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Groups Influences on Disaster ResponseGroups Influences on Disaster Response
Martin LeaMartin Lea
martinlea.commartinlea.com

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Thinking about groups in disasters
• Disaster phases?
• What kind of groups are
involved?
• What kind of group
factors are involved?
– First responders
– The public

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General issues
Communication
• Pervasive problems
– complex mix of
technological and
human factors
• Disaster conditions
create
– High information
uncertainty
– Limited information
control
– Extreme time pressure
– High responsibility
– High surveillance

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General issues
Group communication
• Group influences
– Information sharing
– Interagency communication
• Public health disaster
or crime scene?
– professional norms
– organizational routines
– Organizational culture

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General issues
Group Decision-Making & Creativity
• Normally: decision trees
• Disaster: Template matching
• Creativity
– "figuring out how to use what you
already know in order to go beyond
what you currently think"
– Organizational barriers

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First Responders
Turnout and Commitment
• Important for
successful response

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First Responders
Turnout and Commitment
• Surat earthquake and
plague 1994

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First Responders
Turnout and Commitment
• Chernobyl nuclear
disaster

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First Responders
Turnout and Commitment
• Group influences:
– Role conflict?
• Professional vs domestic
• Increased or reduced
during disaster?
– Beliefs about low turn out
• Emergency response
managers
• Public fear

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First Responders
Health and Stress Reactions
• First responders as
psychological victims
• Group influences
– Age & experience
– Identification with victims
– Terrorist groups
– Organizational complexity of inter-
agency response

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First Responders
Protective Clothing and equipment
• Required to shield against
harmful agents
– Interferes with individual and group
performance:
• Verbal communication
• Paralinguistic cues
• Personal and organizational
identifiability
• Gas mask phobia
• Group influences:
– Organizational identity markers
– Training and experience

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First Responders
The Public as First Responders
• Large proportion of First
Responders are public
• Group influences on public as
first responders
1. Victims
2. Convergence by
neighbourhood & community
groups
– Volunteering in pre-disaster
roles: gender, work
1. Mobilization by volunteer and
disaster agencies

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First Responders
The Public as First Responders
• Who volunteers?
– Identification with victims
– cultural constraints
• Communities value
volunteering
– shared norms
– therapeutic for the community
"Victim" community  "Competent" community

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The Public
Warning Response
• Public rarely respond
immediately
– Message confirmation
Search for information & social cues
• Group influences
– Friends and family
– Credibility of sources
– Belief systems
– Social and ethnic groups

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The Public
Evacuation
• Evacuation zones and
evacuation shadows
– Personal risk assessment
– Confusing communications
and conflicting information
increase shadows (intergroup
dimension)

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The Public
Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident
• Recipient group influences:
– Geographical proximity
– Similarity to target group
– Relation to target group
– Where do people evacuate to?
• Friends and family
• Public care facilities

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The Public
Quarantine and Shielding
• Quarantine or Isolation
– restriction of movement of
large populations
– separation and confinement
of infected individuals
• Dispersal
– Big problem
• Shielding
– self-imposed isolation
– Families, friends, work
groups
• Group influences
– Violation of quarantine
– Fragmentation vs.
coherence of social groups

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The Public
Mass Psychogenic Illness & Panic
• Mass psychogenic (sociogenic)
illness
– Rapid spread of illness signs and
symptoms affecting members of a
cohesive group
– Physical complaints:
• have no corresponding organic
aetiology and
• are attributed to the environment
• Implications for reliability of “Triage”
– sorting of patients and
allocation of treatments
• Panic
– Problem of definition

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The Public
Immediate social Response
• “Individual” acts of altruism
or social norm?
• Social response:
– Ties binding community
groups strengthen
– Group boundaries
overcome (e.g. ethnic,
religion)
– Emergence of new groups
• Convergence phenomenon
– Altruistic response by
communities not affected
– Deteriorates over time
(overwhelmed by scale)
– Bounded by identities, and
roles

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The Public
Community Recovery (long term)
1. Initial impact phase
• traditional relationships replaced by
emergency behaviour:
• debonding (personal survival)
• situationally specific temporary re-
definition of social bonds
1. Massive drive to reassert
community bonds
• accompanying search, rescue and
clean-up activities
• intense camaraderie and shared
experiences
• may only last a few hours or days.

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The Public
Community Recovery (long term)
3. Recovery phase
• Previous complex community
system of networks, groups
and boundaries reasserts itself
• turmoil, conflict and social
differentiation

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Group influences on disaster response
1. Groups as causal factors
• e.g. terrorists, negligent companies
1. Groups as processes
• Intra-group and inter-group
• e.g. mass psychogenic illness
• e.g. identification between helpers and victims
• e.g. inter-agency communication
1. Groups as moderators
• e.g. influence of families, communities on responses
1. Groups as outcomes
• victim groups – wider than primary victims
• e.g. families, friends, organizations, communities, public, first
responders.
• Disaster response is socially arranged in complex
ways by group and organizational considerations