did it half a century ago. It also
means learning how to exploit the sources and flows of information and how to
commandeer and dominate the interpretations. Verily, the soothsayers have not
gone away. They no longer look at the tails of comets and tell us that the gods are
angry, but there is no guarantee that a pundit with a strong presence on the dominant mass media will offer anything better, for we live in an age in which the public
has developed a chronic appetite for personalities. Incidentally, the original pundits
carried the equipment when the British surveyed northern India. No doubt it was a
repetitive job, because modern punditry certainly is.
One well-known pundit of the modern media was a certain Dr Iben Browning. His
chosen field was one of the most contentious in science: the short-term prediction
of earthquakes for the purposes of warning people of their imminent arrival. In 1990
he "predicted" (if that is the right word—which it probably isn't) an earthquake in
southern Illinois. Modern media do not distinguish well between 'plausible' and
'specious'. Browning is now deceased: he took his earthquake prediction secrets to
the grave with him. However, in 1990 he developed a strong and plausible mass
media presence that put the official scientists to shame.
26
No earthquake occurred in southern Illinois during the period specified by Browning,
but anxiety proliferated among the local population and there was a significant convergence reaction among the US mass media.46
Short-term earthquake prediction may never be feasible. Although there are nine or
ten physical phenomena that can undergo characteristic, or 'signature' changes
hours or days before earthquakes, the level of uniqueness in slip-faulting mechanisms militates against developing a standardised short-term prediction measure
that can be employed with ease around the world. And, incidentally, contrary to
public perception, the anomalous behaviour of animals is about the least reliable
earthquake precursor, such are the unknown vagaries of the psychology and reflexes of animals large and small. Nonetheless, all physical precursors are being actively, indeed intensively, studied by scientists in the hope that one day there will be
a break-through.
The US Geological Survey, as custodian of America's scientific values in this field,
examined its navel after the Browning affair and concluded that it had underestimated the power of charlatans to manipulate the media and appear credible.47 A publicity offensive should have been mounted on behalf of official science. Incidentally,
Browning's coup de theatre was the fact that he managed to convince a legitimate
geologist that his prediction had substance. The man in question was eventually
sacked by his university for misconduct.
In the early 1990s, the US Geological Survey issued a prediction for a moderately
powerful earthquake on a locked segment of the San Andreas fault in California.48
By virtue of having a surface expression, the San Andreas enjoys a public image
that few other active faults can aspire to (most of them are deeply buried). The role
of cowboy films and Easy Rider can perhaps be detected in the fact that equally
spectacular surface faults in China and Venezuela remain unknown to the world's
media audiences.
Parkfield, California, lies astride the locked segment of the fault. In 1993 it had a
population of 57, plus 300 scientific instruments, 80 of which were continuously recording. Within days of the start of the USGS's 'Parkfield Earthquake Experiment',
the local population had swollen to over 2,000, a motley combination of media representatives, New Agers and the curious and idle. But after 18 months the experiment ended without a significant seismic event—and even today it still hasn't occurred.
Official reports by the US Geological Survey make it clear that a 90 per cent probability of a magnitude six earthquake also means a perfectly respectable ten per cent
probability of nothing at all.49 That is what transpired. It reminds me that I once attended an earthquake conference at which the flower of Californian seismologists
congregated in a flimsy looking room that projected outwards from the first floor of a
monastery (a 1930s edifice, not something Mediaeval—this was California), about
ten kilometres from the San Andreas fault. It was interesting, if somewhat macabre,
to speculate what would have happened if the 'big one' had occurred while we were
27
all in that room, but such thoughts took no account of the hard reality of probabilities. And if probabilities did not enter into my considerations, they are positively
shunned by the general public.
It is an interesting exercise to type 'earthquake prediction' into an Internet search
engine. Bona fide, official science has its websites, and these explain that longterm, regional earthquake prediction is effectively a solved problem with routine procedures, but short-term transient prediction is no more than an elusive goal. What is
worrying, however, is that there are many other websites that confidently predict
major earthquakes all over the place, and usually the day after tomorrow. Hence,
the Internet has given free rein to the charlatans. Although the science behind their
activities is false or suspect, the visual impact of their sites is usually as good as
that of the USGS. Because it is the Internet, the sites are not policed.
Many a legitimate scientist would like to be the one who is remembered for ever after as being the person who cracked the problem of how to predict an earthquake
reliably in the short term. The fact that earthquakes do commonly emit precursors
makes this goal seem tantalisingly near at hand. Fortunately, bona fide science has
its in-built protection mechanisms which ensure that legitimate scientists do not
make unjustifiable leaps of faith, and that charlatans are excluded from the circle of
practitioners.50 But does the public realise this? The socio-economic implications of
earthquake prediction are potentially enormous: house prices may dip, people may
not go to work, children may be kept away from school, residents may leave the area, psychological pathologies may develop, and so on. In other words, the stakes
are high in both the negative and the positive senses, for being able to predict imminent earthquakes could indeed save lives if it were coupled with a well-rehearsed
plan of action.
In 2004 a talented Israeli sociologist, Avi Kirschenbaum, published a book about
disasters.51 The body of his text reported a well-executed but fairly standard social
survey of how the Israeli population reacts to threats, hazards and emergencies—a
kosher piece of work. However, there was something radically different about his
first and last chapters. In Chapter 1, Kirschenbaum plotted the number of disasters,
worldwide, against the dates on which important disaster management organisations were founded. He discovered a significant correlation. Now, most researchers
would automatically assume that the organisations, associations and agencies were
founded in response to the disasters. In individual cases, that is often so. However,
Kirschenbaum thought the opposite. He argued that there are increasing numbers
of disasters because there are increasing numbers of disaster management agencies, not the other way around. His thesis was that these organisations have a vested interest in self-aggrandizement and therefore tend to inflate the number of disasters and the magnitude of their impacts. In reality, he wrote, the increases in the
size and frequency of disasters have been relatively modest.
