A Brief Summary of Search and Rescue Literature: A Report to COT Netherlands
Date
2008
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Disaster Research Center
Abstract
The accumulated of research on search and rescue (SAR) allows us to identify repeating patterns that should be considered in the development of an effective plan for national emergency response: (1) SAR is not simply an organizational activity, it necessarily includes the social and collective behavior of volunteers; (2) Preexisting and emergent organizations, social statuses and social identities, such as neighborhood and work place relationships and family and neighborhood social identities, serve as a basis for the emergence of new SAR groups and constitute the fundamental concepts and categories that are needed to understand and improve SAR activities; (3) SAR activities do not emerge from a vacuum; as an example of the principle of continuity advocated by Quarantelli and Dynes (1977), there are always elements of the traditional social structure embedded within collective behavior entities, and their emergent division of labor, role structure, and activities are also dependent on prior social relationships and forms of social organization in the community or region; (4) Breakdown models of social organizational patterns in disaster are not useful to understand SAR. Television reports and misinformed reporters often misinterpret throngs of people moving seemingly at random at the sites destroyed by various hazards, and assume that the people were disoriented immediately after impact and had lost their ability to enact social roles. Despite these reports, scientific research shows the absence of widespread confusion, lack of coordination, and panic (Aguirre, 2005). The seeming disorganization and aimless movement of people is the result of their individual and collective acts as they try to accomplish multiple individual and collective goals under severe time constraints (c.f. Fritz & Mathewson, 1957). Creative problem-solving and rationality is a more accurate way of understanding their actions (Aroni & Durkin, n.d., p. 30). In short search and rescue (SAR) activities are part of the complex emergency response system that emerges in response to disasters.
Description
Keywords
Search/Rescue, Disaster Research