Abstract
This is a chapter about the meaning of things after disaster and specifically the meaning of things to the people recovering from disaster. In Chapter 3, I examined the way in which official narratives of what is important after one disaster influence the construction of technologies that will support those in future disasters. In this chapter, I explore a specific set of assumptions by official narratives, articulated through the National Recovery Guidance, differ from what is happening in the lived realities of residents in Toll Bar. This is not a benign difference; I will show that when a dominant official narrative and official understanding, in this case that the belongings of residents are now waste, is prioritised, then the consequences on the situated realities are far reaching and devastating.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
A 9/11 memorial museum at the Ground Zero site in New York has been established to commemorate the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Many stories have been captured and displayed and one is by a mother who talks about receiving from rescuers a till receipt which showed that her son had had breakfast before his death. She talked about the comfort this receipt had brought her. For further information visit http://www.national911memorial.org/site/PageServer?pagename=New_Home.
- 3.
Much progress has been made in this area but as I have written previously the return and protection of personal effects as ‘a right’ remain fragile and unprotected: “It would be wrong to imply that this is an organised, assumed process that automatically happens after every disaster in the United Kingdom….The return of personal property owes much to dedicated individuals, who educate themselves about the requirements after disaster, and ensure that the process happens. Sometimes they have to fight authority to get it going. In my work I occasionally encounter opposition to it although people are becoming much more aware now. There are numerous articles expounding the importance of a rights based approach for bereaved families, the protection of their right to choose. We have come a long way but I still see plans and planners that are imbued with an alarming amount of ‘paternalism’. It is not about what you and I want. It is an individual’s choice” (Easthope 2008: 182).
- 4.
The distress caused by the loss of personal effects was also highlighted in the research about the Hull floods in 2007. “Memories of seeing personal possessions destroyed seem to persist over the coming months, like a raw wound that must be re-opened every time the person returns to their house; it is very much a re-traumatisation process. Indeed, respondents have highlighted the stress involved in the process of replacing possessions. This stress includes not only whether or not insurance will cover the costs, but also the sense of being overwhelmed by the task ahead when everything needs replacing” (Sims et al. 2008: 2).
- 5.
In many of my earlier experiences, there had been an airline or other commercial partner with insurance policies that covered the cost of this work. An additional and crucial difference was that in Toll Bar there was nobody to resource this work. In a flooded community, there is often not the same availability of funding from either insurers or the local government. My personal conflict came about frequently when residents enquired about my own disaster experiences: Discussions of the personal effects work often led to questioning of me by them of whether they thought responders could and should have done more to save their damaged items. Residents blamed themselves for not saving precious items.
- 6.
Sims et al., researching in Hull after the floods there in 2007, highlighted similar examples of the way in which people critiqued their own decisions about what to bring with them: “They come and and they banged on the door did one of the workmen and he said, “You’ve ten minutes to get out and then we are turning your power off”. And I mean it [the water] was up to here and it just come through the floor and Chris grabbed a case, he said, “Quick put a few things in there”. Because we knew we had to go to the hotel…and I ran for my hairdryer (Laughs). When I look back you know, I laugh, but I thought what do I take? It isn’t until after you realise what you lost and you think, oh I should have took that, you didn’t have time” (Sims et al. 2008: 1).
- 7.
This quotation illustrates the ambivalence that surrounds the items affected by floodwater. The way in which they are contaminated may appear as a significant practical challenge and it is understandable that often the easiest course of action is to destroy them.
- 8.
‘Health and Safety requirements’ and ‘contamination’ have been a recurring stumbling block in my personal effects work as I have briefly discussed above. Much of my research work in this area has focussed on working with practitioners to overcome their fears (which they then conveyed to families) that items were ‘unsafe’ (e.g. see Payne and Eyre 2006). Once they had been rendered as ‘contaminated’, they became dangerous; families may assume that the authorities know best and were trying to protect them—unaware that is sometimes ease or assumption or a lack of guidance may be at the heart of the issue.
- 9.
Practitioners who ‘manage’ the risk of contamination from personal effects every day such as funeral directors, HM Coroners, police officers, anatomical pathology technologists (who work in mortuary environments) and other forensic scientists frequently collaborated with my earlier personal effects work to ensure that the latest measures for managing hazards were incorporated but often the solutions would be relatively simple (e.g. see Payne and Eyre 2006). They might include the use of a disinfectant, or in more severe situations, we would work with families to explain that the item was damaged and discuss the risks with them. There were occasions when items would be assessed as ‘unsafe’ such as in the case of batteries that had started to leak acid but in twelve incidents this was a rarity.