Kirschenbaum's last chapter contained a radical proposition. Having argued that the
world can ill afford such rampant inflation in the number of disaster management
agencies, he suggested that the best thing to do would be to make disaster re28
sponse a fee-for-service activity. If a person, or a family, does not subscribe to it,
they will receive no help when the next disaster occurs. Since Kirschenbaum was
writing (in the early 1990s) privatisation has become more and more fashionable
and has been applied with careless abandon to many public services in many countries. Why not civil protection? Parts of it are already in private hands anyway, for
example in branches of many countries' health services.
In my view there are too many considerations about welfare and the care of the vulnerable for such an approach to be morally justifiable. I will return to this issue in my
next essay. But for the time being I would like to point out that Kirschenbaum's book
should be required reading. It is a sort of "intellectual cod liver oil" for disaster specialists: it tastes bad but it does you good.
Is 'virtual reality' an oxymoron? And in any case, what is reality? An enduring image
comes to mind. It shows a village ruined by earthquake. All the houses are visibly
damaged, and some have collapsed. They have been abandoned by their occupants, with one exception. This is the coffee bar at the centre of town, which has
reopened with temporary connections to electricity and water supplies. Inside it
there is a party of local residents who are grouped around a television screen. They
are watching an image of a town that has been ruined by earthquake and abandoned by its inhabitants, except for one building at its centre. Possibly, the town is
their own.52
This early and rather primitive example of a sort of virtual reality highlights the importance of perception of hazards, risks and disasters. Although perception studies
have been conducted in this field for the past seventy or eighty years, they have only really come into their own since the 1970s. In part, this is an effect of the development in the 1970s of the concept of subjective risk (as opposed to measurable
'objective risk' based on hard data about probabilities). In the end, perception
equals money, because it can be equated with what people are prepared to pay for
safety and what services they are not prepared to underwrite because they perceive them as being unacceptably risky.
Disaster risk lies in a parallel world to the one we inhabit. I will go further: risk does
not exist. I hasten to add that, despite this observation, it is no less real. But risk is
like friction, it only comes into play when it is mobilised. We can never make a direct
measurement of risk: what we measure in its stead is impact, and by then the risk is
over and done with.
Under these circumstances it is not surprising that risk has proved such an elusive
phenomenon, easily misunderstood, seldom perceived accurately (if accuracy is
possible), and in many cases feared and dreaded.
Our parallel world is not merely inhabited by risk, it is increasingly subject to risk
aversion. A risk is regarded as 'dreaded' if it is considered intolerable.53 What is tolerable is a matter treated with great elasticity. I mentioned in a previous essay that
the glare of publicity can turn on the flow of solidarity; and turning off the stream of
reporting can stifle the process of donation. Likewise, the degree to which a risk is
29
feared or dreaded—conversely, the extent to which it is accepted—depends at least
in some measure on publicity.
In 1969, in a classic article in Science magazine, the risk analyst Chauncey Starr
declared that "a thing is safe if its risks are judged to be acceptable".54 Hence, safety is a variable factor, indeed, one that varies over time. This means that it is also
malleable. In that sense, the mass media are the mirror of what society is thinking
and of its sense of values. But it is a two-way relationship, in many ways, more or
less subtle, the media can create society's agenda. It can very easily pander to people's prejudices.
One evening I turned on the television news and the top story was a train crash
which had occurred that afternoon at a place called Crevalcuore (which translates
into English rather aptly as "break-heart"). Nineteen people died when two trains
crashed head-on in fog on a single-track line. News is, of course, not merely a
question of reporting the facts, but also involves putting a spin upon them, emphasising a particular angle, and selectively reporting the details. Evidently in this case
the television news editors had a grudge against the state railways. The news bulletin gave the distinct impression that it would be far safer to get on the motorway and
drive like a maniac in thick fog than set foot in a train. Trains are actually a very
safe means of transport in Europe, yet on a previous occasion the same news service had reported the deaths of six passengers in a crash as a "massacre", while
the deaths of six times as many people in road accidents during the same weekend
was treated as a "normal", unexceptional statistic.
These rather crude examples illustrate how the goalposts in the game of safety are
constantly being shifted. The threshold of what is considered tolerable and what is
treated as a disaster migrates over time. And of course it differs greatly from one
part of the world to another. A flash flood in Mogadishu killed 118 people, but as it
came at a time when conflict was raging in Somalia and there was daily mortality
due to fighting.55 Because, moreover, many vital life-support services had broken
down, the flood was hardly a disaster at all, or at least it was hardly distinguishable
from the disaster that was daily life.
Stalin once famously observed that one death is a tragedy and a million deaths is a
statistic—he more than any of his contemporaries other than Hitler should have
known. Perhaps the great misfortune of our time is our ability to decouple large
death tolls from the human tragedy.
But let us return to the information technology revolution. Disasters have always
had a symbolic value, and different cultures have ascribed to them different symbols and associated them with interpretations. Following the Golden Bough of Sir
James Frazer, magic involves the covariance of unrelated actions, event and consequence without a true cause and effect. The very term disaster, "dis-astro",
means "bad star" and thus refers to the role of the stars and planets in causing extreme terrestrial events, or bad luck on earth. Science has established a more enduring set of causal relationships (although not without mistakes, setbacks, contro30
versies and inaccuracies), but curiously this has not led to the demise of symbolism, only its metamorphosis.56
Nowadays, we talk incessantly about 'icons'. Clearly, we do not mean venerated
paintings of the Madonna and Child. We mean reductive symbols. Whether they are
small diagrams or people who embody some characteristic (usually celebrity), the
modern idea of the icon is to be able to reduce reality to a simple, perhaps fleeting,
piece of symbolism. The symbolic value of disasters has changed—somewhat—but
it has not diminished.
In January 2012, the Costa Concordia cruise ship foundered on a rock in the Tyrrhenian Sea and beached on a Mediterranean island. Ships have always been a
metaphor for society, and perhaps that is one reason why churches have naves.
