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Making Sense of Natural
Disasters: The Learning
Vacuum of Bushfire Public
Inquiries

Graham Dwyer
Making Sense of Natural Disasters
 Graham Dwyer

Making Sense of
Natural Disasters
The Learning Vacuum of Bushfire Public Inquiries
Graham Dwyer
Centre for Social Impact
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, VIC, Australia

ISBN 978-3-030-94777-4    ISBN 978-3-030-94778-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94778-1

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 Foreword

Disasters affecting humans are not new but they are occurring more often.
This may be to do with the size of the population of homo sapiens upon the
planet but it may be something to do with the planet itself. In a world of
climate change and a wide acceptance that human actions and reactions
contribute to the Anthropocene, disasters in the twenty-first century
threaten more human life and living standards in more and more places.
Given this, what might we learn about how to organize against them?
Graham Dwyer offers in this book a way forward to enrich our under-
standing. Dwyer has concentrated upon emergency management practi-
tioners and those communities facing extreme events, especially bush fires.
His approach is based upon research in the state of Victoria in Australia
but is germane to our understanding of disaster management in many
nations, in both hemispheres. He shows that the organization of human-
ity, both in the face of such disasters and the planning that goes into
preparation for them, relies upon a process of ‘sense-making’ whereby
extraordinary conditions are fitted into everyday, ordinary frameworks
that are meant to be formal, robust, and pre-planned to deal with such
extreme conditions. Dwyer points out, however, that emotions are height-
ened in such extraordinary circumstances and formal, linear systems rarely
conceptualise this element as a matter of great consequence. Indeed, the
deliberations of Public Inquiries seek to remove emotion from their think-
ing almost altogether and to concentrate upon rationality and the alloca-
tion of blame within a legal framework of cause and effect. By ignoring the
role of human emotions in extreme circumstances, says Dwyer, Public
Inquiries offer little that is new to human understanding. Dwyer’s

v
vi FOREWORD

provocative research suggests that Public Inquiries must consider the role
of ‘emotion’ within their very ‘rational’ frameworks. Without this new
dimension, humanity faces a ‘learning vacuum’ with mortal consequences
for many.
Graham Dwyer’s book, for this reader, relates back to a tension deep
within human history, yet is in order to understand our future upon a
changing planet. In ancient Greece, the Apollonian strand of thinking
emphasised rationality and the power of thought. Apollo was the sun God
and appealed to logic, prudence and illumination. On the other hand,
Dionysus was the God of wine and dance and is associated with chaos and
irrationality. His worship appealed to those who wished to celebrate the
emotions and instincts. Some have seen this quarrel acting at the level of
the human brain where the Apollonian resides in the higher cortex,
whereas the Dionysian is to be found in the ‘reptilian’ and ‘limbic’ brains
still possessed by the human anatomy. This tension in worldviews seems
very relevant to this reader in understanding Making Sense of Natural
Disasters. Dwyer wishes for immediately experienced ‘emotions’ to be
admitted into Public Inquiries despite their legal focus being upon long,
drawn out cerebration, seeking allocation and apportionment of responsi-
bility. It is this other, fully embodied worldview of those facing extreme
danger on the front line that he offers. He leads the reader to see the value
in our understanding of a world in which, one might argue, the pre-­
eminence of legal-rational bureaucracy has created a runaway monster of
climate change ready to devour the world as we humans know it. And in
such threats to life and limb is it any surprise that sense-making might well
include the spontaneous reaction of our own viscera?
Making Sense of Natural Disasters is thus a book for today, not only for
the women and men who face the consequences of a hotter, drier world
almost every day but for us all. Emergency workers protect us, of course,
but in order to do so they must protect themselves, using not only plan-
ning in the seminar room but ‘out there’ with a mind that is fully embod-
ied in the face of terrifying conditions. Graham Dwyer has done these
emergency workers a great service in rendering the world more complex
yet more understandable, as well as those who plan for disasters, those
who seek to control events afterwards, and all of us who are beholden to
them. His readers will appreciate his subtlety and erudition in so doing.

University of Manchester Gibson Burrell,

Manchester, UK
 Preface

Victoria, Australia, is arguably the most fire-prone area in the world.

Scientists and climatologists claim that with climate change we will increas-
ingly experience longer drought periods, higher wind speeds and warmer
temperatures, giving rise to a greater bushfire threat in an already extremely
bushfire-prone environment. Given such circumstances, it is likely that
Victoria’s emergency management organizations will increasingly find
themselves responding to bushfires characterized as complex, harmful and
rare. This book examines the public inquiries conducted after some worst-­
ever bushfires witnessed in Australia, in order to understand how emer-
gency management organizations make sense of and learn from bushfires
in Victoria so that they can be better prepared for bushfires in the future.
Despite its long history of bushfires post-European settlement, Victoria
has struggled to make sense and learn from its experience. While the in-­
depth findings of public inquiries into major bushfires have resulted in
various recommendations being developed and implemented in emer-
gency management organizations, there continues to be a perception that
learning from such events rarely occurs.
This book examines some of Victoria’s most significant bushfire inqui-
ries and the ways in which emergency management organizations made
sense of their findings and recommendations. I show that while public
inquiry findings do shape bushfire planning and preparedness, they have
also created a learning vacuum because their recommendations tend to
have a retrospective focus. This keeps government, emergency manage-
ment organizations and the community looking back at tragic bushfires
without focusing on learning lessons when they need to look forward to

