STATES OF EMERGENCY - Patrick Lagadec

The weapons of crisis 13- critical communications problems emerge:• within organizations• among different organizations• between organizations and the public, via the media.- providing compensation threatens to be difficult,- harsh conflicts develop among groups within a given society, amongcountries, or between influence zones (e.g. East-West or North-Southdivisions),- economic, technological, and cultural stakes are extremely high.Whether all these difficulties are present or only some of them, whetherthey strike immediately or remain threateningly dormant, they are terriblydisruptive. Shaken by the event, the very foundations of social and economicorganizations begin to tremble. To understand why, we need only list themain characteristics of major-accident situations (whether they are trulyserious or simply perceived as such).The scale of the accidentContemporary hazards are now capable of producing catastrophes of ascale previously unimagined. It took just two events - San Juanico, Mexicoand Bhopal - to pulverize earlier records for the number of victims causedby chemical accidents since World War IL A massive and explosive releaseof energy, a cloud of toxic gas, the pollution of a river (or any otherdistribution network) can strike out over great distances and with awesomeforce. Neither factory walls nor national borders preserve any significance.As we attempt to put such distances into perspective, Chernobyl has shownhow large the scale can be.Duration of the phenomenonIn this respect, two factors further sway our conventional frame ofreference. On the one hand, the accident process - and it is no longer a simpleequipment failure, but indeed a process - can last a long time (nine and a halfmonths for the rupture of the Ixtoc 1 drilling rig that spilled 500,000 tons ofcrude oil into the Gulf of Mexico between June 3, 1979 and March 22, 1980).On the other hand, the effects of the breakdown may be felt over a periodthat can even surpass a generation. The first factor wears down availableforces. The second introduces chronic difficulties such as long-termsurveillance and gives rise to discussions about carcinogenic, mutagenic andteratogenic dangers. This was the cause of the most heated debates around theSeveso crisis. It also left its mark on Bhopal, and of course on Chernobyl.Consider, in the last case, the extreme disproportion between the number ofimmediate casualties (2 deaths) and short-term ones (less than 30) and thelong-term potential (cancers in the region and all across Europe).