We travel through time in notional vessels and we endeavour to float on a sea of life
made turbulent by vicissitudes. And there on the Island of Giglio we had the biggest
loss of a passenger ship in history, for the Concordia is two and a half times the
size of the RMS Titanic. We also had a brave, thoroughly modern, venture that
came to grief on the unforgiving rocks of an ancient marine basin. Destiny struck. It
is perhaps small wonder that the Concordia was immediately likened to the European economy, as it foundered on the recklessness of bankers, the profligacy of governments and the tax avoidance of citizens.57
Information technology has greatly aided a process of separating the protagonists
from the bystanders. For the majority, disaster is a spectacle to be enjoyed. The
condiment sprinkled on top of each daily dose is the realisation that it is all happening to someone else and one can be thankful for such deliverance. For the sizeable
minority, it represents suffering, hardship, pain and inconvenience. We the privileged watch this from the ringside as if we were immune. We are not.
I sometimes think that international terrorism perpetrated in Western countries is
nothing more than an attempt to re-import the risk that such nations have so successfully exported to the less privileged countries via the globalised economy and
its insistence on the exploitation of labour.
Meanwhile, information technology has succeeded in inverting the status of victims.
One theory of disasters is that they are a source of moral outrage, which is usually
directed against the institutions that have signally failed to protect citizens who put
their faith in them. Incidentally, this forms part of a general drift away from the concept of personal responsibility for bearing risks. However resilient society has become, individuals in Western countries are probably less resilient and less resourceful than they were sixty years ago when the state could do relatively little to
help them overcome the problems of disaster. But now the individual can easily become the harbinger, or purveyor, of moral outrage. Its handmaidens are the lawyers
and accountants whose presence has been substituted for common sense.58
A century ago, or even less, to be the victim of disaster was to bear a burden of disgrace and shame. Nowadays, the victim may be featured on a chat show, is possibly on first-name terms with a cabinet minister, and is certainly equipped with a
31
powerful weapon: moral outrage. There are, of course, those victims who use such
equipment to labour tirelessly and selflessly for the greater good of safety and disaster risk reduction. There are others who exploit it for all it is worth and assume the
symbolic mantle for shameless self-aggrandizement. The public's voracious appetite for personalities, and the ease with which interactions can occur in the age of
digital telecommunications, mean that the less scrupulous protagonists of modern
disaster are as likely to be applauded as vilified.59
Business continuity management is the art and science of doing two things simultaneously. One is keeping a crisis under control by tackling its root causes and its effects on the ground. The other is vigorously defending the reputation of one's company. Reputation equates to stock-market value, consumer confidence and a host
of other monetary variables. Of course, it can be difficult to defend a reputation
when the underlying crisis management is hopelessly inadequate, but there are
many who have tried. It is certainly a bad idea to manage a crisis faultlessly with the
exception of a plummeting reputation.
Hence, it is notable that in the present age as much effort seems to go into creating
the impression that things are being done as goes into actually doing them. Hence
we return to virtual worlds. Disasters and crises are managed, and so, in parallel, is
the impression that they are being managed.
So, whether reality is 'virtual' or real, we live increasingly in parallel worlds. The
symbolic value of disasters may be no less real than is risk, which in turn is no less
real than the actual impacts of disaster, but there are disjunctures between all of
these things. Noam Chomsky argued cogently that public consent is manufactured,
rather than obtained.60 Information is a primary resource and, despite all the talk of
free flows, it is quite still rigidly controlled. What I mean here is that you can believe
anything you like, but if too many people believe "the wrong thing" then corrective
action will be taken, possibly in the teeth of democracy.
Official attitudes to disasters on the part of governments are quite variable. Shame
is often one of them, along with concealment; political opportunism is another.
Moreover, in some cases governments are as likely to listen to celebrities as they
are to scientific experts. Or perhaps I am being too negative. In more than 30 detailed examples, Dr Ilan Kelman has shown that disasters are often the occasion for
the renewal of diplomatic initiatives.61 The field of disaster diplomacy got underway
in 1999 after earthquakes in Greece and Turkey occurred in quick succession. The
two countries were at loggerheads over a territorial dispute, but the mutual process
of offering post-earthquake assistance jump-started the diplomatic solution to their
dispute.
Whatever the attitudes of governments, and the efficacy, or not, of disaster diplomacy, there is a growing consensus that we need a world community of disaster
risk reduction protagonists, composed of scientific experts and leading decision
makers. Information and communications technology, and mass travel, have genu-
32
inely contributed to the creation of a 'global village' in which the plight of disadvantaged people and their communities is now impossible to ignore.
As each of us participates in global village life, we must adapt to changes, driven by
technology, that are faster and more profound than those our forebears had to deal
with. Let us try to make sure that we build a full pyramid: not merely information, nut
knowledge in the service of wisdom.
33
34
Essay no. 4
Disasters, Resilience and the Tension of Opposites
The word resilience, or resiliency, has a 2000-year history. It stems from the Latin
verb resilire, 'to recoil' or rebound. The first scientific use of the term occurred in
1625, when it was applied in natural history, and thereafter in the Edwardian era it
was applied in mechanics.62 A resilient material is one that, under an applied force,
reacts with an optimum combination of strength and ductility. The strength enables
it to resist the force and the ductility to deform in order to absorb some of the stress
that is applied.
In 1973 resiliency was used to describe ecological systems that could resist shocks
to their equilibrium.63 The term was applied in the sense of formal systems analysis.
The concept had already been widely used in psychology, with particular reference
to the ability of children to survive the trauma of conflict, disaster or family strife.64
Resiliency became fashionable in disaster risk reduction only in the mid-2000s. By
analogy with mechanics, a resilient society is one that is strong enough to resist the
shock effect of disaster and flexible enough to adapt to those aspects that cannot
be repulsed. The idea draws upon both the long tradition of building structural protection against natural disasters (dams, levees, anti-seismic housing, and so on)
and 90 years of human ecological studies on how people and societies adapt to
hazards.
One common misassumption about resiliency is that it simply means 'to bounce
back', in the sense of recreating the conditions that prevailed before disaster struck.
A much better idea is to "build back better", in which disaster becomes the opportunity to improve conditions beyond what they were before.65 In many parts of the
world this is an imperative, and one hopes that disaster is not a brake on development, but the opportunity to further it by introducing more functional plans, better
initiatives for renewal and an augmented culture of safety. One also hopes that this
is the case, not only in terms of physical protection, but also with respect to social
and institutional development.
