The study of disasters provides a context to understand how individuals, families and social systems operate under extreme stress, how to respond in disrupted social systems, and what can be done to aid those harmed by the disasters. Within these events individuals and groups under extreme stress are observed to demonstrate the best and worst of humanity, and study of behaviors in these events provide insights into individual and community coping mechanisms. In disaster human
behavior is a response to events occurring at the intersection of
three sets of interacting systems, the socio-ecological system, the system of
collective, social behavior, and the individual actor’s cognitive. Each of
these systems changes and adapts in response to the others as part of a complex
adaptive system of systems. The conception of disaster as a disruption of intersecting complex adaptive systems is too abstract to improve understanding. Instead real-world case studies must be used to provide context, enable process tracing and identify causation. Samuel
Prince’s classic dissertation study of a catastrophe documents the foundational features of disaster and provides evidence for the three interacting systems with behaviors from the environment, groups and individuals.
Both as a study and a story the event is intrinsically compelling with an improbable series of disruptions provided by war, earthquake, fire, flood, famine and storm (Prince 1920, p.28). In December 1917, after a failure in ship signaling, French munitioner transporting explosives collided with an empty Belgian relief ship vessel in the ocean terminal of Halifax, Canada. The resulting explosion brought World War I to the shores of Canada, shaking the ground, showering soot, oil, water and shrapnel, producing a tidal wave of sea that flooded the City of Halifax, triggering gas explosions and a fire that wiped out the north end of the city just before a series of winter storms brought blizzards, wind, rain, flood and freezing temperatures to the area. The event impacted the entire social and environmental system of approximately 50,000 people and forced every individual and social organization to respond in a massive engagement of social change. Globally, aid funding poured in from China, New Zealand, Great Britain and the United States (Ruffman and Findley, 2007), and locally the everyday activities of individuals, families, businesses and government were suspended as citizens in desperate need struggled to deal with the losses; 2,000 dead, 6,000 injured, 10,000 homeless, and ~$35 million in property destruction (Prince 1920, p. 26).
Source: Maritime Museum, Nova Scotia Canada https://escapingelegance.com/tag/halifax/ |
Both as a study and a story the event is intrinsically compelling with an improbable series of disruptions provided by war, earthquake, fire, flood, famine and storm (Prince 1920, p.28). In December 1917, after a failure in ship signaling, French munitioner transporting explosives collided with an empty Belgian relief ship vessel in the ocean terminal of Halifax, Canada. The resulting explosion brought World War I to the shores of Canada, shaking the ground, showering soot, oil, water and shrapnel, producing a tidal wave of sea that flooded the City of Halifax, triggering gas explosions and a fire that wiped out the north end of the city just before a series of winter storms brought blizzards, wind, rain, flood and freezing temperatures to the area. The event impacted the entire social and environmental system of approximately 50,000 people and forced every individual and social organization to respond in a massive engagement of social change. Globally, aid funding poured in from China, New Zealand, Great Britain and the United States (Ruffman and Findley, 2007), and locally the everyday activities of individuals, families, businesses and government were suspended as citizens in desperate need struggled to deal with the losses; 2,000 dead, 6,000 injured, 10,000 homeless, and ~$35 million in property destruction (Prince 1920, p. 26).
Over a period of days and months the individuals, families,
social organizations and the larger socio-ecological system were overwhelmed by
necessary, non-routine activities required to survive and recover. Individuals
struggled through varying physical and emotional states to make decisions and
act in adaptation to the disaster. Prince found that the people of Halifax, Halogians,
experienced varying degrees of shock, helplessness, hallucination, delusion, fear,
grief, sorrow, kindliness, sympathy, heroism, instinct, self-help, mutual aid, blame,
scapegoating, and primitive instincts. At the time of the impact people fled
out of a sense of preservation or fought to prevent the explosion and fires.
After the impact people were engaged in searches for loved ones, rescue and aid
or recovery from injury. Individuals who were physically and mentally able and
with relevant social roles, community leaders or “big men” of civic and
philanthropic work, public utility workers, medical professionals and social
specialists put tremendous energy into the response efforts.
Within hours of the explosion existing social organizations
like the military, play actors and firemen adapted their activities to become first
responders. Refugees informally grouped together for a sense of security and
safety, and other groups emerged in imitation to provide improvised shelter and
clothing and food depots. Formal social organizations resumed activities more
slowly with the first of these being the public utilities providing telegraph
service, gas and lighting, and rail transportation. In the three days following
the explosion newspaper, postal service and banks opened up, and ‘social
specialists’ began to converge on the city to provide medical and
rehabilitative care. Regular city council meetings recommenced two weeks, and
the first businesses opened back up four-five weeks after the explosion. Special
laws were enacted to ensure the safety of Halogians during the time of disaster
recovery. Results from a quickly appointed investigative task-force attempted
to find the cause of the explosions and fix responsibility. Responsibility for
the explosion was not asserted, but the principles of restitution and indemnity
in disaster were formalized (Prince 1920, p.95). The focus of energy and funds to the
rebuilding Halifax led to an acceleration of city growth. It took
only three months to clear the explosion debris from devastated areas by using
950 men and 270 horses working 10 hours a day (Prince 1920, p.78). Such recovery was
only possible through the collective efforts of not only its own citizens, but
also the contributions from more than 200 cities around the world (Prince 1920,
p.78).
"McCall Apartments" from rebuilding. Source: http://halifaxexplosion.org |
As disaster studies expanded, the Halifax disaster and Prince’s study has become a template for the disaster experience to which academics later mapped empirical data and identified human behavior in times of stress (Fritz and Mathewson, 1957; Tyhurst, 1957; Wallace, 1956; Carr, 1932). Prince lays out the groundwork findings of individual, collective and environmental system behaviors that show how the destruction of disasters create social vacuums in which new behaviors and social organizations emerge. His work can also be analyzed as an intersection of individual cognitive systems that trigger emotional and rational behaviors, groups who emerge to collectively respond to the environmental threats, and the environment that provided a disruption triggered by human error. Although it is impossible to trace the infinite number of behavioral causations, the aggregation of these behaviors results in a set of system interactions that can be analyzed to provide greater understanding of the processes at work in disaster.
References:
Carr,
Lowell Juilliard. 1932. “Disaster and the Sequence-Pattern Concept of Social
Change.” American Journal of Sociology, 207–218.
Dynes,
Russell R., and Enrico Louis Quarantelli. 1993. “The Place of the 1917
Explosion in Halifax Harbor in the History of Disaster Research: The Work of
Samuel H. Prince.” http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/576.
Fritz, Charles E., and J.H. Mathewson. 1957. “Convergence Behavior in Disasters; a Problem in Social Control.” Publication 476. Washington, D.C.: Committee on Disaster Studies National Academy of Sciences - National Research Council. Library of Congress.
Prince, Samuel Henry. 1920. “Catastrophe and Social Change: Based upon a Sociological Study of the Halifax Disaster.” New York: Columbia University.
Ruffman,
Alan, and Wendy Findley. 2007. “The Halifax Explosion.”
http://www.halifaxexplosion.org/intro.html.
Tyhurst,
J. S. 1957. “Psychological and Social Aspects of Civilian Disaster.” Canadian
Medical Association Journal 76 (5): 385.
Wallace,
Anthony F. C. 1956. “Human Behavior in Extreme Situations: A Survey of the
Literature and Suggestions for Further Research.” 390. Disaster Study. National
Academy of Sciences -- National Research Council. 56-60013.
No comments:
Post a Comment