Responses to Disaster

But there are dramatically different responses depending both on an individual's personality and û perhaps even more importantly û by the nature of the disaster. People rush into burning buildings to save children with seemingly no thought to save themselves. But when they see a person dying from AIDS û or Ebola û they turn and flee, even when the risk to themselves is far less. This has to do partly with poor risk assessment skills, and partly it seems to do with culturally ingrained values. We may well be taught from childhood onward that we have a moral obligation to intercede in the case of immediate danger, but when the danger is more protracted û someone dying slowly from a disease rather than quickly in a burning building û we are permitted by our cultural training to ignore them. Thus û and here we come to the crux of this paper û in determining how people are likely to react to disasters caused by human technology (such as Love Canal, the Exxon Valdez spill, the Chernobyl meltdown) we must determine how people categorize these disasters. It seems likely that people will be more likely to respond optimistically and energetically when the disaster is like a burning building û or the Exxon V

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s, in the end totaling 260,000 barrels, the largest oil spill in U.S. history. (The tanker's remaining 1 million barrels of oil were removed from the hold of the damaged vessel and transferred to other tankers operated by the Exxon Corporation.) (Picou, 1996, p. 19). The cleanup of spilled oil was slow to be organized in largest measure because Exxon and the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company were quite simply not prepared for the disaster, perhaps hoping that if they had not plan in place to deal with such an occurrence then it simply would not occur. (Picou, 1996, p. 47). (History should perhaps have clued them into the fact that failure to prepare for a disaster has never been an effective way to stave it off.) Left untreated for so long, the oil slick spread much farther than it would otherwise have been able to, eventually coating about 1100 miles of the Alaska shoreline, including numerous islands in the sound. Tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of shore-nesting birds were killed by the slick, as were several thousand sea mammals, especially sea otters (Picou, 1996, p. 51). The oil slick eventually coated about 1100 miles of the Alaska shoreline, including numerous islands in the sound. Tens, possibly hundreds, of thousa
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Exxon Valdez, Soviet Union, Living Risk, William Sound, , Service Company, Dnieper River, Love Canal, Sound Alaska, Central Asia, exxon valdez, medvedev 1992, picou 1996, nuclear power, soviet union, chernobyl nuclear, prince william sound, technological disasters, prince william, oil spill, burning building, chernobyl nuclear power, concentrated space remedy, shore-nesting birds killed, birds killed slick,
Approximate Word count = 2500
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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