Crisis and Disaster Management in the United States: Research, Methods, Analysis, and Findings

CRISIS AND DISASTER MANAGEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES: Research, Methods, Analysis, and Findings Bruce W. Dayton Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs Maxwell School of Syracuse University Xuefeng Li National Institute of Emergency Management Chinese Academy of Governance Wendy Leasure Wicker Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs Maxwell School of Syracuse University Crisis and Disaster Management in the United States: Research, Methods, Analysis, and Findings Bruce W. Dayton Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs Maxwell School of Syracuse University Xuefeng Li National Institute of Emergency Management Chinese Academy of Governance Wendy Leasure Wicker Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs Maxwell School of Syracuse University April, 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This volume is a result of a two year project between the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the National Institute of Emergency Management at the Chinese Academy of Governance. We wish to express our appreciation to the Asia Foundation for their organization and support of the project and the United States Agency for International Development for its funding. We are also grateful for our collaboration over the years with Arjen Boin, Eric Stern, and Bengt Sundelius, whose development and use of case studies for crisis management research have greatly benefited our own efforts. Finally, original source materials and portions of each case were collected and produced by eight graduate students as part of the transboundary crisis management research project at the Moynihan Institute of Syracuse University. They include: Kathy Allison, Cecile Batchelor, Chiara Cruciano, Chris DeMure, Ruthanna Hawkins, Michelle Hill, Steve March, and Jessica Tevebaugh. We thank these individuals for their hard work and insights. Table of Contents An Introduction to Crisis Management and the Case Study Methodology ............................................ 1 1993 Cryptosporidiosis Outbreak in Milwaukee, Wisconsin ................................................................. 6 1988 Yellowstone Forest Fires .......................................................................................................... 27 The 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill ........................................................................................................ 48 1989 San Francisco Loma Prieta Earthquake ..................................................................................... 71 2005 New York City Transit Strike ..................................................................................................... 90 Accident at Three Mile Island, 1979 ................................................................................................ 109 200-2001 California Electricity Crisis ............................................................................................... 130 1982 Tylenol Product Tampering Crisis ........................................................................................... 152 Appendix 1: A Guide to Doing Comparative Case Studies Maxwell Style .......................................... 172 An Introduction to Crisis Management and the Case Study Methodology Bruce W. Dayton Moynihan Institute, Maxwell School of Syracuse University This book introduces the reader to a new kind of case study methodology currently being used to investigate crisis and disaster management in the United States. We have found that this methodology can help academics and public officials to better understand: 1) the dynamics and processes (individual, group, institutional / bureaucratic / psychological) that impact decision making in times of crisis; 2) the patterns of organizational management that appear to be particularly effective or ineffective in forecasting, preparing for, managing, communicating about, and learning from crises; 3) the difficulties that all decision makers must confront as they navigate crisis situations. The book contains eight cases of crisis management in the United States: an accident at a nuclear facility; a forest fire at a national park; an earthquake; a strike by transportation workers in New York city; the failure of an electricity grid in California; the outbreak of an infectious disease through the contamination of a municipal water system; an investigation of mysterious deaths caused by the purposeful contamination of a consumer product; and a major oil spill. Taken together, these cases illustrate how crises can come in many forms and force people and organizations that have never worked together before to jointly address an issue of critical importance. We also included in this book an appendix which contains the case writing manual used by authors to research and write their cases. This manual was developed at the Moynihan Institute at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School by Margaret Hermann, Bruce W. Dayton and Lina Svedin. It has been used to generate well over three-hundred case studies to date and follows a structured, focused comparison methodology. Readers will note, therefore, that each case study is structured in the exact same way and contains information on a common set of core themes in crisis management. In this introductory chapter, I briefly discuss what crisis management is and review the impacts that crises have on public leaders and public institutions. I then provide an overview of our case study methodology and offer a preliminary set of lessons learned that are drawn from our cases. This introductory chapter is followed by individual chapters on eight cases of crises in the United States. These cases were originally written by graduate student at the Maxwell School but have been updated with additional research and re-written by the editors of this book. The names of each of the original case authors appear as a footnote at the start of each case. Finally, as noted above, the manual used to write each case is included at the end of the book. What is Crisis Management? Crisis management refers to the set of decisions made and actions taken by decision makers to assess, mitigate, prepare for, respond to, recover from, and learn from crisis situations. 1 Such situations challenge public officials at all levels of government (from local to international), can emerge across any issue area (e.g., health, environment, natural disaster, civil unrest), and are triggered by both natural and human-caused events. Accordingly, crisis situations vary in a number of important ways. Some crises last only a short period of time, such as a transportation accident. Other crises can last weeks, such as an industrial accident and its aftermath. Still other crises, often called ‘creeping crises’, can for last years, such as the global climate crisis. All crises have three elements in common. First, each threatens core societal values. These might include, for example, human life, organizational survival, environmental security, or political reputation. Second, crisis situations are urgent; when confronting them, decision makers usually have a short period of time in which to make critical decisions. Third, crises are surprises and, therefore, contain a high degree of uncertainty about ‘what’s going on’. A combination of high threat, urgency, and surprise makes crises one of the most challenging situations that government officials and political leaders will ever face. Managing problems that present a threat to core values increases the complexity of the decision-making process and can create a decision-making vacuum as different stakeholders argue over the importance of one critical value verses another. High threat also creates conflict between crisis managers as different organizations or institutions with different interests try to achieve their goals simultaneously. Finally, because the threat is so high, the public will pay close attention to everything that public officials are doing throughout the crisis. Urgency increases the likelihood that public officials will make fast and ill-informed decisions. Often urgent situations result in officials overlooking critical aspects of the situation as they struggle to make sense of what is going on and manage stress. Urgency also can cause a ‘contraction of authority’ whereby mid or low-level managers are pushed aside as more senior officials step in. Often these senior officials have less knowledge about the realities of the situation or the barriers to effective response at the local level. Finally, surprise means that officials are faced with great uncertainty about what is going on and often lack a response blueprint. As a result, different officials will often ‘frame’ and define ‘what is going on’ in vastly different ways. Impacts Crises have the potential to transform politics, economics, and social relations. The successful management of crisis situations helps to build public trust in government institutions. Failures in crisis management can result in organizational decline, political instability, and even leadership change. Such dramatic impacts are of particular concern to public officials because many researchers now argue that crises are likely to increase in intensity in the years to come. This is because societies are increasingly inter-dependent and rely on a complex and highly technical infrastructure. Interdependency and complexity can cause dramatic ‘ripple effects’ when crises do occur. Specifically, when one part of the system fails, others follow, much like the outward rippling of water when a

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