Managing volunteers: FEMA's Urban Search and Rescue programme and interactions with unaffiliated responders in disaster response.

In the aftermath of disasters it is not uncommon for a large number of individuals, ranging from professional technical responders to untrained, albeit well meaning, volunteers, to converge on site of a disaster in order to offer to help victims or other responders. Because volunteers can be both a help and a hindrance in disaster response, they pose a paradox to professional responders at the scene. Through focus group interviews and in-depth structured interviews, this paper presents an extended example of how Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) task forces, a type of professional technical-responder organisation, interact with and utilise volunteers. Findings show that US&R task forces evaluate the volunteers in terms of their presumed legitimacy, utility, and potential liability or danger posed during the disaster response. Other responses to volunteers such as a feeling of powerlessness or the use of volunteers in non-technical ways are also explored. This paper demonstrates some key aspects of the relationship between volunteers and formal response organisations in disasters.

Hurricane Katrina and the healthcare infrastructure: A focus on disaster preparedness, response, and resiliency.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina provides a window of opportunity to address a frail and failing healthcare system. Katrina was the rare incident that disrupted the external systems supplying hospitals with key services and resources needed for the organizations to function; increased the number of patients, both present and expected, that required medical care; and affected directly the physical plants of the hospitals, challenging their functionality. Sorting through and gleaning useful lessons to increase the resilience of hospitals for this type of catastrophic incident will take time and will require system-wide public health planning and intervention. In this article, the authors focus on how hospitals prepared for, responded to, and coped with Katrina. They also provide a brief overview of the current situation and the healthcare crisis confronting hospitals and communities in the region affected by Katrina and discuss the impending need to develop disaster-resilient medical and healthcare systems. Planning, access to adequate resources, networking, effective communication and coordination, and training and education of doctors, nurses, technicians, and medical staff are essential in the development of a resilient healthcare infrastructure that will be able to provide the much needed services to populations affected by future disasters.

The human ecology of tornadoes

This paper offers an empirical test of the impact of human ecological patterns and other known correlates on tornado occurrence. It uses the National Severe Storms Forecast Center's information on tornadoes from 1950 through 1990 and employs ecological data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the Environmental Protection Agency. The results show that metropolitan and other urban counties have higher odds of tornado occurrence than rural counties, and that the probability of occurrence of tornadoes increases with increases in the number of previous tornadoes. The paper assesses the meaning of this finding for demographers, atmospheric scientists, engineers, and disaster managers.(AU)

The social organization of search and rescue : Evidence from the Guadalajara gasoline explosion

This research uses information from the Guadalajara gasoline explosion of 22 April, 1992, to show the importance of social organization in search and rescue activities. Information is obtained from forty three victims that had been buried alive by the explosion throughout the impact area, and twenty two volunteers who had participated in the direct rescue phase. They reported on their own experience during SAR and the experience of victims and rescued by these volunteers. Volunteers social identies in peer groups, extended families, the neighborhood, and the Catholic Church structured their search and rescue activities. Chances of people surviving the blast were directly proportional to the presence among the searchers of a person or persons who cared for the victim and who knew the victim's likely location. The behavior of the victims was market by the continuation of preexisting motivational, normative, and value orientations. Victims acted cooperatively during entrapment. Most of the victims that were rescued alive were rescued during the first two hours inmediately after the explosion. The article concludes with the implication of the study for collective behavior and disaster research and planning (AU)