vii
viii PREFACE

future bushfire and other natural hazard events, as well as human-­

made crises.
Given the impact of these fires, I also reflect on the emotions that sur-
rounded these inquiries. I find that negative emotions have surrounded
the implementation of these inquiry recommendations because they have
increased accountability demands on emergency management practitio-
ners at a time when their efforts need to be focused on developing a shared
responsibility for managing risk in partnership with government and com-
munities. Accordingly, I suggest that future research should seek to
develop new ways to conduct public inquiries in a more inclusive and
meaningful manner, which will result in recommendations that facilitate
more effective planning for future bushfires. This means moving beyond
the existing quasi-judicial approach towards a public review process shared
across government, emergency management organizations and the
community.
As Victoria faces a future of unknowns surrounding bushfires, it is
important that we move beyond the learning vacuum with its retrospec-
tive learning, towards a more prospective approach where we prepare as a
community and society – not only for bushfires, but for all the natural
hazards and challenges we are likely to face in the future. Such an approach
may yield better ways of learning and, consequently, more meaningful
organizational change in our emergency management organizations.
Although history may dim the memory of just how devastating bushfires
can be (Griffiths, 2010), it is important that political leaders, emergency
management practitioners and private citizens continue to be mindful of
bushfire risk so that they can help each other to prepare for the inevitable
fire events of the future. The experiences of those who have lived through
the bushfire events at the core of this book remind us of the need to con-
tinue to heed the lessons from them:

The scene that confronted me when I first saw Strathewen was—it was inde-
scribable. There literally wasn’t anything that wasn’t burnt, that wasn’t
destroyed … We came over the hill and the young chap that was driving for
me, he saw his parents’ house fully enveloped in flames … it was very diffi-
cult. I got further up Chads Creek Road … and I met a resident on the road
and he said, ‘There’s a body up there’. I went up and there was a chap I had
known for 40 years dead in the middle of the oval. (Mr. David McGahy,
captain of the Arthurs Creek CFA brigade, describing his observation when
 PREFACE ix

he arrived at Strathewen in the aftermath of the Black Saturday bushfires,

quoted in Parliament of Victoria, 2010: 83)

Melbourne, VIC, Australia Graham Dwyer

References
Griffiths, T. (2010). An unnatural disaster: Remembering and forgetting bushfire.
History Australia, 6(2), 35.1–35.2.
Parliament of Victoria. (1939). Report of the royal commission to inquire into the
causes of and measures taken to prevent the bush fires of January, 1939, and to
protect life and property, and the measures taken to prevent bush fires in Victoria
and protect life and property in the event of future bush fires 1939, Parliamentary
paper (Victoria. Parliament); T. Rider, Acting Government Printer, Melbourne.
 Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands where I respectively live

and work. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and future. I recog-
nize that these lands have always been places of teaching, research and
learning.
I would like to acknowledge the following people for their support over
the course of my journey so far into academia.
First and foremost, I would like to thank Cynthia Hardy, Laureate
Professor Emerita, University of Melbourne (and collaborator on several
publications) for your guidance, support and mentorship in all matters
academic relating to research, writing, publication, teaching and learning.
Your generosity (and patience) knows no bounds, for which I am ever so
grateful. Such generosity (and patience) was always present as my lead
PhD supervisor during my time at University of Melbourne. I would also
like to thank Professor Susan Ainsworth and Professor Graham Sewell
(both University of Melbourne) for your support as co-PhD supervisors
and your considerable investment in my topic, which has given me so
much content to work with as a basis for writing this book. More broadly,
I would like to thank all of the staff at the Department of Management &
Marketing, University of Melbourne, for their support during my PhD
and Teaching Fellowship journey, as well as the team at the Bushfire and
Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre (now Natural Hazards
Research Australia).
At Swinburne University of Technology (SUT), I would like to thank
all the team at the Centre for Social Impact (CSI) and more broadly col-
leagues at the School of Business Law and Entrepreneurship. A very special

xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

thanks to Dr Michael Moran, National Education Director, CSI, Associate

Professor Emma Lee, tebrakunna country, Indigenous Leadership, CSI,
SUT, and Professor Timothy Marjoribanks, SUT for their guidance and
support which has contributed enormously to helping me develop over the
course of my early career as an academic. I also extend this thanks to Dr
Warren Staples, University of Melbourne and Professor Michael Dowling,
Dublin City University.
A special thanks to my collaborators who have helped, are helping and
will (continue to) help explore the knowledge frontier related to many of
the issues at the core of this book. Specifically, I would like to acknowledge:

