Explore two (2) journal articles regarding a contemporary crisis. Relevant articles would be dated after 2010 (to present). Consider the following situation--and then respond to the questions. Be sure to use APA formatting in your essays.
Understanding how the success or failure of an emergency response depends on the size of the gap between the behavior of disaster victims and the bureaucratic procedures of a public official, pick an emergency from your experience and answer the following three questions:
1. What were the challenges faced?
2. What actions were undertaken to deal with the crisis?
3. Were the choices made successful? Why (or why not)?
. Journal Article Review
Article 1: Understanding Resistance to Emergency and Disaster Messaging (Goode et al., 2015)
This article examines why some individuals disregard official disaster warnings, seemingly against their own self-interest.
Key Concept: The article highlights the failure of the traditional linear communication model (sender → message → receiver) when applied to human behavior in a crisis. Many official warnings, despite being accurate and timely, are resisted because of the victim's subjective reality, prior negative experiences, or a lack of personalizing the threat (Goode et al., 2015).
Gap Relevance: This directly addresses the gap in perception. Public officials assume a rational actor will follow clear instructions; victims, however, may be operating under denial, normalization bias, or emotional attachment to property, which creates a significant behavioral gap with the official mandate to evacuate or shelter in place.
Article 2: The Influence of Bureaucratic Structures on Emergency Management Leaders' Adaptive Responses (Walden University Research, 2022)
This study explores how the characteristics of bureaucracy—like rigid procedures and hierarchies—can constrain adaptive responses in a catastrophic incident, focusing on the experience of emergency management leaders.
Key Concept: Leaders noted that while bureaucratic processes provide control and accountability, they often hamper the necessary flexibility and speed required for effective response (Walden University Research, 2022). Success required navigating the bureaucracy—using personal relationships and experience to bypass or quickly adapt procedures.
Gap Relevance: This addresses the gap in procedure and action. When a victim needs immediate aid (behavior), bureaucratic rules requiring multiple forms, strict chains of command, or slow resource authorization (procedure) lead to critical delays and frustration, widening the trust gap between the public and the public official.
II. Personal Emergency Response Analysis
Emergency Scenario: A localized, sudden flash flood event in a low-lying urban area following an intense, unpredicted heavy rainfall. The experience is viewed from the perspective of a volunteer attempting to assist both victims and overwhelmed city services.
1. What were the challenges faced?
The primary challenge was the discrepancy between victim behavior and bureaucratic necessity, manifesting in two main ways:
Gap in Information: Victims, driven by panic and altruism (the "Heroic Phase" described by Sanentz Kalayjian in the literature), relied heavily on social media and neighbor-to-neighbor communication, which was fast but often inaccurate (Goode et al., 2015). The official city emergency broadcasts, while accurate, were slow, generic, and often inaccessible due to power outages or simply being tuned out in favor of the immediate local network.
Gap in Resource Allocation: The immediate behavior of victims was to demand immediate, personalized rescue (e.g., "My car is floating! Get me out now!"). The public officials (police/fire/local management) were constrained by bureaucratic procedures that mandated centralized deployment, required signed authorization for specific equipment release, and prioritized the preservation of life in critical areas over the salvage of property in non-critical ones. This mismatch led to intense conflict and the perception that officials were "doing nothing."
2. What actions were undertaken to deal with the crisis?
The most effective actions involved informal steps taken to bridge the behavioral and procedural gaps:
Informal Information Hubs: Volunteers (and some junior police officers) disregarded formal communication policy and established a live, crowdsourced information dashboard using a dedicated Telegram/WhatsApp group. This provided granular, real-time needs (e.g., "Mrs. Smith on Elm Street needs dialysis medicine") that the formal 911/emergency system couldn't handle quickly.
Adaptive Resource Deployment: A senior fire department commander, leveraging personal trust (as noted in the Walden University Research, 2022, on navigating bureaucracy), unilaterally pre-authorized specific vehicles (e.g., high-water rescue trucks) for immediate deployment based on the crowdsourced data, bypassing the formal, time-consuming chain of command approval that would have been required for each call.