Newswise — It's been one week since Hurricane Katrina wreaked death and destruction upon the Delta, but the hard part -- the relief and rebuilding effort -- has only just begun. A veteran consultant for U.S. Agency for International Development's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) is not surprised that effort has become very political.
Dr. Vincent Gawronski, an assistant professor of political science at Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Ala. -- which also felt the edge of Katrina's fury -- has been a consultant for USAID/OFDA since 1998. Earlier this month, he was one of the opening speakers at a large conference on disaster preparedness, mitigation, and response in Central America. The conference was being hosted by the University of South Florida's Global Center for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance and U.S. Southern Command. His talk was titled "The Politics of Disasters."
He just began research with Richard Olson of Florida International University to do content analysis of the media coverage on the Hurricane Katrina disaster, using funds provided by a standing relationship with the University of Colorado Natural Hazards Research Center to study natural disasters. The Center's Quick Response Program provides federal monies to disaster researchers so that they can get into the field as soon as possible.
"We are interested in how the media 'constructs' a disaster, so we do content analysis. We'll collect newspaper stories over the next 30 days from three or four local newspapers and The New York Times. Our hypothesis is that most of the media attention will be on the human interest stories, of course, but also on 'causal attributions' that focus mostly on response and preparedness issues and not on 'wisdom failures' -- like building and/or living in high risk areas," he says. "There will be very few stories that directly address the most obvious reasons why so many people are vulnerable to hurricanes along the Gulf Coast."
According to Gawronski, in the aftermath of most disasters, government officials must not only manage the situation, but also explain it. "Thus, sometimes-competing 'causal stories' are generated," he says. "Disasters are, therefore, fundamentally political occasions." He cites the following reasons for why disasters are inherently political events:
* media frenzy -- domestic and international* political biases and political fodder* the event becomes an optic, a "window" * demands and resources mostly, but also because of the potential "political fallout"
"Public expectations run high while the regime's capabilities are challenged or low, and that equals a potential political crisis," Gawronski says. And once the event becomes political, those influences ultimately impact the relief effort -- creating a disconnect in what disaster professionals want and ultimately get. The following are what he reports disaster professionals want from political leadership:* clear and stable lines of authority* clear and stable priorities* plans followed* decision flow diagrams followed* rational decision-making* operational non-interference
And this is what disaster professionals usually get from political leadership:* changing definitions of "Who's in charge?" * shifting priorities from changes in "Who's in charge?" * plans (re-)shelved after "¦ 10 minutes* decision flows shift "¦ daily/hourly* "incomprehensible" decisions* interference from operational "help" Why the professional-political mismatch?
"Because once a major disaster strikes, a completely different -- and very political -- logic starts to work; a logic that emergency response professionals seldom see in normal times and come to understand late, if at all, during response," says Gawronski. Dick Jones Communications assists Birmingham-Southern with its public affairs work.
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