• Professor Cynthia Hardy, Laureate Professor Emerita, University of

Melbourne, Australia
• Professor Steve Maguire, University of Sydney, Australia
• Professor Haridimos Tsoukas, University of Cyprus, Cyprus &
University of Warwick, UK
• Professor Leanne Cutcher, University of Sydney, Australia
• Professor Gibson Burrell, University of Manchester, UK
• Professor Markus Höllerer, University of New South Wales, Australia
& WU Vienna, Austria

A very special thanks to all of the police and community of emergency

management practitioners who continue to help us understand so many of
the nuances surrounding the work that you do and the challenges which
you face as you plan for and respond to fire in our landscape.
Finally, for everything, míle buíochas to my family and community of
friends in Melbourne and Dublin.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
1.1 What Happens After Disasters?  5
1.2 Structure of the Book  8
References 10

2 Learning as Sensemaking 15
2.1 What Is Sensemaking? 18
2.2 Equivocality and Sensemaking 23
2.3 What Happens After Disaster and Public Inquiry
Sensemaking? 28
2.4 Sensemaking and Emotion 30
2.5 Conclusion 33
References 34

3 Bushfires and Public Inquiries: A Case Study of Victoria 43

3.1 Making Sense and Learning from Public Inquiries 44
3.2 Victoria: Case Study of a Bushfire Society 45
3.3 Conclusion 62
References 62

4 Sensemaking and Learning from Public Inquiries 65

4.1 Findings 66
4.2 Conclusion 81
References 81

xiii
xiv CONTENTS

5 Discussion and Conclusions 83

5.1 Models of Post-Inquiry Sensemaking 87
5.2 Reflections 88
5.3 Areas for Future Consideration 98
5.4 Practical Contributions100
5.5 Personal Reflection107
References110

References117

Index133
 List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Sensemaking and learning from public inquiries.

(Adapted from Dwyer and Hardy (2016)) 76
Fig. 5.1 Sensemaking and learning in emergency
management organizations 86

xv
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Sources of textual data 47

Table 3.2 Illustration of codes and quotes for key themes 56
Table 4.1 Summary of findings from Black Friday 1939 71
Table 4.2 Summary of findings from Ash Wednesday 1983 72
Table 4.3 Summary of findings from Black Saturday 2009 74
Table 4.4 Summary of findings from Black Summer Inquiry Part 1 75
Table 4.5 Emotions surrounding public inquiry sensemaking
and learning 78
Table 5.1 Recurring focus of Victorian bushfire inquiries 87

xvii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts related to

the ways in which sensemaking and learning unfold following significant
natural hazard events. While scholarly and practitioner work has high-
lighted the damage and losses that occur as a result of natural hazard
events, there has been less focus on what happens afterward. Accordingly,
the focus of this book is to bring attention to the ways that government,
emergency management and community stakeholders seek to make sense
of and learn from natural hazard events through public inquiries. I do so
by focusing on the case study of bushfire in Victoria, Australia, specifically
on the ways in which emergency management practitioners use the find-
ings and recommendations from public inquiries to plan for the risks asso-
ciated with future bushfires.

Keywords Natural hazard events • Bushfires • Public inquiries •

Sensemaking • Learning

Recent history has provoked a high level of concern over the earth’s natu-
ral environment and the extreme events, grand challenges and wicked
problems surrounding natural hazards (Dwyer, 2021b; Gephart, 2021).
Higher temperatures, intensifying wind speeds and rain deficits are being
attributed to climate change, and are subsequently prompting floods,
droughts and bushfires which are increasingly endangering the lives of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
G. Dwyer, Making Sense of Natural Disasters,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94778-1_1
2 G. DWYER

those practitioners who must respond to them (Dwyer, 2021c). These

have become increasingly regular, complex and devastating, giving rise to
novel societal risk (Nohrstedt & Bynander, 2019; Glade et al., 2010;
Birkman, 2006) and placing communities in the path of considerable dan-
gers (Zuccaro et al., 2020). The increased incidence and severity of disas-
ters has also been challenging for the broader community of emergency
management practitioners, including government ministers, policymakers,
police officers, firefighters, weather forecasters and geospatial analysts, cre-
ating three forms of uncertainty described as “known, unknown and
unknowable” (Chow & Sarin, 2002: 127). In many instances there have
been long-term effects on communities, landscapes and ecosystems
(Waldmüller, 2021).
Globally, disasters such as hurricanes (e.g. Katrina, USA, 2005: 1464
lives lost), earthquakes (e.g. Haiti, 2012: 223,000 lives lost) and tsunamis
(e.g. Southeast Asia, 2004: 250,000 lives lost) have revealed insights into
the difficulties facing community, government and industry organizations
as they cope with, manage and respond to adversity in challenging envi-
ronments (Birkman, 2006; Dwyer, 2015; Kates et al., 2006; March &
Olsen, 1983; Pauchant & Douville, 1993). Such events have highlighted
the importance of implementing science- and evidence-based approaches
to Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation as identified
in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030
(SFDRR) (Zuccaro et al., 2020). While SFDRR requires “the adoption of
policies, strategies and plans and the further review and development of
normative instruments at local, national, regional and global levels as well
as quality standards and practical guidelines” (UNISDR, 2015: 3), there
remains little by way of insight to guide practitioners as they seek to
develop such instruments. Experience has shown that even well-prepared
emergency management organizations struggle to respond effectively to
natural hazard events and the disasters they bring into existence (see
Dwyer et al., 2021; Mileti, 1999), because their learning from previous
events is undermined when new or unfamiliar conditions unfold. While
SFDRR begins to train attention on the need to move towards a multi-­
hazard and multi-sector approach to mitigating natural disaster risk, the
case study of bushfires in Victoria shows that, even with increased scientific
knowledge and robust policies in place, bushfire events still give rise to
significant damage and losses. Ultimately, no two events are the same, so
it becomes problematic to apply yesterday’s learning to present-day disas-
ters (Dwyer, 2021a). Disasters are also typically events with a high impact
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

