Disaster resilience as communication practice: remembering and forgetting lessons from past disasters through practices that prepare for the next one

Abstract

Communities learn important lessons about their vulnerabilities from disasters. A crucial aspect of resilience is how communities apply past lessons to prepare for future events. We use a practice lens to examine how communities remember and forget lessons through everyday communication surrounding their preparedness activities. We analyze two cases of disaster preparedness in one community. The first site, a local Office of Emergency Management, adapted national policies to the community while also keeping local disaster lessons in mind (i.e. remembering lessons). The second site represented an intractable conflict between the U.S. Forest Service and a community group that inhibited the implementation of a large-scale wildfire mitigation project (i.e. forgetting lessons). We frame resilience as a communicative accomplishment and apply practice methods to ‘zoom in' on communication micropractices, and ‘zoom out’ on trans-local communication practices. The findings highlight how communities remember and forget local lessons in everyday activities.