Gradually, the erosion of boundaries between disciplines and professions has led to
a consensus that the answers to the problems posed by disasters need to be holistic. The sectoral approach has often created more problems than it has solved, for
example, by encouraging development behind structural barriers that fail to offer
adequate protection against floods, landslides, avalanches or tsunamis—in fact no
structural measures ever offer 100 per cent protection. Indeed, without a holistic ap35
proach that develops measures in a variety of structural and non-structural domains, there may be a risk transfer effect, but not of the mutually beneficial kind.
More likely it will transfer risk from where it is tractable to where it is intractable or
cannot so easily be sustained.
Indeed, one of the most common forms of risk transfer involves the marginalisation
of the poor and dispossessed. All evidence points to the fact that disasters tend to
strengthen pre-existing power structures. Once the 'therapeutic community' of welfare and mutual assistance has evaporated, the social milieu that emerges tends to
be a version of what was there before, which exaggerates its own defects. For instance, after the December 1972 earthquake in Nicaragua, the rich and middle
classes rebuilt their damaged property in six months: some of the poor and marginalised people of the city never rebuilt their homes at all.66 Hence, disasters are seldom about empowerment, even though they ought to be. They weaken the position
of the weak and strengthen the hand of the strong. In the Caribbean, for example,
Hurricane Mitch set back development in some areas by twenty years, and it left
plantation workers destitute, as their employers switched production elsewhere and
offered them no safety net. What was mere inconvenience to a multinational company was devastating to its employees.67
It should be apparent from this discussion, and from much of what one reads about
disaster, that it is a thing of light and shade. Indeed, the tension of opposites, the
chiaroscuro of disaster, dominates the whole field. This is hardly a new predicament. In fact, perhaps without being aware of it, we still use the ancient Platonic notions of generatio and corruptio, creation and destruction. The Greeks had intended
them primarily as expressions of small-scale cycles, by which, for example, mountains were elevated and their rocks gradually shattered and scoured away by erosion. Indeed, they saw the world as continuously locked in the dialectic of creation
and destruction. The Mediæval thinker, on the other hand, was apt to impose a beginning and an end to the great cycles, and hence generatio gradually became
equated with Genesis, and corruptio with the Day of Judgement and the ensuing
extinction of the world in a final conflagration. Greeks who had been sceptical of
Plato had interpreted his magnus annus (or Great Year) in this way, as one phase
of growth and decay encompassing all life and human existence.
Despite our different perspective in the 21st century, the tension of opposites, generatio and corruptio, remains a part of our outlook.
In fact, sometimes the ancient Greek thinkers seem quintessentially modern. Consider, for example, Anaximander of Miletus, whose dates were 615 to 547 BCE. By
a process of dispassionate observation of the world around him he raised the great
questions: what is nature? What is the source of the confusion and change that we
see around us, and how are we to reconcile it with the concept of eternal and absolute order? Almost 2,600 years later, if we knew the answers to these questions sufficiently well, we would probably know enough to bring the disasters problem fully
under control.
36
Instead, we live in the New Baroque Era. True, history does not repeat itself, but it
does make some close passes with respect to how it once was. The old Baroque
period was distinguished by the tension of opposites.68 In Europe, the Ancien Régime began to crumble under the duress of technological and social change. Old
certainties began to disappear. The 21st century has its absolutism, its barbarism
and its perplexities, too. In both periods we can discern a struggle to come to terms
with the rapidly shifting foundations of society.
I was much struck by the parallels between the Lisbon earthquake of November
1755 and the attacks on the United States in September 2001. In both cases, the
heart of a great trading empire was suddenly, unexpectedly struck a cataclysmic,
death-dealing blow on a calm, sunny morning. Even the visual parallels are striking:
lofty buildings, with their repetitive fenestration, suddenly brought down, towers decapitated, dust plumes and crackling fires that consumed the wreckage. I have written in detail about the philosophical, social and symbolic similarities between the
two disasters.69 Suffice it to say that in each case the shockwaves rippled out
across society and led to consequences far beyond their points of origin—in time, in
geography and in form of socio-economic mutation.
The Lisbon earthquake is widely held to have ushered in a darker period of history,
in which the optimism of the Enlightenment was replaced by a black pessimism
about the human condition and the future of society. Most probably, one cannot
generalise so readily, such are the many points of view that need to be taken into
account. However, continuing the parallel with modern times, it is true that there
was a resurgence of militarism after the 2001 disasters, and one that could be directly connected to them. The attitude after Lisbon, when the human experience
was suddenly revealed to be malevolent, was perhaps yet more authoritarian.
This brings be on to one of my favourite topics: the difference between civil defence
and civil protection.70 The terms are often employed loosely. For example, the civil
protection service of New Zealand is the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency
Management. However, I believe it is useful and necessary to distinguish between
the two forms of organisation. Civil defence, in its purest form, is a centralised, national, top-down service that is designed to protect a country against armed aggression. Originally, this was by other states, but latterly it has been practised by loosely
organised ideological groups, possibly with state backing (one should not underestimate the importance in the modern era of proxy wars, however "asymmetric" they
may be). Civil protection, sensu stricto, is a bottom-up, locally organised, federated
system designed to protect the civilian population against natural and technological
disasters. Some countries, for example Italy, have both systems clearly delineated,
and in such cases they tend to complement, rather than conflict, with one another.
In organising a country or region to fight disasters (both in terms of crisis response
and risk reduction), there is usually a gradual transition from military to civilian models. Information and communications technology is widely employed nowadays, and
one of its effects is to flatten the chain of command. It is clear, moreover, that civil
protection works best when it is allied with participatory governance.
37
Now according to the dictionary, 'governance' is nothing more than "the act of governing".71 However, for the term to mean anything in the context of disaster risk reduction, it must signify a common social process: representative democracy, but
probably also a substantial dose of participatory democracy. One reason is that we
need to induce people to assume more of their own risks (allowing for welfare,
which I will discuss shortly), and another is that what is done to protect society
needs to be based on approval by consensus.
