A different way to think about emergency preparedness and response

I

Start with current debates over periodizing the last World War.

It’s one thing to adopt the conventional periodization as 1939 – 1945. It is another thing to read in detail how 1931 – 1953 was a protracted period of conflicts and wars unfolding to and from a central paroxysm in Europe. (Think: Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, the late 1940s Dutch war in Indonesia, the French war in Indochina from the late 1940s through early 1950s, and the Korean War, among others.)

From the latter perspective, the December 1941 – September 1945 paroxysm, with carnage and the Shoah, was comparatively short and embedded in a much longer series of large regional wars, which were less preludes to each other than an unfolding process that was indeed worldwide .

II

Now think of a major earthquake in the same way. What if it were also to be viewed as a central paroxysm in the midst of other disasters that unfolded, before and afterwards?

Current terminology about “longer-term recovery” would be considerably problematized when the longer term is one of disaster unfolding into disaster. Immediate emergency response would look considerably less immediate when embedded in a process of recurring response always before the next disaster.

Source

Buchanan, A. (2023). Globalizing the Second World War. Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies 258: 246-281.