but a low probability of occurring, meaning that they interact with actors,
systems, processes, procedures and routines in the organizational environ-
ment in a manner that is often rapid and unpredictable (Landgraf &
Officer, 2016; Thatcher et al., 2015; Kruke & Olsen, 2005; Weick, 1988,
1999). Such scenarios create a high cognitive load (Sweller, 1994), as
individuals’ ability to understand and manage what is occurring begins to
diminish in the face of escalating danger. Individuals move between emo-
tional states such as anxiety, panic, fear and stress as they seek to take
meaningful action to ameliorate the emerging danger and avoid significant
losses and damage to communities. Such disasters also have an emotional
impact on individuals who work in emergency management organizations,
who may experience feelings of regret, shame and sadness after these
events because of a perception created by media commentaries and public
inquiries that their actions were unable to ameliorate the harmful effects
of disaster (Dwyer, 2021a; Dwyer et al., 2021). Risk management and
capacity-building focused on integrating climate change into hazard miti-
gation planning offer the potential to ameliorate the harmful effects of
natural disasters (Stults, 2017; Buergelt & Paton, 2014). However, this
book shows that there are challenges with achieving an integrated approach
to hazard mitigation through deliberative forums such as public inquiries.
I show that, despite the fact that they span 80 years of learning and signifi-
cant innovation in Victoria, public inquiries as a sensemaking device have
given rise to a learning vacuum, insofar as there is little new that emerges
from their deliberation.
The focus of this book is the way in which emergency management
organizations and the organizational actors that comprise them make
sense of and learn from the paradoxes, predicaments and problems which
arise from disasters. I do so by examining four case studies of bushfires and
the public inquiries that were held after them in the state of Victoria,
Australia. Its unique combination of landscape, climate and vegetation
makes Victoria one of the most fire-prone areas in the world. Consequently,
and not surprisingly, Victoria has had a long history of bushfires (Griffiths,
2010). Four such bushfires continue to live in the collective memory of
Victorians and are the focus of my study: the Black Friday fires of 1939;
the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983; the Black Saturday fires of 2009; and the
Black Summer fires of 2019. In each case, the organizations responsible
for managing these fires faced surprising, overwhelming and novel situa-
tions that, despite their experience with bushfires, were difficult to manage
4 G. DWYER

and gave rise to widespread damages and losses – leading to close examina-
tion by subsequent public inquiries.
This book reflects on the ways that emergency management organiza-
tions understood and acted following these bushfire disasters. We know
from the existing literature that such sensemaking occurs as individuals
seek to understand a situation that is rapidly and unpredictably unfolding
(Dwyer, 2021b). Often, because of the nature of a disaster, this initial
attempt at understanding fails, as Weick (1993) famously showed in the
rapid onset of wildfire at Mann Gulch in 1939. This had fateful conse-
quences as firefighters failed to make sense of what was happening. A long
list of other studies has shown how problems with sensemaking and the
failure to generate plausible meanings about what may be unfolding can
lead to or exacerbate disasters (Brown, 2000, 2004; Gephart, 1984, 1993,
2007; Turner, 1976; Vaughan, 2006; Weick, 1990, 1993, 2010).
We also know that, in order to make sense of what happened during a
disaster, and how and why it occurred, governments will usually commis-
sion a public inquiry (e.g. see Gephart, 1984, 1993; Gephart et al., 1990;
Elliot & McGuiness, 2002; Lalonde, 2007). Studies of such inquiries have
shown that they often identify how people’s behaviour in emergency situ-
ations is frequently a contributing factor to the disaster – because they
failed to make sense of it at the time (Leveson et al., 2009; Perrow, 1981,
1983; Vaughan, 1990, 2006). They also show that the inquiry itself
involves a retrospective form of sensemaking around what happened dur-
ing the disaster (Boudes & Laroche, 2009; Colville et al., 2013; Brown &
Jones, 2000; Brown, 2000, 2004, 2005; Gephart, 1984, 1993, 1997).
This has been no different in a Victorian context, where public inquiries
have been used to make sense of bushfires since 1939 (Dwyer & Hardy,
2016; Dwyer et al., 2021).
There is, then, a rich body of literature about sensemaking, both during
a disaster and afterward when an inquiry takes place. However, there is less
work on learning and how it occurs. We know little in terms of how the
individuals, groups and organizations charged with responding to the
public inquiries make sense of their recommendations after commissioners
have concluded their deliberations (Dwyer, 2021a). Moreover, recent
work has even called for new ways of conducting public review processes
which seek to foster new cultures of learning within emergency manage-
ment organizations (Dwyer, 2021a; Dwyer et al., 2021). This, then, is a
key focus of this book: How should public review processes be conducted
after major bushfires? By exploring this question, I provide an evidence
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

base for exploring how a broader range of stakeholders can become

involved in planning for, responding to and recovering from bushfires in
the future.

