James Kendra

Elements of Resilience After the World Trade Center Disaster: Reconstituting New York City's Emergency Operations Centre

In this paper we examine the reconstitution of the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) after its destruction in the World Trade Center attack, using that event to highlight several features of resilience. The paper summarises basic EOC functions, and then presents conceptions of resilience as understood from several disciplinary perspectives, noting that work in these fields has sought to understand how a natural or social system that experiences disturbance sustains its functional processes. We observe that, although the physical EOC facility was destroyed, the organisation that had been established to manage crises in New York City continued, enabling a response that drew on the resources of New York City and neighbouring communities, states and the federal government. Availability of resources--which substituted for redundancy of personnel, equipment and space--pre-existing relationships that eased communication challenges as the emergency developed and the continuation of organisational patterns of response integration and role assignments were among the factors that contributed to resilience following the attack.

RECONSIDERING CONVERGENCE AND CONVERGER LEGITIMACY IN RESPONSE TO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER DISASTER

The World Trade Center disaster generated many of the features seen in other disasters in the U.S., including post-disaster convergence. We conceptualize emergency management activities as taking place within a multilocational “response milieu,” and we suggest that the study of convergence should focus on the negotiated legitimacy of people in and wishing to enter it. We discuss the five types of personal convergers and how the access of each of these groups to the response milieu was related to their legitimation status. We then identify two additional forms of convergence: supporters or fans, and those who came to mourn or to memorialize. We conclude by discussing implications for policy.

A snapshot of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami: societal impacts and consequences

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the societal impacts and consequences of the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.Design/methodology/approach – One month after the tsunami, a group of social science researchers from the Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, and the Emergency Administration and Planning Program, University of North Texas, participated in an Earthquake Engineering Research Institute reconnaissance team, which traveled to some of the most affected areas in India and Sri Lanka. Data were obtained through informal interviews, participant observation, and systematic document gathering.Findings – This research yielded important data and information on disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. A number of issues are identified that emerged from the field observations, including: tsunami education and awareness; the devastation and the loss; economic impact; mental health issues; irregularities and inequities in community based response and recovery efforts and...

Community Innovation and Disasters

In this chapter, we examine community innovation. We begin first by conceptualizing community and innovation as they relate to hazard and disaster. We identify the difficulties inherent in the terms community, innovation, and community innovation, presenting some working concepts that seem to align best with overall disaster research experience. We examine the characteristics of communities that make innovation both necessary and difficult, using examples of innovations drawn from the United States and internationally. This discussion will point toward some directions for future research, including an understanding of community that might be suitable for newer, complex, and diffuse hazards – such as bioterrorism, cyberterrorism, and slow onset hazards related to climate change. The discussion will also point to some needed reorientations in policy that might proceed from either subsequent or existing research.

Institutional Resilience and Disaster Planning for New Hazards: Insights from Hospitals

The objective of this paper is to present an institutional view of disasters derived in part from the results of a recent study of hospitals in the United States. It is offered in the hope that a focus on institution will help resolve the present lack of fit between, on the one hand, the increasing complexity of the new hazards and on the other, existing conceptualizations in the social sciences of disasters and emergency management that privilege the community. The paper uses information from 76 participants in 13 focus groups in acute-care hospital organizations in California, Tennessee, and New York to illustrate the argument for institutions. The implications of these findings for an institutional conceptualization of disasters are discussed.

An adaptive governance approach to disaster-related behavioural health services.

This paper explores the provision of disaster-related behavioural and mental health (DBH) services as a problem of institutional collective action in the United States. This study reviews the challenges that providers have in surmounting multi-organizational disconnects, unstable professional legitimacy, ambiguous information, and shifting disaster needs in developing a system for delivering DBH services. Based on the adaptive governance framework, it argues that existing protocols such as the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and Incident Command System (ICS) may be helpful in advancing collective action, but that real progress will depend on a recognition of norms, expectations, and credentials across many spheres-in other words, on the ability of responders to continuously adjust their procedures and administrative boundaries for behavioural health institutions.

The Social Impacts and Consequences of the December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami: Observations from India and Sri Lanka

The 26 December 2004 tsunami is one of the most severe disasters of the last several decades. Less than one month after the disaster, a group of social science researchers from the University of Delaware and University of North Texas participated in an Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) reconnaissance team. This team traveled to some of the most heavily impacted areas in India and Sri Lanka. Focusing on the social impacts and consequences of the disaster, the team identified a number of emerging issues, including loss of life and destruction of property and infrastructure, impact on livelihoods, a persistent sense of uncertainty, variation in community-based response and recovery efforts, inequities in disaster relief distribution, gender and age vulnerability and capacities, temporary shelter and housing, and long-term relocation planning.

Local Emergency Management Funding: An Evaluation of County Budgets

Local emergency management offices are shouldering an increasingly large share of the responsibility for implementing homeland security policies, in addition to traditional emergency preparedness and response functions. One of the concerns about this devolution of responsibilities is the supposed lack of available funding at the local level. City and county budgets are constrained by anti-property tax revolts and the paradoxical rising expectations of citizens for more and better services. Emergency management offices compete in this milieu for attention from policy makers and adequate funding. Despite the importance of local funding, there is little understanding of how funding decisions are made. Utilizing a nationwide survey of county emergency management officers, this study helps provide some insights by evaluating the impact of subject threat assessments, past disaster experience, emergency management activity, community resources and location factors affecting the variance of emergency management local funding.

Seaport development versus environmental preservation: The case of Sears Island, Maine, USA

The expansion or construction of a seaport is often proposed as a means of spurring economic growth in an area, in addition to providing quality facilities for importers and exporters. When there are underlying environmental considerations, the speculative nature of anticipated benefits may invite determined opposition from preservationist groups, or reinforce their objections. This paper examines such a conflict, over the proposed development of a dry cargo and container terminal at Sears Island, in upper Penobscot Bay, Maine, USA.

The Reconstitution of Risk Objects

This paper examines the relationship of risk and power through a critical analysis of Crew Endurance Management, an initiative directed at enhancing maritime safety and efficiency. The paper argues that the initiative applies rhetorics of choice and self‐discipline to unite morality with risk, thus casting merchant mariners as risk objects in the shipping industry. This objectification relies on differentials in power rooted in differentially‐valued discourses that delegitimize some kinds of expertise. At the same time, deploying alternative rhetorics keyed to the anxieties of other levels of society allows risk objects to resist their objectification by shifting the relevant social scale for considering risk. The paper concludes by suggesting that imperatives for both productivity and safety will expand the workspace by expanding, through emphasis on personal choices, the environment in which workers must be concerned about risk reduction.