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Working Paper: Understanding the Multiple Roles of the Emergency Manager through Pomerance’s The Elephant Man

Cindy L Pressley ([email protected]) and Michael Noel ([email protected]) Stephen F Austin State University

*Cindy L Pressley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Stephen F Austin State University. Michael Noel is a graduate student in the Master’s of Public Administration Program at Stephen F Austin State University.

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Working Paper: Understanding the Multiple Roles of the Emergency Manager through Pomerance’s The Elephant Man

BISHOP: I find my sessions with him utterly moving, Mr. Treves. He struggles so. I suggested he might like to be confirmed; he leaped at it like a man lost in a desert to an oasis. TREVES: He is very excited to do what others do if he thinks it is what others do. BISHOP: Do you cast doubt, sir, on his faith? TREVES: No, sir, I do not. Yet he makes all of us think he is deeply like ourselves. And yet we’re not like each other. I conclude that we have polished him like a mirror, and shout hallelujah when he reflects us to the inch. I have grown sorry for it. -p. 64, The Elephant Man

This paper first began to develop out of a story told by William Alexander Percy in his autobiography Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter’s Son originally published in

1941. One story he relates is that of the deadly 1927 Mississippi flood that killed close to 1,000 people. During the flood Percy was placed in the position of Flood Relief Committee and Red

Cross chairman. “I found myself charged with the rescuing, housing, and feeding of sixty thousand human beings and thirty thousand head of stock. To assist me in the task I had a fine committee and Father’s blessing, but no money, no boats, no tents, no food” (Percy, 1941, p.

251). Unlike today there was no FEMA. Percy was aided by various locals, such as bootleggers, and received some help from the National Guard and the Red Cross. Percy explains how he acted to confiscate necessary items such as boats and food. “We sent out a nation-wide appeal. The response was immediate and on a grand scale. . . Whenever you are just about to decide that

Americans are selfish, unpatriotic, and unintelligent, they always prove themselves the most liberal and lovable people in the world” (Percy, 1941, pp. 252-253). Percy discusses the 3

difficulties he faced in managing the needs of the population in such a chaotic situation.

Eventually the situation deteriorated as the flood waters did not dissipate. “Undoubtedly the flood should have ended in June. If it had, we could have remembered ourselves as paragons of unselfishness and devotion. But it didn’t and, descending precipitously from our heights, we lapsed into true, everyday sons of Adam” (Percy, 1941, p. 259). Racial tensions later emerged after a popular black man was killed by a white police officer. While Percy was able to avoid a full blown race riot from emerging, the entire situation left him

Exhausted and I [Percy] felt I had the right to resign as chairman. Having persuaded my friend Hazlewood Farish-later my law partner and the grandfather of my namesake-to take my place, I sailed for Japan. I had never imagined I was naturally given to attacks of hubris, but the painful truth is that when I left the work to which I had devoted myself exclusively for four months, I was convinced it would suffer because of my absence. I suspect I even hoped it would. Human beings are engagingly absurd, we oscillate between being insignificant and imagining ourselves God. It is a small man indeed who is not made big by a big job, but never as big as he imagines. I returned from Japan to find that the relief work had proceeded distressingly well without me. (Percy, 1941, pp. 268- 269) As Percy tells the story we see the different ways he behaves as emergency manager, a role he was appointed to, and the way he is perceived by others as emergency manager. Percy’s story is particularly interesting in that it reflects the frustration that emergency managers may feel in doing their jobs. Percy’s opinion toward his responsibilities as an emergency manager seemed to change based on how others perceived his actions, seemingly leading to feelings of disappointment and burn out.

The question this paper began to address was how the perspectives of emergency managers held by those the emergency managers interact with have evolved over time and the impact these perspectives have on the emergency manager. Examination in pursuit of this question seems to reveal however that the perspectives others hold of emergency managers 4

fluctuate depending on the time and situation. The perspective is not a static one. Rather, the perspective vacillates as though the emergency manager were standing in front of a funhouse mirror where the image ebbs and flows depending on what part of the mirror the emergency manager is looking into. It is multiple but yet always distorted, at least from the perspective of the emergency manager. There is no one clear image but rather simultaneous distortions in the same mirror. An image is always a distortion of reality so no one image is truly valid.