- 10.
Practically, there were a number of options for dealing with contamination such as E. coli on personal effects, and in my experience, I had been able to return items with much more serious contaminants so this did not seem to be as ‘perilous’ as had been conveyed to residents.
- 11.
When I have discussed this with responders and local environmental health specialists in Doncaster they have suggested that the local people read too much into the messages and overstated the dangers amongst themselves. However when they state this they are considering only the written messages and not the way in which actions or other visual clues may be perceived by a frightened, unsettled, exhausted community as described in Sims et al’s observations in Hull: And then Disaster Care arrived… A big white van came and we had six or seven guys… jumped out and donned these white suits, which had hoods on them and everything and masks on… And they are telling us that everything is contaminated and we shouldn’t really be in there. And then they start throwing all your worldly goods out on the drive… And then this huge wagon come and put everything in the back and crush all your possessions and everything. And I was trying to save stuff and take it back in and they kept saying, “No, no, contaminated, you can’t have that” (2008: 4).
- 12.
In my earlier work, some families would ask me to address the issue of strong smells on items and there were a number of commercial products available that would help with this (even something as easily available as “Febreze”).
- 13.
This was at odds with my work in this area. I had previously recommended that police forces or other organisations retained items for at least 18 months after disasters like bombings to allow families the time to decide whether they wanted the items back. It also meant that in those early, pressured, hectic days in the immediate aftermath of a disaster they were not bombarded with a need to make quick decisions that were later regretted.
- 14.
Skips and their contents have become my totemic image of my time in Toll Bar to the extent that after the exhibition in 2009 residents and responders signed the back of the large canvas skip photograph that we had displayed and gave it to me as gift. It now hangs proudly on my study wall.
- 15.
These took me back to my very first encounters with personal effects during my disaster response work. I wanted to take them out of the skip, care for them and dry them and return them to families but instead I walked on. In the earliest days of my personal effects research, I was privileged to be able to interview families in America who had been bereaved by air disaster. One story that has influenced me continuously since those interviews is the story of those bereaved by the loss of Flight 427, 1994, in Pennsylvania, USA, in which relatives had had a particularly horrific encounter with skips. They had lobbied for access to the warehouse where wreckage and personal effects had been held, and as they waited outside, they suddenly realised that placed into the skips outside the building was not only personal effects but also human remains (Payne and Eyre 2006). The families demanded a change in the law and with Bill Clinton’s personal support pushed through legislation that protects families’ rights to personal effects and other forms of assistance in transportation disasters in the USA.
- 16.
I gave all residents who took pictures on disposable cameras for me a set of their developed images. Some of these stated that these were the only photographs they had now after the floods have destroyed their previous photographs.
- 17.
As I was pregnant during some of this fieldwork, I noted the way that several of the maternity units that I visited advised the patients not to make copies of their original scan photographs. It was stated that photocopiers would destroy the original image. In some of the hospitals that I was treated in, it cost £5 to purchase a single image. These factors may have influenced why women only have one copy of their scan photograph.
- 18.
- 19.
Ed Miliband is the Member of Parliament for this part of Doncaster.
- 20.
The new edition of Emergency Response and Recovery produced by the Cabinet Office was also searched using the same methods, and no specific results were found. However at the time that this book manuscript was being prepared, the author was asked to co-author new site clearance guidance for the UK Government which does include her own writing on the importance of personal effects in emergency response.
- 21.
This ‘lesson’ is also a source of great personal frustration for me as in December 2004 I was asked to provide advice to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office via a private contractor on a number of issues. I asked them how they would approach the personal effects that would be piling up, affected by sea water which can act corrosively on many materials (personal correspondence, December 2004). I was dismissed on this issue and told that there were much more important issues as hundreds of thousands of people were dead. Six months later, the FCO were being heavily criticised by families for failing to preserve these items and sought to attempt to address this situation retrospectively which is always more difficult. The FCO were then heavily criticised on their emergency management of the Tsunami in several reports, e.g. see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4465044.stm.
- 22.
In 2008, I presented my research at a conference where British insurance firms were challenged by a number of researchers that the uninsured were a neglected aspect of ‘recovery planning’. The insurers stated that their figures showed that 85% of all homeowners were insured.
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Easthope, L. (2018). Value, Waste and the ‘Furniture of Self’. In: The Recovery Myth . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74555-8_4
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