1.1   What Happens After Disasters?

It is important to understand what happens after disasters that usually arise
from bushfires (as well as other natural disasters) and how organizations
respond to them for both practical and theoretical reasons, and studying
public inquiries helps us to do this. Practically speaking, inquiries are
ostensibly intended to either reduce the likelihood that disasters will re-­
occur or, if that is not possible, to improve the way organizations respond
to them through learning for the future. Inquiries into bushfire disasters
have significantly informed the practice of emergency management in
Victoria, but we know very little about how this takes effect and whether
and how inquiries engender change and learning in organizations (Dwyer
& Hardy, 2016). Bushfire management in Victoria involves a complex
arrangement of plans, structures and hierarchies that have been estab-
lished and refined over many years as a result of lessons from a range of
bushfires and other natural disasters. Anecdotal evidence thus suggests
that public inquiries and their recommendations do play an important role
in shaping the ways in which Victorian emergency management organiza-
tions respond to and prepare for bushfires, although how they do so is not
clear. Some researchers suggest that public inquiry recommendations can
make a “staunch commitment to a particular set of meanings” that may, in
fact, create “substantial blindspots that impede action” such as organiza-
tional change and learning (Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010: 562). In other
words, public inquiries may inhibit the future attempts of organizations to
deal with disasters as much as they help them, and this has proved to be
the case over time (Dwyer, 2021a).
Theoretically speaking, it seems likely that individuals who work in
emergency management organizations will have to make sense of inquiry
recommendations before they can implement them (Botterill, 2014).
They therefore engage in sensemaking and sensegiving (Gioia &
Chittipeddi, 1991) as they seek to interpret the recommendations, influ-
ence each other’s perceptions and implement change in their organiza-
tion. However, to date there has been limited involvement of broader
emergency management stakeholders in society (see Williamson et al.,
2020). The bulk of evidence from public inquiries has been generated by
6 G. DWYER

cross-examining individuals from the upper hierarchical echelons of emer-

gency management organizations; lessons learned have accordingly been
developed from such perspectives. This follows a range of studies that
imply that sensemaking, sensegiving and learning are the domain of man-
agers in the upper echelons of an organization’s hierarchy; those who
operate at the lower levels of a hierarchy appear more likely to be passive
recipients of sensegiving, with their responses often cast as resistance
(Dwyer et al., 2021; Bartunek et al., 2006; Bean & Hamilton, 2006).
However, emergency management organizations are characterized by
their inclusion of a broad range of functional experts, that is, those with
various forms of highly technical expertise who do not necessarily have
managerial responsibility. It therefore seems likely that those at the lower
echelons of emergency management organizations would play an impor-
tant and, indeed, prominent role in the sensemaking and sensegiving pro-
cesses following from public inquiry recommendations, with their actions
inevitably contributing to whether or not learning unfolds. Accordingly, I
ask the question: How can emergency management organizations facili-
tate collective learning after public inquiries have been published, and in
particular, does it give rise to lessons for the future? This is important as
we seek to reflect on new, more inclusive ways of conducting public review
processes.
The second focus of this book is the role of emotion in these sensemak-
ing processes; this is increasingly becoming an important focus of scholar-
ship around natural hazard events (Lifang et al., 2020). We know that
bushfires and natural disasters generate intense emotions, but there has
been little focus on the emotions that arise as a result of public inquiry
sensemaking (Dwyer, 2018). Indeed, scholars have argued for more
research to clarify the role of emotion in sensemaking generally (e.g. Liu
& Maitlis, 2014; Maitlis & Christianson, 2014) and in relation to learn-
ing. Some scholars portray emotion as a potential impediment to mean-
ingful action in the context of learning organizational change initiatives
(Maitlis et al., 2013). However, other studies suggest that emotional states
such as fear, panic and stress play an important role in directing individu-
als’ attention to the very anomalies or discrepancies in their environment
that fuel sensemaking before, during and after both human-made crises
and natural disasters (Cornelissen et al., 2014; Weick, 1993). Without
such emotions, individuals may not notice the emergence of ‘learning
cues’ in real time and take the actions required to avert disasters (Dwyer
& Hardy, 2016: 2). That said, where emotions have brought attention to
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

