STATES OF EMERGENCY - Patrick Lagadec

Organizations with their backs to the wall 25accident - nor had many seen a letter that plant spokesmen claimed was sent toresidents every year since 1975 outlining the plant's emergency programs." To topthings off, the magazine added, "If they had, they might still be confused. Accordingto the letter, two three-second blasts of the plant's whistle means a fire or medicalemergency; three three-second blasts means a gas release; two-second blasts everythree seconds for two minutes means a major disaster, with two-second blasts every 30seconds until the danger has passed... Instructions for what to do next are equallyconfusing: if the wind is blowing favorably, stay put. If the wind is blowing towardyou from the plant, evacuate 'by going crosswind'. 'In some cases, you can see thefumes as a white cloud', the letter added. 'However, this is not always the case sodon't depend on your eyes'." (1)The sudden event and the state of shockA major incident can veer sharply into unimaginable and supposedlyimpossible scenarios. Mexico City went into shock on November 19, 1984,because of an eery light over northern barrios, a tremor felt in a radius ofmore than 20 kilometers, a blaze so hot it rendered the area inaccessible,fears that all the gas storage tanks would blow, and an anguished vision of adomino effect rushing through all the installations in the area and wideningthe catastrophe. Meanwhile, terrible news spread of the cost in human livesand the chaos reigning in the area. Who wouldn't be thrown by the sheerscale of the disaster? Bhopal's 2000 dead also inevitably plunged UnionCarbide into a state of shock, especially in the light of the cascade ofproblems that rained down on the company: it was impossible to getinformation (Indian authorities blocked all contact between the company'sheadquarters and the Indian subsidiary); the company's president was arrestedupon arriving in India; there were fears of corporate collapse. In theChallenger accident, the shock took an even more destabilizing form in themedia world, where noise is the norm: suddenly, the loud-speakers went off.Silence was the response to incomprehension.This state of shock may even be felt during simulation drills (whichsuggests the force of the phenomenon when the disaster is real). This wasobserved in an exercise organized in Lyons, France on April 2, 1982, byhighly aware and responsible authorities. The theme of this drill for decisionmarkerswas a toxicological accident in an urban area. The danger level wasperceived to be too high, and the actors were "in consternation" over thegravity of the event.Lyons exercise, April 2, 1982: According to the scenario, the event was atransportation accident causing the release of 26 tons of a toxic substance within 30minutes. Half an hour after the accident, several zones could be observed: a mortalzone 3 kilometers long and 300 meters wide; a debilitating zone 5 kilometers long and500 meters wide; an irritation zone, more than 10 kilometers long and between 800meters and 2 kilometers wide. These respective areas contained 6200, 11,900, andmore than 30,000 persons. The central lesson of the drill was, "Faced with a situationof this amplitude, seeing the disaster spreading rapidly, the actors were disconcerted.