Citation

Quarantelli EL. Int. J. Mass Emerg. Disasters 1988; 6(3): 283-310.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1988, International Sociological Association, International Research Committee on Disasters)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The three volume, 960-page report, entitled Human Reactions in Disaster Situations issued in 1954 by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, is a classic. Not because it has been widely read, for very seldom do I encounter anyone who has ever even seen a copy of the publication, much less perused it. Not because its specific contents are very well known and used as a starting base in current disaster research scientific circles; for different reasons, the various summaries and inventories of disaster findings have not presented any of the data or findings, except by Barton who gives some limited and selective material in his now two decade old book, Communities in Disaster. And the NORC work, whether generally or specifically, is very seldom cited in the present day disaster research literature, and extremely few libraries have copies of the report. Rather our argument is that the publication is a classic for two other reasons: (1) it primarily reports on what, by most criteria which could be used, is still the best survey study so far undertaken in the disaster area; and (2) because of the mostly unrecognized but highly significant influence the NORC, work had on the historical development of disaster studies in the United States and on how much of the current research in the area is conducted. In this review and analysis of the research effort in the disaster area by NORC we shall present: (1) the general background of the work; (2) the nature of the field research undertaken; (3) a selective summary of the substantive focus and findings from the largest single field study within the NORC work, namely on the Arkansas tornado; (4) a brief overall assessment of the research done; and (5) some of the important consequences of what NORC did in the disaster area.