Disaster narratives

Disaster scenarios. A third factor that has contributed to the view that NT is a controversial area of research is the fact that imaginative and well-informed authors have created narratives of nanodevices that self-replicate and learn. In some visions, ffiose who created such devices to serve their purposes lose control over them, sometimes to great human and/or environmental harm. ... 

R. Thomas, ed., Interesting and Authentic Narratives of the Most Remarkable Shipwrecks, Fires, Famines, Calamities, Providential Deliverances, and Lamentable Disasters on the Seas (Hartford E. Strong, 1837), p. 183. 

My hope is to use this study to better understand the processes that allow organizations to slide into disasters and failures, and why it may be difficult to recognize, learn from, and intervene in these processes in order to arrest the slide. I use the notion of the safety failure cycle as a main theoretical framework (e.g., Heimann, 1997 Reason, 1997). I follow my theoretical discussion with a narrative that describes the experiences of the shuttle program and the JPL. Following my analysis of these experiences I conclude with some implications for theory and practice. 

Part II Moments of Transformation shows how information critical to risk assessment may be reconstructed and rendered invisible in writing at specific moments of transformation within the cycle. Chapter 4 describes how two different writers attempt to capture experience at one specific moment of transformation. This chapter contrasts a miner s narrative, inside of the hazardous environment he describes, with the agency s reconstruction of the accident, above and outside of the mine. When John Nagy attempts to reconstruct events in the Wilberg disaster, his account presents only a limited view of the complex viewpoints that individuals must assume to work safely in dynamic and hazardous environments. This chapter argues that writers must pay increased attention to the ways that individuals manage multiple viewpoints because agencies rely on accident narratives to determine the cause or causes of a disaster. 

While it would be impossible to examine all of the viewpoints that writers represent in all 25 appendices, two documents in particular help us analyze the rhetorical processes by which local knowledge moves into the domain of science and public policy. Appendix F contains Blake s hand written account of his escape, written immediately after the accident. Appendix H contains Nagy s independent analysis of miners testimony following the accident. Blake s narrative enables us to view the uncertain and dynamic geography of a mine from the viewpoint of a miner focused on his own survival. His viewpoint is limited to his own experience, but his narrative reveals how he used sensory cues in the environment to save his life. Nagy s report reveals the rhetorical strategies that one fire consultant employed as he attempted to reconcile conflicting accounts of the disaster in order to reconstruct a coherent and consistent narrative of events and conditions that precipitated the disaster. 

In the agency s final representation, no single narrative can fully represent the truth of the experience. The agency s account must weigh this first-hand account against other representations of the disaster. Fortunately for rhetoricians, Nagy s analysis explicitly documents the processes by which this transformation occurs. 

Researchers at the Bureau of Mines recognize that investigation reports do not provide the details that agencies need to understand the cause of the disaster. One study concluded that More than 20 percent of the 2,685 reportable incidents in this study could not be analyzed because report narratives did not contain sufficient detail to identify a specific job task (Klishis et al., 1992, p. 78). 

Larry Strayer describes how he lost his leg while working with a friend.- Strayer s narrative re-presents experience as he experienced it from a position inby the disaster. In this excerpt, Strayer remembers how it felt to lie on the ground as the roof began to collapse over his head ... 

Expert miners gesture more frequently on average than novice miners and use more gestures in which they use their entire bodies to portray a character in their narratives Gesture thus provides additional information about the spatial and temporal dimensions of risk—information not available in speech alone. The knowledge embodied in gesture may become invisible, however, if writers transcribe only the speech portion of oral testimony as evidence in scientific and te nical accounts of the disaster. 

Cullen (1990) The public inquiry into the piper alpha disaster. HMSO Cm 1310 Emmet L, Cleland G (2002) Graphical notations, narratives and persuasion a pliant systems approach to hypertext tool design. In Proc ACM Hypertext, College Park, Maryland, USA Eurocontrol (2003) ESARR6 Software in ATM systems. 

The confluence of crises of the late 2000s left most citizens deeply concerned for the economic and physical security of their families and their country. The Great Recession spawned by the financial meltdown of 2007-08 put millions of Americans out of work, and millions more in fear of losing their jobs, their pensions, and their health benefits. At the same time, the Deepwater Horizon spill, the Upper Big Branch mining disaster, the recalls of millions of toxic toys, and the dire predictions of climate scientists made ordinary citizens fearful for their health, safety, and environment. These powerful demonstrations of the failure of laissez faire minimalism can provide the grist for an easily accessible and compelling narrative about the necessity of maintaining robust institutions of responsibility and accountability in a modern political economy. 

My narrative (in chapter 5) followed Bosch almost to the end of the World War I, when he organized the expansion of ammonia synthesis and nitrate production at Oppau and the construction of a new ammonia plant at Leuna. Shortly after the war s end, in December 1918, Bosch was delegated to Spa, and in March 1919 to Versailles, as the representative of German industry in the armistice and peace treaty delegations. After his return from France he became the chairman of the BASF board, and in that capacity he had to deal with the worst disaster in the company s history, an explosion at Oppau that caused more than 500 fatalities and destroyed the homes of more than 7,000 people in September 1921. In May 1923 Ludwigshafen was occupied by French troops, and Bosch, who fled across the Rhine, was sentenced in absentia for his refusal to cooperate with French authorities. 

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