Acceptance of one image is futile because of the nature of the work of the scenario where it is an emergency/disaster. The scenario, the emergency/disaster, is a sideshow and the emergency manager is one attraction within the sideshow.

This paper seeks to address the changing distorted perspectives held of the emergency manager and how these perspectives impact the emergency manager and their ability to function as an effective professional. The paper begins by first examining the history and development of emergency management and the role of emergency managers. This is followed by a theoretical discussion of emergency management connected with a classic tale of an individual considered to be a ‘sideshow’, , also known as the elephant man. Merrick was not a fictional person. His story was real. Part of his story was fictionalized as a play by Bernard Pomerance.

The play continues to be staged today. It tells the story of Merrick and the way that others viewed him and the impact this had on Merrick. This story can be applied to the story of the emergency manager. By taking heed of the tales of the story, it may be possible to determine ways to minimize potential negative repercussions placed on the emergency manager due to the perspectives of others, most notably repercussions such as disappointment and burnout. This paper concludes by suggesting ways to address these repercussions. 5

Development of Emergency Management

In society today, government help and assistance is a reality that is hard to escape.

Programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and federal unemployment benefits are used extensively by the people of the . They are well known programs that are heavily depended upon. Emergency management and assistance from the government is not much different in the way it is used and understood. “As is typical in many countries, the US government often provides grants or low interest loans to citizens who are victimized by natural disasters” (Barnett, 1999, p. 139). However this has not always been the case.

The government’s role, as well as the public administrator’s role in professional emergency management in regards to natural disasters has changed drastically over time.

Handling and recovering from natural disasters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was to be left largely up to the citizens who were living in the particular area where the disaster struck and “with the exception of disaster responses such as firefighting in urban areas and forests, programs to address hazards and responses to disasters were almost unknown in the

United States prior to World War I. Disaster relief or recovery was largely the province of charitable and religious institutions” (Waugh, 2000, p.11). Government officials and public administrators did not feel that giving aid during times of natural disasters was a primary duty of the public sector.

It was the citizens’ responsibility to address their particular situations when disaster struck. This is evidenced by the actions of numerous administrators during the late 18th and early

19th century. In 1887, President Grover Cleveland vetoed an emergency appropriation of 6

$10,000 for drought victims in Texas. “He stated that the federal government had no ‘warrant in the Constitution . . . to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds . . . [for] relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service’” (Barnett, 2000, p.140). During the Yellow fever outbreak in New Orleans that ended in 1905, President Roosevelt, and the federal government “required New Orleans banks to give a $250,000 dollar guarantee before the surgeon general would help fight the epidemic” (Barry, 1997, p. 369). During the Mississippi flood of 1927, there was no aid given by the federal government because there was no federal response agency for disasters such as this (Kosar, 2005). In 1927, many people still believed that the federal government did not need to be involved in disaster relief. Individual relief was seen as a handout. The Treasury shared this belief because even though they collected “a record surplus of $635 million, in a disaster that affected almost 1 percent of the nation’s population, the government would not even create a loan-guarantee program” (Barry, 1997, p.371).

As time passed, the government’s role, and therefore, the administrator’s role in emergency management as disaster relief changed to enforcing ad hoc legislation. These “one time only” acts usually pertained to a specific disaster. Examples include The Joint Resolution of December 21, 1928 which authorized $6,000,000 for rehabilitation of agriculture, $2,000,000 for school houses, and $100,000 for purchase of seeds in Puerto Rico following a hurricane of

September 1928, or the Act of December 20, 1930, which provided loans amounting to

$45,000,000 and later increased by an additional $20,000,000 for purchase of seed, fertilizer, etc. in drought and storm stricken areas of the United States (Library of Congress, 1950). Shortly after the trend of ad hoc legislation began, it gave way to further change in emergency management involving the establishment of more permanent relief programs. 7

The National Emergency Council was created in 1933 and operated within the White

House until 1939. The main purpose of this council was to cope with the Great Depression, but it also took on the role of overseeing natural disaster relief. In 1939, the National Emergency

Council was moved to the Executive Office of the President and renamed the Office of

Emergency Management (OEM) (Wilson, 2001). “In 1949, the US Congress established the US

Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA), which provided low interest loans and other financial aid to farmers and ranchers who were hit hard by natural disasters”

(Wilson et al, 2008).