From the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 to the San Francisco tremors and urban fire of
1906, citizens were summarily executed if they did not do what the authorities
thought they should do. Authoritarianism in disaster aftermaths has not disappeared: indeed, leaders with strong personalities see it as an easy fix to complex
problems—giving people a dose of what they need, whether or not they want it.
However, in the last twenty or thirty years there has been much more discussion of
ethics and equity than before, and the spotlight of instant publicity has fostered this
trend.
At this point I think I might open a parenthesis by asking which was the first
"modern" disaster? There are, of course, varying interpretations of this, and I can
only offer the one that I favour. It was the Nigerian civil war of 1967-70, sometimes
known as the Biafra war. A quite artificial famine was induced in the Nigerian state
of Biafra as part of a 'scorched earth' policy against the rebels. This was the first
time that television cameras reached the area during the crisis phase, filmed the
human suffering in the raw and, with some ingenuity, played the footage on television news within a matter of hours. It was not real-time broadcasting, but it was a
breakthrough that led inexorably to exactly that.
I might add that civil defence, in its modern form, probably began one morning in
April 1937 at the Battle of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. It was the first
concerted aerial bombardment in history. It may well have been the tipping point at
which warfare started to reap a greater toll among civilians (particularly women and
children) than among soldiers, which it now routinely does. The rudimentary attempts to protect the civilian population on the ground were to grow to fully-fledged
systems of civil defence a few years later during the Second World War.
Origins apart, civil defence was the progenitor of civil protection. Hence it is tempting, and perhaps legitimate, to think in terms of an evolutionary process from one to
the other. Is civil defence, perhaps, the darker reality and civil protection a more optimistic one in terms of the human condition? Is such an interpretation justified in
terms of social, organisational and institutional evolution? Does evolution of any
kind naturally bring us to a happier, more adjusted state? In this case, perhaps: civil
defence is, after all, linked to warfare and conflict, while the raw material—more
properly the core material—of civil protection tends to be a more morally neutral set
of phenomena associated with natural disasters and unanticipated failures of technology. It is also the defence of civic values against any enemy, whether morally
neutral or not.
38
"Man's inhumanity to man / Makes countless thousands mourn!" wrote Robert
Burns in 1785. In that sense, it was inevitable that civil defence would never go
away. Indeed, it could be regarded as the ethical face of warfare. Or could it?
The civil defence of the 1940s was an affair of tin hats and gas masks in canvas
bags. Its operatives pulled survivors from the rubble of bomb-sites and found them
makeshift accommodation. As the War was ending, the term 'iron curtain' was already being used to describe a situation that would vastly intensify once the threat
of all-out nuclear conflict was fully appreciated. Civil defence in the post-War period
was dominated by a series of preparations that were increasingly and demonstrably
futile. If populations could survive nuclear war, what sort of world would they
emerge into? Would there be a food chain at all? Would radioactive contamination
wipe them out, person by person? Would the state have protected its people or only
its élite? Would it have used civil defence to protect the élite against the people?
We will never know, but there will always be doubts about the motives inherent in
civil defence during the Cold War. In most countries it was a very secretive affair,
and secrecy does not breed trust.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was one of the most symbolic moments in modern history. It led to a lapse in civil defence that, however, was anything but permanent. Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that the so-called "peace dividend",
the economic "beating of swords into ploughshares", lasted only until about 1994.
Terrorism has conveniently provided a new Cold War. In part this is justified by the
mutation of proxy wars (as practised previously in Afghanistan and Africa, for instance) into proxy-based asymmetric conflict (as practised, once again, in Afghanistan, and also the Middle East and Asia, and periodically imported into the West).
For the rest it represents the resurgence and reassertion of the cold warriors after
their brief period in the wilderness.
Clausewitz regarded war as "politics carried on by other means". I would prefer to
see it as economics, rather than politics, "carried on by other means". Its fuel is the
military-industrial complex (and in this respect it is notable that the global armaments industry has not suffered from the recession that has so deeply affected virtually every other sector of production). Let me correct myself: it is a militaryindustrial-academic complex, because many people in the universities are seduced
by the opportunity to give it an intellectual justification. They are the retailers of fear
and anguish.
So was civil defence reborn. Its first act was to suck up money in copious quantities. The links between civil defence and civil protection vary from one country to
another, but, however they are configured, they are always joined at the hip by the
question of funding. Their interconnection brings me to another of my pet interests:
the relationship between centrism and devolution.
Civil defence is necessarily based on the nation state. If time and space permitted, I
would launch a discussion about that and the question of national identity (let me
declare my interest: I am a federalist and anti-nationalist). Rather than being the
39
natural state of human beings, nations are a relatively recent construct that in less
than half a millennium has contrived a temporary solution to the questions of identity and citizenship. But the defence of the realm requires a national approach, because in most countries that is where in the hierarchy the armed forces, intelligence
services and command structures are located.
In contrast, wherever it is, civil protection needs local input. Failure to organise locally, failure to support local solutions to local problems, and failure to take local interests into account will result in the failure of civil protection. Evidently, it needs to
be harmonised at successively higher levels of government, or otherwise there will
not be enough interoperability. And civil protection forces are moving ever further
around the world's chess-board of disaster responses. In this respect one of the recent trends has been to fuse international with domestic disaster response in the
interests of greater efficiency (but it needs a radical overhaul of attitudes and training).
I have been a regional government employee in two countries and have observed
the local response to threats, risks and hazards as it occurs and in a variety of settings. I am convinced that it flourishes the most when it is given autonomy (but perhaps also guidance and support). Herein lies the dilemma for most national governments. Devolving power is a vote-getter, but after it has been devolved, governments tend to regret their actions and want it back.72 This is especially true if the
intermediate and local levels of public administration turn out to be pugnaciously
independent.
If civil protection is very poorly developed in a given place, once disaster strikes it
will be swept aside as aid, assistance and command lines are imported into the area. Once these are withdrawn, as if they were the Roman legions marching back to
defend the centre of a collapsing empire, then the local response is doomed to be
the victim of its own ineffectiveness.