discrepant environmental cues and they have been misinterpreted, indi-

viduals have been found to bring harmful circumstances into existence
(Colville et al., 2013). Thus, the effect of emotions during a disaster is
unclear.
We know even less about the emotions that arise after disasters in rela-
tion to subsequent public inquiries (Dwyer et al., 2021). The individuals
who responded to a disaster will often be required to give evidence at the
inquiry, which frequently emphasizes blame and culpability (Dwyer, 2021;
Dwyer & Hardy, 2016). After the inquiry has completed its deliberations
and published its findings, individuals found to be at fault by the inquiry
may then be responsible for making sense of the recommendations and
implementing changes in their organizations. However, there is little
understanding of the impact of such emotional ‘contagion’ (Cornelissen
et al., 2014) on the organization and its response to the inquiry.
Accordingly, the second focus of this book is: What are the emotions that
shape sensemaking in emergency management organizations after the
findings from public inquiries have been published and do they influence
learning?
I explored these areas of interest by examining bushfires in Victoria. I
chose this context because such disasters occur regularly, leading to subse-
quent inquiries, many of which have been controversial (Tolhurst, 2019,
2020). Further, emergency management organizations are charged with
preparing for and responding to subsequent bushfires based on what they
have learned from previous events. I felt that I could discern evidence of
how sensemaking and learning occurs from public inquiry recommenda-
tions, as well as the emotions surrounding such events, by examining the
state’s most significant fire events. I examined a range of documents, such
as newspaper articles, public inquiry transcripts and commentaries from
online platforms related to the bushfires and the public inquiries. I chose
this approach because sensemaking and learning are social processes that
emerge as a result of dynamic interactions between different groups of
individuals who seek to interpret equivocality such as confusion or ambi-
guity in their environment (Weick et al., 2005; Maitlis & Christianson,
2014; Brown et al., 2015; Sandberg & Tsoukas, 2015).
8 G. DWYER

1.2   Structure of the Book1

In this chapter I identify the characteristics of sensemaking as a concept
and explain how it arises from equivocality, where situations allow for the
possibility of multiple meanings and interpretations (e.g. Wagner &
Gooding, 1997; Weick, 2001). In particular, the focus of my review is on
sensemaking studies that relate to human-made and natural disasters. I
find that crises and disasters have provided potent conditions for observ-
ing how sensemaking – or a lack thereof – unfolds. Next, I examine the
work of scholars who have sought to show how public inquiries make
sense of such disasters. Such scholars have shown that public inquiries usu-
ally result in authoritative accounts of findings and recommendations.
From my review of the literature, I find that disasters have provided a basis
for developing theory in relation to how sensemaking gives rise to learning
and vice versa. Scholars have extended sensemaking theory by examining
how public inquiries make sense of highly equivocal events such as disas-
ters; however, the literature is largely silent about the ways in which public
inquiry findings then influence learning within emergency management
organizations.
In Chap. 3, I present an overview of the four bushfire events that gave
rise to significant damages and losses in Victoria. Each bushfire was fol-
lowed by a public inquiry that acted as a catalyst for change in emergency
management organizations in Victoria. While the recommendations of
public inquiries have certainly given rise to organizational change, they
have also created forms of learning inertia insofar as similar recommenda-
tions re-occur and the same issues remain unresolved. This can contribute
to a perception that emergency management organizations are unable to
learn from previous experiences.
In Chap. 4, I draw on publicly available content to explore how public
inquiries and the sensemaking processes surrounding them might give rise
to what Argyris (1976) refers to as single- and double-loop learning. I find
evidence suggesting that emergency management organizations used
single-­loop learning (learning that occurs as a result of detecting errors)
from the recommendations of inquiries to make sense of, and learn from,
four of Australia’s worst bushfires in order to be better prepared for similar
events in future. I also find that public inquiries were a basis for double-­
loop learning (learning that prompts a change in the governing values of
an organization), insofar as publicly available commentaries suggested that
sensemaking and learning cues from recommendations gave rise to new
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

practices that enabled emergency management organizations to prepare

better for the future effects of fire. I find that emotions seem to play a role
in shaping the sensemaking and learning process before, during and after
public inquiries have concluded their business. I conclude this chapter by
reflecting on the three key focus areas of this book.
In the final Chap. 5, I present two models showing how sensemaking
and learning emerge after significant bushfires. Figure 4.1 shows how sen-
semaking plays an important role in organizations after a public inquiry
report is published. Importantly, it highlights an over-emphasis on learn-
ing retrospectively, which limits the ability of government, emergency
management practitioners and the community to focus on planning and
preparedness for future bushfires. Figure 5.1 shows how emergency man-
agement organizations seem to move between negative and positive emo-
tional experiences as they make sense of and learn from public inquiries.
Figures 4.1 and 5.1 challenge the idea that public inquiry recommenda-
tions are authoritative, and provide insights into the ways in which they
are re-interpreted within organizations through sensemaking and learn-
ing. I hope that these models will provide a basis for organizational prac-
titioners to develop processes for identifying sensemaking and learning
cues that will enable them to implement public inquiry recommendations
in the most meaningful and efficient manner for their organization and the
broad range of stakeholders who have a role in planning for and respond-
ing to bushfires. My study suggests that emotion must be a part of this
process. This study therefore provides a basis for re-evaluating and recon-
sidering the ways in which future Royal Commissions after disaster events
are conducted, placing an emphasis on procedural sensemaking and learn-
ing in a prospective manner, rather than developing recommendations
based on past bushfire events that have little relevance for the future. I
conclude with a discussion which offers some personal reflections and
pathways forward in terms of how practitioners might be able to move
beyond the learning vacuum which seems to have been created by public
inquiries after bushfires in Victoria.

