Chlimintza, Elpida-Melpomeni (2010) Communication processes in the Hellenic fire corps: a comparative perspective. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1754/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the Author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Communication Processes in the Hellenic Fire Corps: A Comparative Perspective Elpida-Melpomeni Chlimintza Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of PhD Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences Faculty of Law, Business and Social Sciences University of Glasgow SEPTEMBER 2009 Photo: Grammattiko fire, 22/08/09 Communication Processes in the Hellenic Fire Corps: A Comparative Perspective Elpida-Melpomeni Chlimintza Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of PhD Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences Faculty of Law, Business and Social Sciences University of Glasgow SEPTEMBER 2009 ABSTRACT My research explores critical issues involved in emergency management in a front-line, emergency service – the fire brigade – in Greece, Germany and Britain. It is designed to identify the problems in the communication conduct among fire-fighters during emergency responses, to examine the causes of these problems and to suggest ways to overcome them that should allow European countries to adopt more effective policies. It aims to make a contribution to the academic study of crisis management in organizations through an analysis of actual, real-time, responses to emergencies such as industrial fires, plane crashes, road traffic accidents and train collisions. Organizations such as fire services are seen as communication events and a platform where shared cognitive meanings and shared value commitments shape the actions of the interactive agents. In this vein, emergencies are the outworking of communicative disruption in organizations, in which fire services face a triple jeopardy: they have to manage other organizations’ crises (such crises include those arising in large chemical and oil factories), their own crises (for example, failing to communicate because of inadequate radio spectrum) and natural disasters (such as earthquakes and forest fires). 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of tables 7 List of figures 8 Acknowledgements 9 Abbreviations 11 Introduction 14 1. Defining the problem: How I came up with my research topic 14 2. Defining emergencies 18 3. From being an insider to becoming an outsider in the HFC 20 a. Approaching the HFC 21 b. Investigating the recorded conversations 21 c. Interviewing HFC personnel 25 4. A comparative research: The British Fire and Rescue Services 27 a. The initial encounters 27 b. Attempting to access the BFRSs and to integrate in their routines 29 - The SFRS-1 30 - The SFRS-2 33 - The EFRS-1 36 - The EFRS-2 37 c. The efforts that did not flourish 38 5. An “out of the blue” development: Expanding my research to the Ludwigshafen fire brigade 39 6. Revisiting some of the services 45 7. Reflections on conducting field research 46 8. Structure of the thesis 48 Chapter 1 Case studies from the United States 49 1.1. The 9/11 emergency response 49 1.1.1. The 1993 response to the terrorist bombing of the WTC complex 50 1.1.2. The 9/11 response to the attacks of the WTC 51 1.2. 9/11 emergency communication: The NORAD recordings 57 3 1.3. The hurricane Katrina response 60 1.4. Conclusion: Lessons from the 9/11 and the Katrina response 64 Chapter 2 The Hellenic fire corps and the episodes investigated 66 2.1. The HFC actors 66 2.2. Analyzing the material 69 Episode A: The train collision 69 Episode B: The Square Tower 80 Episode C: Factory on fire 89 Episode D: Fire in a hotel 101 Episode E: The case of the of the Cypriot 737 - 300 Boeing air crash 109 Chapter 3 Role-set and expectations: The Incident Command System and its protagonists 124 3.1. The new version of an old idea: The ICS as an emergency bureaucratic 124 mechanism 3.2. The ICS role-set: The case of the incident commander 126 3.2.1. “What is it that you see over there?” (A, 99) 129 3.2.2. “What’s going on out there? ... Who is that ‘asshole’? … We are ‘fucked’” (B, 78, 75, 76) 132 3.2.3. “Is anybody listening to Ares?” (C, 134) 135 3.2.4. “We’ve lost the ball” (D, 80) 139 3.2.5. “Every single time something will go wrong” (E, 146) 142 3.3 Conclusion: The ‘domino effect’ – How incident commanders affect the actions of the operations’ personnel 148 Chapter 4 The ICS role-set: The command and the general staff 151 4.1. The command staff 151 4.1.1. Securing the diffusion of the incident information 151 a. The role of the Press Office 152 b. The quid pro quo information dissemination policy 154 c. A brief overview of the diffusion of the incident information 157 4.1.2. Liaising HFC with other responder-organizations 158 4 a. Cooperating