Local (and indeed regional and national) administrators vary in their attitudes to disaster reduction and response. This field suffers considerably from the "no votes in
sewage" syndrome. In other words, come what may, it has a negative profile. Even
the concepts of more safety and security don't seem to be sufficiently positive to enthuse politicians in search of re-election (or not unless there has very recently been
a bad disaster in their precincts). Moreover, politicians can avail themselves of the
Great Gamble: that disaster will not strike during their next term of office. As a result
of the public's lack of understanding of probabilities and the need to prepare for the
worse in "times of peace", they usually get away with it. If a disaster does occur,
many of them are adept at blaming the failure to prepare on someone else.
Few nations can aspire to the levels of rigour and honesty that prevail in Sweden.
Having discovered, amid great national scandal, that it did not have the capacity to
manage the Swedish aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, it set up a national agency for civil protection. Due to lack of experience with this form of organisation, it did not work well. The Swedes learnt fast—very fast indeed—and within
40
months had it reorganised and functioning well at all levels from Stockholm to the
provincial towns. No doubt Swedes who read this will, through familiarity with defects to the system, pick holes in my description, but compared to other countries I
can assure them that they are making a counsel of perfection. And the science and
art of civil protection are both highly imprecise.
Now there are countries, like France, where the administrative traditions are highly
centralised and are likely to remain so. They will have to find their own solutions to
the problem of local autonomy in the face of disasters. Let me remind them that the
opposite of such autonomy is, if I may employ a bastard term, assistentialism. By
ironic reference to existentialism, this is dependence on imported assistance. Once
the source of that help dries up, nothing is left but a dependence on something that
is not there. It tends to kill local initiative.
To watch other countries deal with the problem of managing disasters and associated risks is to chart the progress of a constant, often very dynamic, tension between
centrism and devolution. The latter solves problems, but it does so by engendering
the fear that things will get out of hand.
A subsidiary issue connected with this tension between centrism and devolution is
that of the dual roles of imported and indigenous knowledge.73 Throughout this discussion, I use the term 'imported' to mean "brought into the area in question", but
not necessarily across an international border. Imported technologies, know-how
and procedures are often vilified for their effect in depleting local autonomy and
making local communities dependent on extraneous ways of doing things that, perhaps, they don't fully understand. This is often very true, most sadly, but it would be
wrong to glorify all indigenous knowledge, some of which is positively toxic. For example, after the 1964 Great Alaskan Earthquake it was reported that Inuit fishermen
had a tradition which informed them that tsunamis are composed of two waves.
Many were drowned by the third wave, which was the largest in the 1964 sequence.74 But now back to the primary distinction.
Theoretically, both civil defence and civil protection are potential hand-maidens of
revolution, or at least of insurrection. In fact, in the politically polarised times of the
Cold War, with all their associated fears and suspicions, in places, civil protection
was actively prevented from developing for fear that it would lead to a coup d'êtat.
This, of course, was when civil protection was seen as a sub-military parallel to the
armed forces.
Although few generals, majors and colonels will admit it, military commanders often
feel out of their depth when dealing with disasters. Such events are a shadowy, ambiguous form of enemy and many of the tactics used to deal with unruly citizens can
only be practised on the very people the armed forces are seeking to protect.
Hence we observe the gradual 'civilianisation' of civil defence and its transition into
civil protection. When the leaders of the latter are no longer military men but are
trained women, we will have arrived. Many women have shown extraordinary aptitude as disaster managers, although it is not yet clear whether this is because they
41
are naturally superior at the job to men or merely because to make progress they
are forced to compete in a male-dominated world. I suspect the former.
So the tension of opposites between civil defence and civil protection is likely to
continue. Civil protection does not do some of the things that civil defence does, notably forensic analysis, surveillance and intelligence gathering. But civil defence
tends to be inept at managing natural disasters on the local level. The militaryindustrial academic complex would have us believe that the threats from extreme
natural events are relatively stable, while those from terrorism and unrest are growing dynamically. In reality it could be the other way around, especially given the potential effects of climate change. True, the momentous adaptations that a dynamic
climate will require of human populations will probably foment unrest, but is the solution civil defence, or is it greater equity in the distribution of resources? And greater emphasis on the stewardship of the resources we have?
One issue that arises out of all of this is welfare. Strictly conceived, this is the provision of assistance necessary for adequately decent living conditions to people who
cannot provide such a thing for themselves. Unfortunately, welfare has tended to
mutate into largesse, and this often has a political motivation behind it. The effect of
this has been to cheapen the concept and render it both unworkable and unacceptable to society. Yet welfare will always be needed, unless one subscribes to
such a Darwinian view that one believes that social misfits and losers in the great
lottery of life should be callously abandoned to their fate. Hence, welfare needs
constantly to be redefined and reinvented. It should go hand in hand with empowerment (big governance rather than big government) that enables people to avoid it.
We need to avoid attitudes to welfare that resemble those of the Victorian moralists: it is neither a social disease nor an intolerable burden on society.
Although it is not a tension of opposites, resilience and sustainability need to be
considered together. The one is the other. Hence, the sustainability of disaster risk
reduction is the sustainability of lifestyles and livelihoods, and of the Earth's carrying
capacity. No "technofix" can ensure that, so the problem is social and cultural, even
emotional, as much as it is one of applying more and more technology.
I return to the idea of the New Baroque Era and the tension of opposites. There are
many of these and I encourage those who have patiently followed this discussion to
seek and identify them.75 Is resilience the opposite of vulnerability, and is the
change in emphasis a useful switch from a negative to a more positive view of disaster? Can we better solve the problem by adopting a "can-do" approach, or must
we first develop a better understanding of the sum total of human suffering.
To end these essays, I pose the question, what comes after resilience? Like everyone else I don't know, and I have no crystal ball that reveals the future to me. Like
all committed scientists and citizens, I have tried to follow the trends, and reflect on
where they are taking us. So I leave the reader with a possible clue: perhaps the
tension is between fragility and hardening.76 And I leave you to work out what that
might mean for disaster risk reduction.
42
Citations
1. "Of the things that you read here, some are good, some mediocre, and most bad.
