DISASTER RESEARCHconsensus on whether social happenings involving
intentional, deliberate human actions to produce
social disruptions such as occur in riots, civil dis-
turbances, terrorist attacks, product tampering or
sabotage, or wars, should be conceptualized as
disasters. The majority who oppose their inclusion
argue that conflict situations are inherently differ-
ent in their origins, careers, manifestations, and
consequences. They note that in disaster occasions
there are no conscious attempts to bring about
negative effects as there are in conflict situations
(Quarantelli 1993). Nevertheless, there is general
agreement that both conflict- and consensus-type
crises are part of a more general category of
collective stress situations, as first suggested by
Allan Barton (1969).
MAJOR RESEARCH FINDINGSWhile the research efforts have been uneven, much
has been learned about the behavior of individuals
and households, organizations, communities, and
societies in the pre-, trans-, and postimpact time
periods (Quarantelli and Dynes 1977; Kreps 1984;
Drabek 1986). A separation of the disaster-plan-
ning cycle into mitigation, preparedness, response,
and recovery phases has won partial acceptance at
some policy and operational levels in the United
States. However, international usage of the terms
is far from total and there also is disagreement
regarding what should be considered under miti-
gation. Therefore we will continue to discuss find-
ings under the older ‘‘time’’ breakdown.
Preimpact behavior. Individuals and households.
Most residents show little concern about disasters
before they happen, even in risk-prone areas and
where threats are recognized. Citizens tend to see
disaster planning as primarily a moral even more
than a legal responsibility of the government. Very
few households ever plan in any concrete way for
possible disasters. Exceptions to these passive atti-
tudes are where there are many recurrent experi-
ences of disasters as occur in some localities, where
disaster subcultures (institutionalized expectations)
have developed, and where potential disaster set-
tings (such as at chemical complexes or nuclear
plants) are the focus of activist citizen groups.
Organizations. Except for some disaster-orient-
ed groups such as police and fire departments,
there usually is little organizational planning for
disasters. Even agencies that plan tend to think of
disasters as extensions of everyday emergencies
and fail, according to researchers, to recognize the
qualitative as well as quantitative differences be-
tween routine crises and disaster occasions. In
disasters the responding organizations have to
quickly relate to more and different groups than
normal, adjust to losing part of their autonomy to
overall coordinating groups, apply different per-
formance standards and criteria, operate within a
closer-than-usual public and private interface, and
cannot function well when their own facilities and
operations may be directly impacted by the disas-
ter agent.Communities. Low priority usually is given to
preparing localities for disasters, and when there
is some effort it is usually independent of general
community development and planning. This re-
flects the reactive rather than proactive orienta-
tion of most politicians and bureaucrats and the
fact that the issue of planning very seldom be-
comes a matter of broad community interest as
would be indicated by mass media focus, discus-
sions in the political arena, or the existence of
advocacy groups. Efforts to initiate overall disaster
preparedness often are hindered by prior organi-
zational and community conflicts, cleavages, and
disputes. Starting in the 1990s, major systematic
efforts from the top down have been made in a few
countries to push for the implementation of local
mitigation measures. For programs to be imple-
mented, however, people must accept the realistic
criticism that while a disaster may be a high-im-
pact, it is a very low-probability event.Societies. Generally, disaster planning does not
rank very high on the agenda of most societies.
However, increasingly there are exceptions in de-
veloping countries when major recurrent disasters
have had major impact on the gross national prod-
uct and developmental programs. Also, in devel-
oped societies certain even distant catastrophes
such as a Bhopal or Chernobyl can become sym-
bolic occasions that lend impetus to instituting
preparedness measures for specific disaster agents.
Increasingly too, attention to national-level disas-
ter planning has increased as citizens have come to
expect their governments to provide more securi-
ty in general for the population. Also, mitigation
or prevention of disasters is being given higher
priority than in the past.