The development of programs such as the OEM and the FSA started the change that would eventually lead to permanent, stand alone programs designed specifically for disaster relief. These programs created new roles and new concerns for public administrators when it came to natural disaster relief. Administrators began to change from passive observers to front line players in the field of emergency management. The culmination of the government’s role in emergency management and natural disaster relief however, can be seen with the creation of the

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Created in 1978 by President Carter’s

Reorganization Plan No. 3; FEMA was charged with coordinating federal efforts with state and local efforts and designated the lead agency for the national emergency management system.

The creation of FEMA brought four general functions into the field of emergency management that are well recognized today: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery (Waugh, 2000).

It is clear that the field of emergency management has gone through dramatic changes over the past few decades. The field has developed from an almost non-existent idea that was left largely to the local citizens to handle, to a professionalized, centralized, and formal field that 8

is becoming increasingly technical and has risen far beyond the scope of what normal citizens are capable of handling, and therefore out of necessity, it has fallen into the hands of professional public administrators.

As the field of emergency management became more professionalized and became a more prominent part of public administration, scholarly research surrounding the issue of emergency management also began to evolve. Petak (1985) notes that, emergency management had been considered a part of law enforcement, fire departments and other types of public health and defense organizations. As such, it was sidelined for some time. However it is important that public administrators should become more proactive and less reactive in the area of emergency management. Petak notes the complex issues that emergency managers must address including social, political and economic. Emergency managers must be able to understand and put into place comprehensive programs.

The emergency manager must be the organizational leader who manages the conflicts that inevitably arise from differing philosophies and territorial imperatives, and facilitates the integration and implementation of emergency management policies, plans, and programs. Furthermore, traditional managers must engage in serious personal developmental activities and support organization development programs if the challenges of comprehensive emergency management are to be met. This will be necessary to overcome the problems created by the traditional functionally oriented organizations which tend to impose significant limits on meeting complex system demands. (Petak, 1985, p. 5) Scholars have continued to note the complexity and conflicts that arise in emergency situations that emergency managers must address. These situations are not simply managerial in nature but also have cultural and political implications. For example, Gould (2007) examined the after affects of Hurricane Katrina in regard to public administrators and emergency management where public administrators must rebuild the cultural, not just physical, environment of New 9

Orleans in the aftermath of the hurricane. The article shows how public administrators serve multiple roles during emergencies as builders, destroyers and rebuilders of culture. Wyatt-Nichol and Abel (2007) discuss how media and political discourse impacts the emergency managers’ ability to do their jobs. Multiple, competing discourses which were often flawed led to problems in responding to the disaster. This increases the difficulty for emergency managers. One way to address these difficulties would be as Sobel and Lesson (2006) argued, which is to limit the role that the federal government plays in disaster management and to increase the role played by private actors. This is partly because those who make political decisions may find that they have incentives to go against what is in the interest of the public. While this is a possible solution, this does not seem to coincide with the manner in which emergency management has developed which was to increase government involvement based on the needs of the citizens at large.

How then is the individual emergency manager as a public administrator supposed to continue to function effectively during emergency/disaster situations when those situations are complex and involve a range of issues that must be addressed? A problem that arises for the emergency manager in functioning effectively is to avoid disappointment and burnout. In order to do these things it is necessary to examine what is influencing burnout and disappointment.

