I examine how failures surrounding a quarantine detention program for returned travellers from overseas brought a deadly second wave of the Covid-19 virus into existence in Victoria, Australia. In ...addition to providing insights into the ways in which public administration organizations (PAO) can plan for and respond to wicked problems, I propose that they can learn to manage latent failures and equivocal circumstances before, during, and after such crisis events. This is important as locally and globally PAO face emergencies, crises, and disasters triggered by natural and non-natural hazards which remind us thatwe need to find new ways of learning while living in challenging times.
The Black Summer Fires of 2019-2020 remind us not only that Australia is arguably the most bushfire prone area in the world but also that we have much to learn in terms of how we learn from such ...events. Bushfires interact with emergency management systems in a manner that is complex and unpredictable which all too often results in damages and losses, so significant that governments establish public inquiries to forensically examine what happened and why afterwards. Too often, such processes have resulted in emergency management practitioners (EMP) being blamed, not to mention scapegoated and even vilified for damages and losses from major bushfire events. With recent bushfire events (as well as other crises surrounding Covid-19) highlighting the excruciating demands placed on EMP and an escalating scepticism about whether public inquiries improve preparation for future bushfires, this paper explores the question:what can we learn about public inquiries based on the experiences of EMP?
We examine post-inquiry sensemaking by emergency management practitioners following an inquiry into the most damaging bushfire disaster in Australia’s history. We theorize a model of post-inquiry ...sensemaking with four distinct but overlapping phases during which sensemaking becomes more prospective over time. In addition to providing important insights into what has, hitherto, been a neglected arena for sensemaking studies, i.e. post-inquiry sensemaking, we contribute to the understanding of sensemaking more generally. Specifically, we show the complex nature of the relationship between sensemaking and equivocality, explain how multiple frames enhance sensemaking, and explore temporality in sensemaking over time.
Climate change means that planning for and responding to future bushfire events is increasingly challenging for emergency management organisations. Arguably, meeting the challenges caused by climate ...requires more than an improvement in our knowledge about climate change and its likely effects. Instead, the current challenge lies in the translation of this knowledge into emergency management policy practice.
The global phenomena of floods, fires, heatwaves and droughts (to name a few natural hazards) have given rise to capacity and capability challenges for emergency services organisations as well as ...communities. In recent times, natural hazards, as noted by the AIDR Major Incidents Report, have been 'concurrent, consecutive and compounding'. This creates complex challenges for preparing for, responding to and recovering from the losses and damages that inevitably arise from such phenomena.
The global phenomena of floods, fires, heatwaves and droughts (to name a few natural hazards) have given rise to capacity and capability challenges for emergency services organisations as well as ...communities. In recent times, natural hazards, as noted by the AIDR Major Incidents Report, have been 'concurrent, consecutive and compounding'. This creates complex challenges for preparing for, responding to and recovering from the losses and damages that inevitably arise from such phenomena.
Abstract
In the context of bushfires (and other emergencies), state agencies should avoid developing policy and/or advice that locks people into rigid binary choices. In Victoria, Australia post‐fire ...inquiries have found the bushfire safety advice often referred to as ‘Stay (
and defend your property
) or Go (
early before the fire arrives
)’ to be contradictory and competing in its logic. However, this advice continues to provide a basis for positive community safety outcomes. It can still be used effectively by policy makers and practitioners within emergency management agencies to inform and educate a highly urbanised society that has become experientially detached from bushfire. With the introduction of the Australian Fire Danger Ratings System and climate challenges ahead, it appears that logics at the core of ‘Stay or Go’ will continue to offer communities located alongside complex bushfire risk in urban, regional, and rural areas a basis for appropriate safety decisions using the best available information.
Points for practitioners
Provides guidelines for ways in which ‘Stay or Go’ advice can continue to be used by emergency management policy makers and practitioners as a basis for positive community safety outcomes from bushfire risk.
Challenges suggestions from significant bushfire inquiries that the logics at the core of ‘Stay or Go’ contradict each other. Staying and defending a home or leaving early offer a basis for surviving bushfire depending on individual circumstances—practitioners should ensure that this is a key message of bushfire education campaigns.
Provides pathways for practitioners and the community to work together and co‐create collaborative bushfire plans whereby preparing for bushfire risk is a shared responsibility.
Organizations increasingly find themselves responding to unprecedented natural disasters that are experienced as complex, unpredictable, and harmful. We examine how organizations make sense and learn ...from these novel experiences by examining three Australian bushfires. We show how sensemaking and learning occurred during the public inquiries that followed these events, as well as how learning continued afterward with the help of “learning cues.” We propose a model that links public inquiry activities to changes in organizational practices. Given the interesting times in which we live, this model has important implications for future research on how new organizational practices can be enacted after public inquiries have concluded their work.
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