Thus and not otherwise, Avitus, books are made."
2. The catalyst was a report on health management in disasters by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO 1981), one of the early publications of PAHO's
Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Relief Coordination Programme. This report
is no longer available and has been superseded by PAHO (2000). The estimable Dr
Claude de Ville de Goyet was the genius behind PAHO's disaster publications series. PAHO 1981. Emergency Health Management After Natural Disaster. PAHO/
WHO Scientific Publication No. 407. Pan American Health Organization, Washington, DC.: PAHO 2000. Natural Disasters: Protecting the Public’s Health. PAHO/
WHO Scientific Publication No. 575. Pan American Health Organization, Washington, DC, 119 pp.
3. Duffield, M. 1994. Complex emergencies and the crisis of developmentalism. Institute of Development Studies Bulletin 25(4): 37-45.
4. Kirkby, J., P. O’Keefe, I. Convery and D. Howell 1997. On the emergence of
complex disasters. Disasters 21(2): 177-180.
5. The most common sources of data of this kind are the EM-DAT database compiled by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the
Catholic University of Louvain and the Munich Re disaster database.
6. Pielke Jr, R.A. 2005. Making sense of trends in disaster losses. Bridges 7: bridges.ostina.org.
7. Drabek, T.E. 1970. Methodology of Studying Disasters: Past Pattern and Future
Possibilities. American Behavioral Scientist 13: 331-343.
8. Prince, S. 1920. Catastrophe and Social Change: Based Upon a Sociological
Study of the Halifax Disaster. Studies in History, Economics and Public Law no. 94.
Colombia University Press, New York, 151 pp; Barrows, H.H. 1923. Geography as
human ecology. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 13: 1-14; Sorokin, P.A. 1942. Man and Society in Calamity: The Effects of War, Revolution,
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9. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37580
10. White, G.F. 1945. Human Adjustment to Floods: A Geographical Approach to
the Flood Problem in the United States. Research Paper no. 29. Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 225 pp: Hinshaw, R.E. 2006. Living with Nature's
Extremes: The Life of Gilbert Fowler White. Johnson Books, Boulder, Colorado, 339
pp.
43
11. Fritz, C.E. and E.S. Marks 1954. The NORC studies of human behavior in disaster. Journal of Social Issues 10(3): 26-41.
12. Wallace, A. 1956. Tornado in Worcester. National Academy of Sciences/
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Washington, D.C.
13. E.g. Simon, H.A. 1956. Rational choice and the structure of the environment.
Psychological Review 63: 129-138.
14. Oliver-Smith, A. 1986. The Martyred City: Death and Rebirth in the Andes. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 280 pp.
15. See Drabek, T.E. 1986. Human System Response to Disaster: An Inventory of
Sociological Findings. Springer-Verlag, New York, 509 pp.
16. Guglielmini, Domenico 1719. Dominici Gulielmini ... Opera omnia mathematica,
hydraulica, medica, et physica. Accessit vita autoris, a Jo. Baptista Morgagni ...
cum figuris & indicibus necessariis, Tomus primus, Tomus secundus. Cramer,
Perachon, Geneva (2 vols).
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Ecology of Damaging Events. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 154 pp.
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M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 487 pp.
19. O'Keefe, P., K. Westgate and B. Wisner 1976. Taking the naturalness out of
natural disasters. Nature 260: 566-567.
20. Hewitt, K. (ed.) 1983. Interpretations of Calamity from the Viewpoint of Human
Ecology. Unwin-Hyman, London: 304 pp.
21. Weichselgartner, J. 2001. Disaster mitigation: the concept of vulnerability
revisited. Disaster Prevention and Management 10(2): 85-94.
22. Gaillard, J.C., B. Wisner, D. Benouar, T. Cannon, L. Creton-Cazanave, et al.
2010. Alternatives for sustained disaster risk reduction. Geography and
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23. Alexander, D.E. 2007. Misconception as a barrier to teaching about disasters.
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 22(2): 95-103.
24. De Ville de Goyet, C: 2007. Editorial review: myths, the ultimate survivors in
disasters. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 22(2): 104-105. Drabek, T.E. 1970.
Methodology of Studying Disasters: Past Pattern and Future Possibilities. American
Behavioral Scientist 13: 331-343.
25. There have been some slight improvements in the present decade, but new
forms of media that distort the picture have emerged (Alexander 2010).
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26. Quarantelli. E.L. 2001. The sociology of panic. In N. Smelser and P.B. Baltes
(eds) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences. Pergamon
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28. Johnson, N.R. 1987. Panic and the breakdown of social order: popular myth,
social theory, empirical evidence. Sociological Focus 20(3): 171-183.
29. Grosshandler, W., N. Bryner, D. Madrzykowski and K. Kuntz 2005. Report of
the Technical Investigation of The Station Nightclub Fire. National Institute of
Standards and Technology, Washington, DC.
30. Alexander, D.E. 2012. The 'Titanic Syndrome': risk and crisis management on
the Costa Concordia. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 9
(1); article 33.
31. Cantril, H. 1940. The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic.
Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 260 pp.
32. Alexander, D.E. 2010. News reporting of the January 12, 2010, Haiti earthquake: the role of common misconceptions. Journal of Emergency Management 8
(6): 15-27.
33. Mitchell, J.T., D.S.K. Thomas, A.A. Hill and S.L. Cutter 2000. Catastrophe in
reel life versus real life: perpetuating disaster myth through Hollywood films. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 18(3): 383-402.
34. Fritz, C.E. 1961. Disaster. In R.K. Merton and R.A. Nisbet (eds) Contemporary
Social Problems. Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, New York: 651-694; Barton,
A.H. 1970. Communities in Disaster: A Sociological Analysis of Collective Stress
Situations. Doubleday, New York, 368 pp.
35. Allen, T.D. 2007. Katrina: race, class and poverty: reflections and analysis.
Journal of Black Studies 37(4): 466-468.
36. Anderson, W.A. 1973. The reorganization of protest: civil disturbances and social change in the black community. American Behavioral Scientist 16: 426-439.