One potential influence could be the way in which those the emergency manager interacts with perceive the emergency manager. A way to understand this influence is by trying to understand how different perceptions could impact an individual and to then develop a way to deepen this study. The next part of this paper lays out Pomerance’s The Elephant Man, explains how this relates to emergency managers and the paper then concludes by showing how this information can be used to develop a way to study the impact that the perceptions of others have on the emergency manager specifically in regard to burnout disappointment. 10

The Elephant Man

Bernard Pomerance’s 1979 play The Elephant Man recounts a fictionalized version of the life of Joseph Merrick, a man afflicted with a disease causing severe physical abnormalities. The play begins with an introduction to Merrick on display at a sideshow. Frederick Treves, a doctor, sees Merrick and decides he needs to examine him further. Merrick then returns to the sideshow but is soon sent away by his manager who has an argument with police over permits and the decency of the show. Merrick is attacked at the train station and is then helped by police who find Treves’ card and contact him. Treves takes Merrick to the hospital which is the main location for the remainder of both the play and of Merrick’s life. In the next scene Treves attempts to find a nurse for Merrick who may be useful as she had cared for others with serious illnesses such as lepers, however she runs screaming from the room. In the next scene we see the

Bishop’s reaction to Merrick and the Bishop talks of how he hopes to continue to provide religious instruction to Merrick. We also find in this scene that Carr Gomm, the hospital administrator, has written a letter to the newspaper and has begun to receive charitable donations from the public to provide support for Merrick in the hospital (Merrick is indigent).

Gomm asks Treves: “Well, Jesus my boy, now we have the money, what do you plan for Merrick?” Treves responds: “Normality as far as is possible” Gomm: “So he will be like us? Ah. (Smiles)” Treves: “Is something wrong, Mr. Gomm? With us?” Fadeout. [p. 21]

The scene ends and the next several scenes we see interactions between Merrick, Treves, Gomm, a porter and an actress. The actress is the main woman in the play and brings in other characters for Merrick to meet. It is in the interactions with the actress that Merrick shows a great deal of emotion. Throughout the hospital scenes, Merrick is often seen putting pieces on to a replica of 11

the cathedral in the vicinity of the hospital. The various visitors that come to see Merrick bring him different objects as gifts such as silver-backed brushes, ivory-handled razors and a cigarette case. By the time we arrive at scene twelve, titled ‘Who Does He Remind You Of?’ Treves decides to question the actress about the various gifts. This is the scene where we see Merrick through the eyes of the visitors. Each visitor seems to have more than one perspective.

The actress, in response to Treves, says “Well. He is gentle, almost feminine. Cheerful, honest within limits, a serious artist in his way. He is almost like me.” (p. 39). Later she says “Of course he is rather odd. And hurt. And helpless not to show the struggling. And so am I.” (p. 40). Treves says, “How odd. I think him curious, compassionate, concerned about the world, well, rather like myself, Freddie Treves, 1889 AD.” (p. 40). He later says and ends the scene by saying, “Merrick visibly worse than 86-87.That, as he rises higher in the consolations of society, he gets visibly more grotesque is proof definitive he is like me. Like his condition, which I make no sense of, I make no sense of mine.” (p. 41). The play continues with various interactions between characters. We eventually see

Merrick become more ill and he begins to have revelations about his role in the story. Merrick dies when the ‘pinheads’, a group of three women with physical and mental disabilities, come to his room and eventually move his head into a normal sleeping position. The weight of his head suffocates him. The final scene of the play is a discussion between Gomm and Treves regarding the final report they will give to the Times on Merrick.

The story of Joseph Merrick, like the story of other individuals with malformations who were part of sideshows, provides a theme to understand views of others and selves. Hunter

(2005) discusses the history of the study of human malformations, known as teratology and how it relates to the sideshow. In discussing the rise of the PT Barnum sideshow circus and explaining how children who suffered from malformations were sold to these sideshows, Hunter says, “in the sideshows they found a true home, living and working with their own kind, creating 12

a dark parallel society whose attraction never failed to pull in the leering crowds, ‘normal’ folk unwittingly gazing into the mirror of their hidden selves” (p. 22). Stephens (2006) discusses the changing nature of the sideshow and the performers in the sideshow such as the change in the types of performers from those born with physical deformities to the now more common performer who purposefully creates an act for the purpose of the show. Essentially what is termed a ‘self-made freak’. Stephens argues that the sideshow is once again becoming popular

“neither because it definitively reinforces cultural norms nor subverts them, but rather because it provides a site at which these possibilities, and the concepts of the body they encode, are continually un/fixed” (Stephens, 2006, p. 495).

