John:
As I have come to understand, emergency management in the UK is
centred on Civil Defence, or a civil defence ethic, which has a
history since WW2 of military based policies applied to "civil
emergencies", all exclusive of public participation and knowledge.
The era of stated risk of nuclear attack in the 1970s was a civil
defence peace-time hey-day. See some of the literature of that time
and also some of the chapters in "Hazard Management and Emergency
Planning" (Dennis Parker & John Handmer; James & James. 1992). More
recently and forwarded to me by Ilan Kelman, S B Manyena (2006) in
"The concept of resilience revisited" (Disasters 30 (4) pp433-450)
refers to community involvement not being a part of the UK's
resilience strategy, except in the event of "overstretched services".
How would public response be effective without knowledge of the
strategy ? Hogan and Marandola (2005) in "Towards an
Interdisciplinary Conceptualisation of Vulnerability" (Population,
Place and Space 11: 455-471) write of "vulnerabilised citizenship"
and a new layer of vulnerability" from disadvantaged asylum seekers
excluded from most forms of social security - and most of all of
awareness of hazards and of civil defence strategies, one might say.
Such "them and us" issues have been and remain a least exposed hot
potato long overdue for popping.
Best Wishes -
James
At 11:06 23/07/2008, you wrote:
>I thought it would be interesting to start a debate on this issue.
>
>Under the UK's Freedom of Information Act, which came into force in 2005,
>reasons for exempting official information from the act's
>requirements include
>safeguarding national security, but it is not clear how far this extends to
>emergency planning in general. In the London Borough of Camden, though,
>disaster response plans are kept secret 'as the release of these could
>endanger public safety'.
>
>There are lots of ethical, legal and institutional questions to be
>debated about
>transparency and secrecy in emergency planning - it's not a simple issue. It
>would be interesting to hear the views and experiences of other members of
>the group.
>
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