Note
1. The methods, findings and analysis pertaining to Chaps. 3 and 4 have been
updated from the author’s previously published work, which has been
appropriately referenced.
10 G. DWYER

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 The plant called “life everlasting” is one which grows in dry, open,
sunny places. It clothes its leaves with silky hairs, and so prevents
them from throwing off too quickly the small amount of water its roots
are able to provide. Without this silky coat, the sun would suck its
leaves quite dry of water.
Sometimes a leaf has only a few of the little leaf mouths through
which most of the water passes. As these mouths are wide open
only in the sunlight, and as often the rest of the leaf is covered with a
thick skin which prevents the water from slipping away (as a little of it
nearly always does) through the cell walls, such a leaf will hold its
water supply and keep fresh for a long time. Such leaves as these
we find on what we call “evergreen” plants. The pines and hemlocks
which light up the woods all winter have these thick-skinned, few-
mouthed leaves, which throw off so little water that even when the
ground is frozen hard, and gives no drinking water to the roots, they
are able to keep fresh by the careful way in which each one hoards
its own little supply.
 WOOLLY AND “DUSTY” LEAVES

C URIOUSLY enough, some plants put on a hairy coat for just the
opposite reason from the one which makes life everlasting
clothe itself in that fashion. Life everlasting fears lest its leaves throw
off their water, or perspire too quickly.
Down by the stream that runs through the meadow grow great
clusters of the pink-flowered steeple bush. If you look at the lower
sides of the leaves of the steeple bush, you see that they are very
woolly. As this wool is not between the sun and the leaf blade, it
cannot be meant to protect the leaves from the heat of the sun; and
indeed in this wet meadow, close to the river, never mind how quickly
the leaves throw off their water, the roots can have no difficulty in
finding close by more than enough to make good the loss. No, the
fact is that these leaves need to throw off water very freely indeed to
make room for the ever-fresh supply that is pushing up the stem, and
their woolly covering is intended to help them do this very thing. Its
object is to aid perspiration. In swampy places the moisture rises
every night from the wet ground, and settles on the plants about. The
little mouths on the under surfaces of the leaves of the steeple bush
would soon be clogged with the moisture rising from below, if they
were not protected in some way; and if they became so clogged,
they could not throw off the water with which the whole plant is
charged. Thus, by having this thick coat of hair, the water that
otherwise would cling to the outer surface of the leaf blade is kept at
a distance from the little mouths, and these are not interrupted in the
performance of a duty so necessary to the health of the plant.
This same habit of coating its lower leaf surfaces with hair, you
notice in the speckled or swamp alder, a shrub which grows also in
wet places, and therefore runs the same risk of having its leaf
mouths clogged with water.
So when you see only the upper surface of a leaf covered with
hair, you can guess that the object of the plant is to prevent too much
perspiration; but when you see only its lower side clothed in this
same way, you can guess that the plant fears too little perspiration.
Sometimes you find a plant with leaves which have a coating of
what looks almost like dust on one or both of their surfaces. This
dust we call “bloom.” We see it in apples and grapes, as well as on
leaves. It is made up of a waxy material which is put forth by the
plant just as it puts forth hair. This bloom the plant uses also as a
help to free perspiration. By thus clothing its leaves it shields the little
mouths from water clogging; and so you can be sure that the little
mouths have not been filled with water, and thus prevented from
doing their work.
The cabbage leaf has mouths on both of its surfaces, and so both
sides are covered with this protecting bloom. If you dip a cabbage
leaf in water and then shake it, the drops roll off and leave it quite
dry.
 PRICKLES AND POISON

L EAVES need to protect themselves from other enemies than too

great heat and too much water.
We found that the prickly armor of the thistle enabled it to live in
pastures where the cattle had killed most of the other plants.
Many animals like to eat green leaves, so we are not surprised to
find that plants invent different ways of protecting themselves.
One look at the leaf of the thistle is enough to persuade us that it
would not be very good eating.
The red-berried holly, with which we decorate our churches and
houses at Christmas time, is another plant with prickly leaves.
 Some plants cover their leaves with bristles, which the cattle dread
almost as much as the stout prickles.
As we read before, the mullein defends its leaves by a fuzzy coat
of hair. Such an armor as this is less warlike than that of the thistle,
but quite as effective.
Other plants fill their leaves with juices which are either poisonous
or unpleasant.
It seems as if animals guessed the presence of these unfriendly
juices by the plant’s smell, for they will munch the different growing
things all about such a plant as this, and leave the harmful leaves
severely alone.
The nettles cover their leaves with stinging hairs. These stiff hairs
break off when handled, burying themselves in the flesh, and
sending out a burning acid that punishes severely the meddler, man
or beast, as it may happen to be.
By this time I think you realize that leaves are well worth noticing.
And when you have looked at a leaf so fully as to be able to carry in
your mind its outline, I hope you will then discover whether it wears a
coat of hair, or a dusty bloom, or a prickly armor, or a thick,
evergreen skin, and that you will decide what enemies it is trying to
escape.
 SOME CRUEL TRAPS

H AVE you ever seen a leaf like the one in this picture (Fig. 152)?
It is shaped something like a pitcher; and the plant on which it
grows has been named the “pitcher plant.”

