Managing the Human Dimension of Disasters

Caring for the Bereaved, Survivors and First Responders

Kjell Brataas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429798214
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Managing the Human Dimension of Disasters provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis on how individuals cope with tragedy and loss.

Kjell Brataas gives a voice to those who have suffered and have been affected by unimaginable trauma. Noted experts recount stories and share their knowledge of how they assisted victims following tragedies such as the Manchester Arena bombing, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, terror attacks, several aircraft disasters and school shootings, the 9/11 attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic. The book focuses on those affected by a disaster, including the bereaved, survivors and first responders. Leaders of support groups formed after these tragedies, trauma therapists and psychologists from three continents offer their experiences dealing with victims and the aftermath of disaster. Chapters provide guidance on memorializing tragedies, site visits, donation management, media relations, social media, grief counseling and human resilience. Readers will be shown that psychological support is critical after a disaster and learn from those who deal with emergencies.

Brataas' unmatched volume offers new understandings, recommendations, best practices and benchmarks on how best to assist victims in the aftermath of disaster. A valuable resource for students, researchers and practitioners.

Part I

The Post-Disaster Timeframe

Illustration: Ingrid Asp.

Chapter 1

Immediate (First Days)

Introduction

When a disaster occurs, the first hours and days can be described as a combination of chaos, fear, logistical challenges, information voids, desperation and hope. Survivors and bereaved will have their lives changed forever, and a multitude of first responders will do their utmost to reduce the number of victims and to help those who need assistance.

With a focus on people, this chapter will describe some of the many challenges that arise in the first hours and days after a disaster.

On-Scene Challenges

The first of many challenges at the scene of a tragedy has to do with saving lives and making sure no more people become victims. Those who are capable will escape the area by their own power, while people hurt or trapped are dependent on others coming to assist. These first responders are usually a mix of coincidental bystanders, private citizens rushing to help and professionals from the police, fire service and ambulances. All of them will need to handle chaos, uncertainty and stress, while tunnel vision and reduced audio acuity are other factors that will influence how people react.

Victims in a disaster zone can be divided into six groups:

•Deceased

•Injured

•Trapped

•Walking wounded

•Survivors

•Witnesses

Surviving a disaster depends on a variety of circumstances, including physical abilities, help from others and luck. Private individuals knowing basic first aid – and who are not paralyzed by the situation – can save lives, and T-shirts or belts can be used to stop any bleeding. On a more professional level, so-called “MCI Throw Kits” (Mass Casualty Incidents) have proved valuable when many people are hurt at the same time. The kits, which can be given out or thrown to bystanders, include basic remedies for stopping bleeding or cleaning a wound.

Considering what can become the worst-case outcome of an ongoing crisis should be mandatory for crisis managers and security personnel. In many instances, lives can be saved if those in charge consider what the worst possible outcome of the situation is, and take immediate action to warn those in danger. One can only speculate how many lives would have been saved on September 11, 2001, if the Port Authority had not given this message through the public address system to people in the South Tower at 8:55 am: “Your attention, please, ladies and gentlemen. Building Two is secure. There is no need to evacuate Building Two. If you are in the midst of evacuation, you may use the reentry doors and the elevators to return to your office. Repeat, Building Two is secure.” A similar situation occurred in South Korea in April 2014, when the ferry Sewol capsized and 304 passengers died. As the ferry began to sink, the crew gave instructions through the intercom to passengers to stay where they were, and they repeated messages to not evacuate for about 40 minutes. The captain and the crew were among the first people rescued off the ship, and later investigations concluded that it would have been possible to evacuate everyone onboard before the ship sank. In the UK, the London Fire Brigade was heavily criticized for its emergency response to the fire in Grenfell Tower in 2017. It followed a “stay put” strategy, which meant that firefighters and emergency hotline telephone operators told residents to stay in their flats even as the fire was growing. A total of 72 people died in the fire.

Handling social media can also be a challenge at the scene of a disaster. There are many examples of witnesses livestreaming an event, and even more people record videos and take pictures after it has happened. Unfortunately, many family members of victims find out about the disaster first through social media, sometimes even recognizing a car or personal belongings while watching a video on Facebook or YouTube.

Many survivors see journalists at the disaster site as an intrusion, and media representatives need to be vigilant and respectful when talking to victims and witnesses. A free press is a principal part of democracy, however, and reporters have a legitimate job to do in depicting what has happened. Traditional media are still a vital tool in crisis communication, as a live TV interview with a police officer or a crisis manager on the scene can be an excellent way of disseminating essential information to a large group of people.

The challenges at a disaster scene can last for days or even weeks. A crash site where an aircraft has gone down will be closed off as long as victim retrieval and police investigations continue, and natural disasters can mean that dead and hurt people are spread through a vast area of land or sea. That was the case, for example, after the tsunami in Asia in 2004, where on-scene challenges included finding adequate storing facilities for the dead, communication without electricity and coordinating spontaneous volunteers and professionals from a variety of training backgrounds, cultures and languages.

