DRC Reflects on 9-11
Dear DRC Alumni, Visitors, and Friends,
This week we mark a sad anniversary: it’s ten years since the September 11 attacks. In this time of somber reminiscing about the shock and loss of that day, many of us will reflect back on where we were that morning. Indeed, such recollection was often the opening in conversations between strangers in restaurants or supermarket lines, replacing the weather or the slowness of the cashier as a point of fellowship. I was on my way to the office here, at DRC, where I was a postdoctoral researcher. We rushed to the nearby media center, watched the growing emergency on television, listened to the contradictory and ambiguous news broadcasts, and saw one, then the other, of the Twin Towers disintegrate into the artificial caverns under Manhattan. Reports circulated of other hijacked planes, other disasters in a sequence of grief. Stepping outside, we heard the silence of aircraft absent from the sky as planes landed all over the country. Even auto traffic seemed diminished and quieter than usual.
The DRC has a long history of post-disaster quick-response research. The purpose of such trips is to document at the earliest possible time the challenges and successes, the main problems and principal decisions, and the shifting roster of individuals and organizations—formal and informal—whose combined efforts confront sudden crisis and disruption. The DRC is just a couple of hours from New York. The attack on the World Trade Center was an event like no other, but the DRC’s particular vocation—advancing the science of disaster and disaster management—demanded action as in other disasters. A field team traveled to New York on September 13; members of the team made repeated trips to New York over the next two months. We found sources of resilience, creativity, improvisation and, at the same time, the vast coping capacities of ordinary people throughout the region who did their parts, large and small: many not with creativity or improvisation, just with hard, determined, straightforward work. In spite of new technology, a lot of disaster response is lifting, dragging, and carrying debris, supplies, equipment. It’s processing and filing paperwork, answering phones, driving trucks, serving food, talking to people—and comforting them to the extent that can even be possible. Not all was perfection, of course, and we saw instances of discord, errors of judgment, even hostile argument at planning meetings where officials with different perspectives or backgrounds quarreled. But disasters don’t unfold according to a script, in spite of planning, and require moment-to-moment problem-solving, which always leaves room for argument.
The DRC’s research would not be possible without the help of emergency managers. In one such encounter, we had finally found the city’s temporary emergency operations center and talked our way in, tossing names out left and right to prove our bona fides. We were looking for one official in particular. We found him surrounded by people, draped with walkie-talkies and having conversations on two phones. We stood quietly. He saw us and came over. He had tried to call, he said. Watch what we’re doing, he directed us. I need you around. Just watch. Take notes. Tell us what we did right and what we did wrong. For the privilege of the access that he and other emergency officials allowed DRC to people and places, we’ve tried to present the management of this disaster with clarity, objectivity, and we hope with understanding: the keys to advancing the knowledge of disaster that can help other stricken places.
We too are looking back on that astonishingly clear late summer day, and on what we saw over the next days and weeks. If you visit the following pages you can join us in that contemplation, sampling some of the scenes we saw. We’ll think about the many losses on September 11, but we’ll also recognize the many ways resourceful individuals and communities redefined disaster as a call to action.
Sincerely,
James Kendra
DRC Director
9-11 Gallery |
Quick Response Work |
Sensemaking During the 9-11 Waterborne Evacuation |
