2
Disaster Research in Historical Context
Early Insights and Recent Trends

Introduction

In this chapter I offer a general overview of the field of disaster research, with an emphasis on contributions from sociology and geography. I then move on to discuss major critiques that were launched against classic disaster and hazards research. This discussion is followed by an overview of subsequent trends in the evolution of the field-especially the growing emphasis on vulnerability as a central topic for research, the introduction of perspectives highlighting power and inequality in the genesis of disasters and in disaster victimization, and the recognition of the importance of axes of inequality such as class, race, and gender in producing disaster impacts and outcomes. We will see how an international network of researchers has formed over time and how the field has matured, as indicated by the growing number of research centers devoted to the social dimensions of hazards and disasters as well as by that of specialist journals in the field. Chapter narratives will also emphasize how particular disaster events shaped sociological research over time. The themes discussed in this chapter are meant to introduce readers to key ideas in the sociological study of disasters that will be explored in the main body of this book.

Disaster Research: Origins and Early Years

Notwithstanding important early research by Samuel Prince (1920) and Lowell Carr (1932), disaster research began as an organized discipline in the United States in the late 1940s. The original impetus for research on disasters came from the US military. The United States' use of nuclear weapons against Japan in World War II and the Soviet Union's successful nuclear test in August 1949 ushered in a period in which the two enemy states and the world at large were forced to contemplate the possibility of nuclear war. One topic of interest was how members of the public would react in the face of nuclear destruction. War planners were wondering whether panic and hysteria would result, whether collective demoralization would set in, or whether residents in bomb-stricken areas would be psychologically willing and able to cope with the terror of nuclear war and begin to rebuild their communities; and this was not the first time that such concerns were being addressed. Findings from the World War II Strategic Bombing Surveys in Europe and Japan suggested that even the most intensive bombing campaigns were unsuccessful in destroying community morale; the bombing actually improved morale. However, those findings were downplayed by military leaders who championed air power and bombs as a way to win wars (Quarantelli 1987; Knowles 2011).

Initial research into the societal dimensions of disasters focused on an event that resembled what might take place in wartime. In August 1948 an air inversion in Donora, Pennsylvania resulted in a toxic smog that killed twenty residents and sickened approximately 7,000-about half of the population in that community. The Army Chemical Center (ACC), which played a role in US chemical warfare planning, sent a team of psychiatrists to look into the deadly smog episode, in an effort to better understand the psychological effects it had on the population; the idea was that such a study could provide insights into possible public reactions to the use of chemical weapons. One finding was that residents who were not exposed to the toxic smog exhibited reactions similar to those of residents who had been directly exposed. This suggested that psychological as well as physiological factors were at play and that chemical weapons could in principle cause panic or other adverse effects in exposed populations.

The ACC asked the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago to conduct a more in-depth study of the Donora episode, but it proved difficult for the center to recruit and train enough field staff to collect all the needed time-sensitive data on public responses. The ACC went on to establish a contract with NORC whereby the latter would train University of Chicago social science graduate students and send them into the field, on a quick-response basis, after major disasters. More than a dozen students were recruited and trained in field methods. Emergencies that took place in and around Chicago were used as training opportunities.

NORC subsequently conducted several quick-response studies on different types of community emergencies, and in 1952 it undertook its first large-scale research project following a deadly tornado that struck White County, Arkansas. The study, which involved face-to-face interviews with 342 residents, yielded a large amount of data on public responses immediately before the tornado struck; the respondents' perceptions of threat at the time of impact; their observations about the behavior of others during the impact period; psychological and behavioral responses after impact, including participation in search and rescue activities; and their emotional responses and behavior in the days and weeks after the disaster. Enrico (Henry) Quarantelli, who was among the original NORC team members, later noted that the findings from this seminal study were replicated many times in subsequent research. For example, the White County study found that

[s]elf control is maintained in extreme threat situations. Panic or wild flight, hysterical breakdown, affective immobility are almost non-existent . Those in danger try to help one another. Because persons are very frightened or afraid does not mean that they will fail to try and take protective actions . Passivity is not characteristic of the immediate post-impact period. The initial and by far the greatest amount of search and rescue is undertaken on the spot by survivors . Severe mental health problems are not occasioned on any scale by disasters . Convergence on a disaster site is a major problem . There may be widespread stories of looting, but actual cases of looting are very rare in post-impact situations. (Quarantelli 1988: 305)

These findings contradicted war planners' expectations about public reactions under conditions of extreme stress. Rather than revealing pathological or antisocial patterns of behavior, the early NORC studies characterized disaster victims as levelheaded (even though fearful) and willing to engage in a variety of pro-social behaviors.

The pioneering NORC studies were significant for their contributions to the subsequent growth of the field. Charles Fritz, who played an important role in establishing the NORC disaster teams, went on to direct studies that were conducted by the Committee on Disaster Studies and the Disaster Research Group at the National Academy of Sciences and became a central figure in disaster-related activities at the Academy. Under Fritz's direction, the Academy carried out approximately 160 disaster studies during the 1950s (for more detail, see Quarantelli 1987). It was also Fritz who formulated what is probably the best-known definition of disaster:

[a]n event, concentrated in time and space, in which a society, or a relatively self-sufficient subdivision of a society, undergoes severe danger and incurs such losses to its members and physical appurtenances that the social structure is disrupted and the fulfillment of all or some of the essential functions of the society is prevented. (Fritz 1961: 655)

Henry Quarantelli went on to become one of the founders of the Disaster Research Center (DRC), which was the first place of its kind in the world: a center devoted to the study of the social and behavioral aspects of disasters. Established in 1963 at Ohio State University, DRC moved in 1985 to the University of Delaware, where it continues to operate. In 1962, Quarantelli and DRC co-founders Russell Dynes and J. Eugene Haas-who, like Quarantelli, were professors in the sociology department at Ohio State University-submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation requesting support for disaster studies. Somehow-and the three sociologists never did find out how this happened-the proposal made its way both to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and to the US Office of Civil Defense. Significant funding followed. What had originally been a request for $50,000 for a project designed to take up eighteen months subsequently became a five-year $1,000,000 grant from the Office of Civil Defense-nearly $8 million in 2017 dollars (Knowles 2011).

At the time of its founding, the DRC conducted both laboratory and field studies. A key focus of the center's laboratory research, which was funded by the US Air Force, was on organizational responses to stress. In one laboratory study, groups of police dispatchers were brought into the lab and asked to respond during a simulated plane crash. In this scripted simulation study, DRC staff members relayed messages to the dispatchers that were designed to increase their stress levels. The objective was to learn how communication and decision-making patterns change when organizations are faced with excessive demands (Drabek and Haas 1969).

Initial DRC field studies focused on a variety of different disaster types, including floods, fires, a dam break in Italy, and major explosions. The 1964 Great Alaska earthquake gave the DRC its first opportunity to conduct fieldwork in a truly major disaster. DRC field teams carried out research beginning in the immediate post-earthquake period and continuing until nearly two years later; they conducted over 500 tape-recorded interviews and collected...