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Community Disasters

Disasters are destructive events affecting communities and can be considered collective traumatic events. A pattern of community response was observed in early studies and has been frequently described since. It includes shock and disorientation at impact, high energy “recoil” directed toward immediate needs, leading to cohesion and a “honeymoon” of altruistic cooperation, followed by conflict, discord, and “disillusionment,” and eventually reestablishment of stable community life.

Community disasters traumatically injure the fabric of normal life, initiating a social process with characteristic features, regardless of the precipitating event. To understand it, a convergence of systems theory, social psychology, attachment theory, and neuropsychology of trauma is required. This entry reviews the nature of communities, the stages of community response to and recovery from disasters, and strategies for effective professional intervention to promote recovery and healing.

The Nature of Communities

There is a traditional distinction between society, defining people united by common language, culture, and organization, and community, comprising people in communication who interact and share a locality. Communities are complex social systems whose members share a common life, depending on each other to meet shared goals. A balance of relationships allows members to relate in varied patterns, forming complex personal identities reflecting various dimensions of community. They form attachments in multiple networks of support (family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, associates). The complexity of the system of relations permits differences in views, priorities, and attachments to coexist; intimacy is balanced with detachment; and a pattern of personal and social boundaries provides a viable “life world.” Differentiated attachments bind people in complex relations based on some but not all social dimensions; they balance similarities with differences and reconcile competing demands of individuality and multiple group membership. Individuals bond to community through attachments to others organized within social structure and culture. The bonds are organized by social roles, designed to meet daily life goals.

The community system is maintained through communicational relationships. Communication is the totality of ways people relate to each other. Complex, multidimensional forms of communication constitute the social fabric as the medium for providing support and resources, sustaining personal identity, and enabling normal interpersonal functioning. The communication process sustains social life, whereas information transmitted shapes it. Since communication is a material process, it is observable; hence, social fabric is observable, and interventions can be made in it provided they are observations and interventions in the social communication process.

Disaster Impact: Social Consequences of Threat, or “Debonding”

When self, loved ones, or property are threatened, a state of heightened arousal is induced. The release of the hormone adrenalin, also called epinephrine, from the adrenal glands on the kidneys activates a survival state modifying all aspects of the person's functioning. Heightened arousal stimulates activity, diverts attention toward the environment, reduces awareness of pain, bodily needs, and emotion, and is adaptive to crisis. It is often incorrectly called panic, but extensive research shows irrational, purely self-preservative behavior is rare. Instead, cognitive function is specialized to process threat information, sharpen senses, shorten reaction time, and focus on the present with egocentric bias. Unless well trained, people disorganize from social roles not designed for threatening situations. They focus on the threat, and communication is abbreviated, disrupted, or bypassed as they attempt to survive. As the situation unfolds, the social system loses relevance; only the most intense attachments remain active, though most people maintain communal norms, cooperating and helping each other as circumstances permit, regardless of prior relationships. They attempt to locate and help loved ones if possible, but during the event itself often enter a state of silent self-absorption as they face uncertainty and the reality of death, mentally farewelling absent others.

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