37. Alexander, D.E. 2000. Confronting Catastrophe: New Perspectives on Natural
Disasters. Terra Publishing, Harpenden, U.K., and Oxford University Press, New
York, 282 pp.
38. Alexander, D.E. and I. Davis 2012. Disaster risk reduction: an alternative viewpoint. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 2: 1-5.
39. Alexander, D.E. and M. Magni 2013. Mortality in the L'Aquila (central Italy)
earthquake of 6 April 2009. PLoS Currents Disasters, 7 January 2013, 26 pp. http://
currents.plos.org/disasters/article/dis-12-0009-mortality-in-the-laquila-central-italyearthquake-of-6-april-2009/
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40. Filson, J., R.V. Sharp, R.D. Borcherdt et al. 1989. The 1988 Armenia earthquake: medical and healthcare aspects. Earthquake Spectra 5(S1): 161-169.
41. Scanlon, J. 2007. Unwelcome irritant or useful ally? The mass media in emergencies. In H. Rodríguez, E.L. Quarantelli and R.R. Dynes (eds) Handbook of Disaster Research. Springer, New York: 413-429.
42. Alexander, D.E. 2010. News reporting of the January 12, 2010, Haiti earthquake: the role of common misconceptions. Journal of Emergency Management 8
(6): 15-27.
43. Novak, J.M. and K.G. Vidoloff 2011. New frames on crisis: citizen journalism
changing the dynamics of crisis communication. International Journal of Mass
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47. Spence, W.J., R.B. Herrmann, A.C. Johnston and B.G. Reagor 1993. Responses to Iben Browning’s prediction of a 1990 New Madrid, Missouri, earthquake. U.S.
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U.S. Geological Survey Circular no. 1116, 14 pp.
50. It is important to note that the seven "scientists" who were condemned in Italy
after the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake were tried for emergency management misdemeanours, not for failing to predict the earthquake (Alexander, D.E. 2013a. Communicating earthquake risk to the public: the trial of the "L'Aquila Seven". Natural
Hazards - in press).
51. Kirschenbaum, A. 2004. Chaos, Organization, and Disaster Management. Marcel Dekker, New York, 328 pp.
52. I thank Rob Stephenson for this example, which corresponds uncannily well
with what I personally have seen in the field.
53. Slovic, P. (ed.) 2000. The Perception of Risk. Risk, Society and Policy Series.
Earthscan, London, 384 pp.
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54. Starr, C. 1969. Societal benefit versus technological risk. Science 165: 12321238.
55. IFRC 1998. World Disasters Report 1998. International Federation of Red
Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 198 pp.
56. Alexander, D.E. 2005. An interpretation of disaster in terms of changes in culture, society and international relations. In R.W. Perry and E.L. Quarantelli (eds)
What is a Disaster? New Answers to Old Questions. Xlibris Press, Philadelphia: 115.
57. Alexander, D.E. 2012. The 'Titanic Syndrome': risk and crisis management on
the Costa Concordia. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 9
(1); article 33.
58. Horlick-Jones, T. 1995. Modern disasters as outrage and betrayal. International
Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 13(3): 305-315.
59. Alexander, D.E. in press. Celebrity culture, entertainment values ...and disaster.
In G. Bankoff et al. (eds) Cultures and Disasters: Understanding Cultural Frameworks in Disaster Risk Reduction. Pending.
60. Herman, E.S. and N. Chomsky 1988. Manufacturing Consent: The Political
Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books. New York, 306 pp.
61. Kelman, I. 2011. Disaster Diplomacy: How Disasters Affect Peace and Conflict.
Routledge, London, 176 pp.
62. Alexander, D.E. 2013. Resilience and disaster risk reduction: an etymological
journey. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Discusssion 1: 1257-1284;
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London, 648 pp.
63. Holling, C.S 1973. Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annual Reviews of Ecological Systems 4: 1-23.
64. See the following reference for a description of the history of resilience in psychological studies: Goldstein, S. and R.B. Brooks 2006. Handbook of Resilience in
Children. Springer, New York, 416 pp.
65. Manyena, S.B. 2006. The concept of resilience revisited. Disasters 30(4): 434450.
66. Kates, R., J.E. Haas, D. Amaral, R. Olson, R. Ramos and R. Olson 1973. Human impact of the Managua earthquake: transitional societies are peculiarly vulnerable to natural disasters. Science 182: 981-990.
67. Wisner, B. 2001. Risk and the neoliberal state: why post-Mitch lessons didn’t
reduce El Salvador’s earthquake losses. Disasters 25(3): 251-268.
68. Maravall, J.A. 1986. Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure.
Manchester University Press, Manchester, 330 pp.
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69. Alexander, D.E. 2002. Nature's impartiality, man's inhumanity: reflections on terrorism and world crisis in a context of historical disaster. Disasters 26(1): 1-9.
70. Alexander, D.E. 2002b. From civil defence to civil protection--and back again.
Disaster Prevention and Management 11(3): 209-213.
71. There is some indication that it may once have been adopted by international
agencies as a euphemism for the "act of governing" by the dictator with which they
had to engage. If so, that time is long gone and the current meaning is far more
positive and straightforward.
72. Caudle, S.L. 2011. Centralization and decentralization of policy: the national interest of homeland security. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 8(1): Article 56.
73. Mercer, J., I. Kelman, L. Taranis and S. Suchet-Pearson 2010. Framework for
integrating indigenous and scientific knowledge for disaster risk reduction. Disasters
34(1): 214-239.
74. Kates, R.W. 1970. Human adjustment to earthquake hazard. In Committee On
The Alaska Earthquake Of The National Research Council (ed.) The Great Alaska
Earthquake of 1964: Human Ecology Volume. National Academy Of Sciences,
Washington, D.C.: 7-31.
75. The final chapter of Alexander (2000) will provide some help, and a model of
disaster based on the 'tension of opposites' idea.
76. Hyslop, M.P. and A.E. Collins 2013. Hardened institutions and disaster risk reduction. Environmental Hazards 12(1): 19-31.
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UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction
University College London
Gower Street
London, WC1E 6BT
www.ucl.ac.uk/rdr
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