with the police: “Colleagues” and “comrades” on a need-to- 158 assist basis b. The ambulance service: A problematic co-actor 160 c. The undermined Secretariat General of Civil Protection 162 d. Occasional emergency responders with an auxiliary role 164 e. A brief commentary 166 4.1.3. Securing personnel on the incident-grounds 167 4.2. The general staff: The practices of the operations’ personnel 168 4.2.1. Self-dispatching: Unruliness on the incident-grounds 168 4.2.2. Seeking directions: Unfamiliarity and embarrassment 172 4.2.3. Radios and mobile telephony 175 4.3. Conclusion 176 Chapter 5 The rollercoaster of the information dissemination process: Conclusion to the Hellenic case 178 5.1. The initial incoming incident information: How control operators engage in 180 essential and trivial conduct with civilians 5.2. How the information is communicated to the control dispatchers by the 184 control operators 5.3. The communicative interactions between the dispatchers and the station 188 operators 5.4. The role of the control officers 192 5.5. Conclusion 195 Chapter 6 The case of the UK brigades 197 6.1. How the emergency communication is instigated 197 6.2. How the control interacts with civilians 202 6.3. The analysis of incident logs 209 6.4. How control employees interact with operations’ personnel 211 6.4.1. Communication with operations’ units 211 6.4.2. Communication with on-call officers 216 6.5. Random conversations 224 6.6. How BFRSs control personnel interact with other co-responders: The 5 emergency command structure 225 6.6.1. The BFRSs and the police 227 6.6.2. The BFRS and the ambulance service 230 6.7. Conclusion 232 Chapter 7 Between the Hellenic and British fire service models: The Ludwigshafen fire brigade 235 7.1. The incoming incident information 235 7.2. Communication during emergency responses 240 7.3. Inter-organizational communication 245 7.4. Affiliations with the police and the ambulance service 247 7.5. Conclusion 250 Conclusion Bureaucratic performances in the FRSs 253 8.1. Communication in the fire and rescue organizations 253 8.2. Agents in action 260 8.3. From the expectations of the role-set to the demands of the system 268 8.4. Summary 280 8.5 The dysfunction of the HFC bureaucracy: Reflections on a puzzle 281 introduced 8.6. Afterward 284 Bibliography 289 6 LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Backstage communicative interactions: How information is disseminated 68 Table 2 The application of the ICS to the Hellenic episodes examined 127 Table 3 ICS actors: Titles and names; positions and settings 128 Table 4 Categories of emergency actors 130 Table 5 The significance of the positioning in the control rooms 202 Table 6 The format of the messages exchanged during emergency responses 212 Table 7 The format of the assistant message 212 Table 8 A transcription of an informative message 212 Table 9 Example of informative messages 213 Table 10 Example of informative messages 213 Table 11 Example of the information exchange between the BFRSs and other 214 responder-organizations Table 12 Example of assistant messages 214 Table 13 Example of how messages are codified 215 Table 14 Transcript of an emergency report 222 Table 15 Endings of communicative interactions between control operators and 223 ops’ personnel using free-speech and non-free-speech policies Table 16 FRSs investigated and the 9/11 response: A comparative perspective 269 of the communication conduct during emergency responses Table 17 Mechanistic and organic characteristics of the FRSs 273 Table 18 Emergency conduct in the FRSs 278 Table 19 The process for dispatching operations’ units on-site 279 Table 20 Gouldner’s typology of bureaucracies 280 7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 The role of the command and control centre 178 Figure 2 Positions and settings in the HFC control room 179 Figure 3 The diffusion of the incident information 186 Figure 4 The roles of the actors involved in the dissemination of the incident information 188 Figure 5 Incident and organizational information: The route of conversion 189 Figure 6 The dissemination of the initial incident information 198 Figure 7 The incident information exchange process after the initial mobilization 199 Figure 8 The positioning of the control employees in the BFRSs control rooms 201 Figure 9 The actors engaged in the process of disseminating information on and off the firegrounds 233 Figure 10 The positioning of the control employees in the LFB control room 236 Figure 11 Communication practices between control and operations’ personnel 241 Figure 12 The LFB ICS 246 Figure 13 The flow of communication prior, during and after the emergency response 247 Figure 14 A detailed incident command system plan 248 8 Acknowledgements I would like to dedicate this thesis to my mother.