WILLIAM RAU
How do citizens and elites respond to disaster? Differently. Most citizens respond, not with panic, hooliganism, or looting, but with spontaneously organized rescue efforts. When Hurricane Katrina clobbered New Orleans, a Cajun Navy of 400 boat owners rescued about 10,000 stranded people. A “New York Navy” consisting of hodgepodge of boats and ships achieved Dunkirk’s scale of evacuation by removing in a few hours more than 300,000 people from the toxic wreckage of 9/11 Lower Manhattan (Solnit 2020:191). After a 9.2 magnitude earthquake leveled Anchorage, Alaska, in 1964, volunteers executed such an effective rescue effort that only five Anchorites died (Meigs 2020). The list goes on and on.
In contrast, elites can behave badly. Believing that disaster-induced chaos will foment looting and violence, elites may direct police and soldiers to shoot looters, block effective volunteer rescue efforts, and establish martial law. San Francisco in 1906 exemplifies how such fact-free fear incites “elite panic” (Clark & Chess 2008). A baseless fear of chaos had officials ordering the army to occupy the city. Soldiers killed at least 75 residents and bayonetted others, engaged in looting themselves, and ineptly turned local fires into a city-wide inferno. Blocking the work of volunteer fire brigades, the army tried to create firebreaks by blowing up buildings with gunpowder only to splay flaming fragments far and wide. These fiery projectiles fed the conflagration that burned down most of the city (Solnit 2020:34-43). Again, the list goes on.
Other leaders become paralyzed rather than panicked as the Titanic’s captain, Edward Smith, illustrates. After quickly learning that the Titanic would sink within two hours, Smith failed to issue the command to abandon ship, order officers to move passengers to lifeboats, or oversee lifeboat launchings. With his ship and 1,000 passengers doomed, Smith “became paralyzed by indecision, had a … nervous collapse, and became lost in a trance-like daze, rendering him ineffective and inactive” (Wiki 2024).
If Illinois were blanketed by a heatwave approaching Europe’s 2003 mass killer, our governor would face a quandary similar to Smith’s: few “cooling-center lifeboats,” overwhelmed first responders and ERs, and citizens without equipment or training to fill the void. Heatwaves are fundamentally different from fast and furious disasters, such as earthquakes or hurricanes. The latter leave shattered buildings and infrastructure in their wake. Immediately thereafter, numerous survivors can leap into the fray and work around the clock rescuing others. Wreckage and cries for help generate collective altruism.
There is no wreckage, no cries for help in a heatwave. And eviscerating, week-long heat will stifle spontaneous, voluntary rescue efforts. The risk of heat exhaustion will allow only short, intermittent rescue work, especially if rescuers lack cooling vests. More importantly, even strangers know whom to rescue after hurricanes and earthquakes: people on rooftops or under rubble. But heatwaves spare buildings and kill the vulnerable by boiling them alive inside. Rescuers must know in advance who will need help, which is why deaths in Chicago’s cohesive Latino communities were so low during Chicago’s 1995 heatwave (Klinenberg 2015: 109-128). Neighbors knew who needed help and looked after them.
Without the training and equipping of an Illinois equivalent of San Franciso’s Neighborhood Emergency Response Teams (Rau 2024), an Illinois governor facing a killer heatwave will inherit a Blast Furnace Built in Hell.
References
Clarke, Lee & Caron Chess. 2008 (Dec). Elites and Panic: More to Fear than Fear Itself. Social Forces: https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Elites-and-Panic-More-to-Fear-than-Fear-Itself.pdf
Klinenberg, Eric. 2015. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Meigs, James B. 2020 (May). Elite panic vs. the resilient populace: The lessons of a forgotten American disaster. Commentary; https://www.commentary.org/articles/james-meigs/elite-panic-vs-the-resilient-populace/
Rau, William. 2024 (Mar 7). How many lifeboats were on the Titanic? Community Word, Peoria; http://thecommunityword.com/online/blog/2024/03/07/heat-waves-in-red-black-how-many-lifeboats-were-on-the-titanic/
Solnit, Rebecca. 2020. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. New York Penguin.
Wiki. 2024 (3 April). The Sinking of the Titanic. Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Titanic