Victim Accounting

One of the main tasks of those who manage a crisis is to come up with a list of names of those involved. Family members and friends of those who might have been killed, hurt or missing want to find out as soon as possible, and media outlets immediately start their own research into who is involved.

Certain types of disasters have a predefined group of people involved. When a commercial aircraft has an accident, the airline can usually provide what is called a flight manifest with names of all people onboard. The same goes for cruise ships and bus tour operators. However, having such a list does not mean that everyone who died will be positively identified, and there are always uncertainties about the quality of the list of passengers. Not all countries or airlines require a proof of identification before boarding, and there have been many instances where someone travels on a plane with a false name. Kenyon International Emergency Services is one of the largest companies in the world that assists after disasters, and they have found that it is very seldom that a passenger manifest is 100 percent correct and that achieving verification is easier said than done. An article on their webpage states:

In the nine major aircraft incidents/crashes we have attended in the past 10 years, only one passenger manifest was 100% correct: the cargo plane that crashed off Houston in February 2019. This is because, as a cargo aircraft, it only had two flight crew and a jump seat passenger.

(Kenyon International Emergency Services, 2020)

Many countries and organizations have experienced first-hand the difficulties of finding out who is a victim. In the early phase, speculations and more or less fact-based estimations can produce totally wrong numbers, and it is therefore important for politicians and company leaders to be watchful when talking about figures. That was not the case in Norway after the Asian tsunami of 2004. A few days after the disaster, Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik said in a press conference that there could be more than 1,000 dead Norwegians. (The correct number turned out to be 84.) The shooting at Columbine High School in 1999 is another instance when a political leader misstated facts. In a news conference on the day of the shooting, Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone talked about 25 dead, a number that was repeated in many newspapers the next day. (The correct number was 15.)

Some disasters are so violent and brutal that survival seems impossible. In those cases, victim estimates show a high number of deaths, but as time progresses it sometimes becomes clear that more people actually survived than originally thought. When watching TV footage of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsing, it is easy to understand that in the following days estimates pointed to more than 10,000 deaths. (Because many people reported the same victim missing – sometimes misspelling a name or giving a wrong date of birth – the database of the Office of the Medical Examiner in New York at one time contained more than 60,000 records.)

Tools for Victim Registration

There are several tools available for reporting and registering victims:

•Telephone hotlines

•Webpages

•Social media

•Posters

•Media

Telephone Hotlines

There are many variations of telephone hotlines. Some are run by the local or national police, and in many instances, they are supplemented by other professional operators from the public or private sector. Most airlines activate a telephone hotline after an accident, and large private companies and government entities will also have such practices in their crisis procedures.

A hotline for relatives must be planned in advance, including finding the right technical equipment, staff and “back office” for the procedure. The people answering need to be trained, including rehearsing what to say to desperate callers, how to “control” the conversation and to maximize data collection while at the same time trying to minimize the time each call takes. Ideally, a phone call should last approximately 2–3 minutes, including the quality control aspect of reading back vital information received. One of the main objectives of a hotline is to assess the likelihood of involvement based on a triage system that enables the call-taker to rank the likelihood that the person in question is involved, injured or deceased. The police or other authorities confirm deaths, but the staff at a call center needs to be trained in answering a variety of difficult questions, including, “Are there survivors?”

In the UK, the Casualty Bureau is the initial single point of contact for receiving and assessing information about people believed to be involved in an incident. It can be staffed with police officers from several geographical locations, and one of its main objectives is to reconcile missing persons. The bureau is activated shortly after major events, and the UK police use Twitter and other social media channels regularly and frequently to inform about numbers to call and webpages for more information.

There are many positive aspects of setting up a telephone support system, but it is hard to foresee how much traffic will be going through the system and to scale its technical functionality appropriately. After the bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, in May 2017, the infrastructure service provider of telephone hotlines experienced major technical problems, which meant that it took eight hours for the Casualty Bureau to be fully operational. In its official enquiry into the response to the tragedy, The Kerslake Report stated clearly: “The setup of the Casualty Bureau was seriously hampered by the complete failure of the National Mutual Aid Telephony system provided by Vodafone. As a consequence, communication with families caught up in the attack was badly affected” (Kerslake, 2018).

Be aware of cultural differences and language barriers that can hinder effective communication through a telephone hotline. That was the case in the UK after the Grenfell Tower fire. According to Tiana Hokins, who has researched reunification processes in the UK and Australia, “It took days for the matching unit to realise that 70 calls were related to the same family due to difficulty communicating and inaccurate information provided” (Hokins, 2019, p. 11).

Other complications arise when the wrong organization takes charge of the telephone support system....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Author
• Meeting Sources and Acknowledgments
• Timeline of Disasters Covered in this Book
• Introduction
• Part I The Post-Disaster Timeframe
• Part II People
• Part III Coping and Recovery
• Part IV Planning for Victim Support
• Part V End Matter
• Index