Adams (2001) addresses the cultural significance of the freak show and points out how the freak show represents otherness. Various forms of art, literature and politics have used the concept of the freak and the sideshow as a representation of the conflicts in dealing with identification. This identification varies with the cultural and historical paradigm and represents a shift between normality and deviance. “Indeed, it is the confrontation with the human form mirrored back in distorted embodiments of excess of lack that makes the freak show a profoundly visceral experience, a flirtation with the abject realm where the human and the nonhuman collide” (Adams, 2001, p. 6).

Siegel (1991) explains the aesthetic of the sideshow.

The sideshow aesthetic is different from most other performance genres. Most importantly, the sideshow is a theater of guts; a viscerally titillating place where performers violate their bodies with spikes, swords, and fire and walk off the platform unharmed. Spectators, however intent they are upon remaining detached and scientific about what they see, cannot help but gasp, or at the very least, drop their jaws. Their guts respond first; afterwards their mind can reflect on what their eyes have seen. (Siegel, 1991, p. 108) 13

Siegel goes on to explain how part of the aesthetic of the show is that the public is part of the show in that they must pay to partake in what they see. In order to get the full impact, the public is enticed to pay more for special performances. The other main component of the sideshow aesthetic discussed by Siegel, a part he says has diminished over time but still exists, “however politically correct or incorrect, and for whatever reasons, people are fascinated by human oddities or freaks” (Siegel, 1991, p. 109).

The question now is how does this apply to the understanding of emergency managers?

Returning to Siegel’s (1991) interpretation of the sideshow as a theater of guts, is this not what an emergency situation is? An instinctive, emotionally driven place with non-stop excitement where the ‘performers’ i.e., emergency managers, use their bodies and minds to act within the place. The ‘spectators’ i.e., the public who interact with these emergency managers, attempt to see the reality of the situation but their emotions, their ‘guts’ as Siegel puts in, are the first to respond. Only after the fact can the spectators attempt to use their minds to understand the scene.

The second element of Siegel’s aesthetic, an issue that is addressed in multiple works on the nature of the sideshow has to do with the interactions and perceptions of the performers and spectators. Are the perceptions of the spectators of the emergency as essential to the understanding of the emergency manager’s self as the perceptions of the spectators of the sideshow are to those performing in the sideshow? Verbeek conducted a study that examined the changing roles of emergency managers and how those roles are viewed by emergency managers and those they interact with. The study focused on the official roles and tasks undertaken by emergency managers. Part of the purpose of the study was to expose the actual and perceived roles of emergency managers because the roles were “often invisible and poorly understood 14

within a community until a disaster strikes” (Verbeek, p. 5). The practical applications of this paper attempt to further delve into this issue of perceptions and impacts of perceptions on the emergency manager.

The final component of Siegel’s sideshow aesthetic that should be briefly referred back to is that of the spectators’ voyeuristic need to see the spectacle, the performer, the oddity, the freak. While this paper contains no evidence to support the following claim other than personal experience, it is assumed that the public has the same need as the spectators when it comes to the emergency. Whether this involves the driver who slows down to see the accident, the crowd that gathers outside the burning house or the millions who watch non-stop media coverage of disasters, whether natural such as Hurricane Katrina or man-made such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, emergencies are just that, sideshows of the non/abnormal.

Practical Applications of the Paper

Joseph Merrick was once part of a sideshow. Even after moving into the hospital he remained a spectacle for those who came to see him. His spectators saw within Merrick the various distortions of their own self images. Joseph Merrick eventually succumbs to death after he begins to change based on the perceptions of his spectators. If an emergency situation can be considered a sideshow, and the emergency manager a performer within the sideshow, what impact will the perceptions of the public have on the emergency manager? For William

Alexander Percy it led to disappointment and burnout. The final portion of this paper attempts to provide a way to examine this question by using the understanding of the emergency as the sideshow and the emergency manager as the performer to develop a possible 15

survey/interview/workshop instrument to apply to one type of emergency management professional, the firefighter, specifically firefighters handling wildfires.

The reason to focus on firefighters handling wildfire is that wildfires are one devastating form of natural disaster that have been apparent in recent years due to drought conditions in places such as Texas. According to the Texas Forest Service (TFS), between January 1st 2012 and March 19th, 2012 the TFS responded to 154 wildfires and local fire departments responded to 952 wildfires, a total of 14, 532 acres were burned, 17 structures(homes and other) were destroyed and 100 counties in Texas put burn bans into effect. During the 2011 fire season which was counted as November 15th, 2010 to October 31st, 2011, there were 30,457 fires, with

3,993,716 acres burned, 5,738 structures (homes and other) destroyed with 52,440 structures

(homes and other) saved. In a June 2011 Associated Press report, it was reported that in one county alone, fires “burned 5,280 acres and dozens of homes caused $2.5 million to $3.6 million in timber losses. State forest resource analyst Chris Edgar says the timber lost to the fire could have yielded about $53 million in forest products, from lumber and plywood to paper. He predicted a total economic impact for East Texas of almost $93 million” (KETK, 2011a). While some of the timber can be salvaged for financial purposes (see KETK, 2011b), the damage done by wildfires in Texas in recent years has been devastating. Due to the high numbers of incidents of emergency response necessary to combat wildfires, it is possible that those emergency management professionals who address wildfires are under high levels of stress that may lead to burnout and possible disappoint in their roles as emergency managers.

Kowalski and Podlesny (2002) discuss the issue of burnout among mine investigators in the United States. They discuss how there are different types of stress that workers can feel, 16

some forms leading to immediate stress while others build over time. Stress that builds over time can eventually lead to worker burn-out with certain types of work more likely leading to stress.

“For example, people working in emergencies and disasters may be thought of as normal people exposed to abnormal circumstances” (Kowalski and Podlesny, p. 2007, p. 158). Kowalski and

Podlesny discuss the specific roles that mine investigators play such as enforcing regulations and more recently taking on the responsibility of meeting with families of those hurt in mining accidents and reporting on the accidents. These tasks can lead to role conflict and high levels of stress for many of the investigators.

The consequences of burnout due to these stressors are potentially problematic for both the individual and the organisation. Burnout can result in work of less quality, job turnover, absenteeism, and low morale. In addition, burnout is correlated with various self-reported indices of personal dysfunction, including physical exhaustion, insomnia, increased use of alcohol and drugs, and marital and family problems. (Kowalski and Podlesny, 2007, p. 161) The authors use the Maslach Burnout Inventory that contains three components, emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and personal accomplishment combined with qualitative data gathered from workshop style settings to analyze mine investigator burnout. Do those who respond to wildfires experience burnout and if so, why? Is a possible stressor for these emergency management professionals the perceptions that others hold of them?

One group of spectators of emergencies is the family of the emergency management professionals. Regehr, et al., (2005) examined the impact that workplace stress on firefighters can have on the wives of firefighters, basically whether the stress is brought from work to the home and how this stress is managed. The authors point out that the support of family is often essential to lowering levels of stress but that research has also revealed that the stress can then be taken back to the home environment. “High stress and trauma situations threaten the family 17

equilibrium and thus produce strain in the work-family fit. Organizational policies and programs that support workers and reduce the stress brought home to families may enhance the work- family fit and therefore enhance commitment” (Regehr, et al., 2005, p. 425). Regehr, et al., conducted interviews with the spouses of firefighters and discovered common themes among the interviews, such as having pride in their spouse’s work, mixed stress of shift work such as more time to care for younger children but also missing family events, built in social networks for firefighters themselves but not for the spouses and lastly themes of learning to respond to the stress of their spouses work. This reflects some of the perspectives that non-firefighters have of firefighters. This could be used to develop further analysis of how the firefighters respond to the perspectives of others. For example, firefighters who find a world of their own in the firehouse, with others who have the same types of experiences as they do, as Hunter (2005) referred to the sideshow, their own parallel world.

Working Idea: Future research could use the Maslach Burnout Inventory by first having firefighters take the survey. Then determine how John Merrick would respond to the survey and use that interpretation to develop questions for a workshop style setting.

Conclusion

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