Fig. 152

The pitcher plant lives in low, wet place, such as the shaded
swamp, or the marsh down by the lake.
On account of its curious leaves it is brought to the cities, and is
sold on the street corners or at the florists’.
In June comes the great flower of the pitcher plant. Sometimes
this is a dull red; again it is a delicate pink or perhaps a light green;
and it has faint, pleasant fragrance.
Next June I hope that some of you children will find these beautiful
flowers and these curious leaves.
Why should a leaf be shaped like a pitcher, do you suppose?
These leaves are not only pitcher-like in shape, but also in their
way of holding water; for if you succeed in discovering a settlement
of pitcher plants, you will find that nearly every pitcher is partly filled
with rain water. Usually this water is far from clear. It appears to hold
the remains of drowned insects; and sometimes the odor arising
from a collection of these pitcher plants is not exactly pleasant.
 Perhaps you wonder how it happens that dead insects are found
in every one of these pitchers; and possibly you will be surprised to
learn that apparently these curious leaves are built for the express
purpose of capturing insects.
It is easy to understand that these odd leaves are not so well fitted
as more simple ones to cook the plant’s food in the sun, or to take
carbon from the air; but if they are unfitted to provide and prepare
ordinary food, possibly they are designed to secure food that is
extraordinary.
It seems likely that the pitcher plant is not content to live, like other
plants, upon the simple food that is taken in from the earth and from
the air. We are led to believe that it wishes something more
substantial; that it needs a meat diet; and that to secure this, it
teaches its leaves to capture flies and insects in order that it may
suck in their juices.
These leaves are veined in a curious and striking fashion. The
bright-colored veins may convince the insects of the presence of the
sweet nectar in which they delight. At all events, in some way they
are tempted to enter the hollow leaf; and, once they have crawled or
tumbled down its slippery inner surface, they find it impossible to
crawl back again, owing to the stiff hairs, pointing downward, which
line the upper part of the pitcher.
Even if they have wings, it is difficult for them to fly upward in so
straight a line as would be necessary to effect their escape.
When tired out in their efforts to get out of this cruel trap, they fall
into the water at the bottom of the pitcher, and are drowned. Their
bodies decay and dissolve; and it is thought that this solution is
taken in by the leaf, and turned over to the plant as food.
It is just the old, sad story of the spider and the fly, you see, only
now it is the pitcher and the fly.
But be sure to examine one of these pitchers if you possibly can,
and then you will understand better how the whole thing is managed.
The leaf in this picture (Fig. 153), for it is a leaf, you cannot find in
our North American swamps. It grows on a plant called Nepenthes, a
plant which lives in hot countries far from the United States.

Fig. 153

The leaf in the picture is full grown, and all ready for its work of
trapping animals. Before it was old enough to do this, the lid which is
now lifted was laid nicely across the opening to the pocket, and so
prevented any unseasonable visits.
Sometimes these pockets are so large as to be able to hold and to
hide from sight a pigeon. They are gayly colored, and the rim around
their border is covered with a sugary, tempting juice. So you can
guess that the animals in search of nectar are not slow in accepting
the invitation offered by color and sweets, and that some of these
are imprudent enough to venture across the sticky edge. In this
event they are pretty sure to lose their footing on the slippery inner
surface of the pocket, and to fall into the watery liquid with which it is
filled. Even if they do not slip immediately, their efforts to crawl back
over the rim are defeated by a row of teeth such as you see in the
picture.
The liquid at the bottom of the leaf is not rain water, as in the
pitcher plant. It is given out by the leaf itself; and it contains an acid
which dissolves the animals’ bodies, so that their more nourishing
parts can easily be taken in by certain little cells which line the lower
part of the pocket, and which have been brought up to this work.
 Fig. 154

The next picture (Fig. 154) shows you a water plant. It is called the
“bladderwort,” because of the little bags or bladders which you see
growing from the branches under water. The little bladders are traps
set for water animals, which swim into them in their wish, perhaps, to
escape some enemy. But they are quite unable to swim out again;
for the door into the bladder is transparent, and looks like an open
entrance with a nice hiding place beyond. It opens easily from the
outside, but is so arranged that it will not open from within. So when
the poor little animal hurriedly swims into what seems to it a cozy
resting spot, and draws a long breath of relief at getting safe inside, it
is hopelessly caught, and must slowly starve to death, for there is no
chance of escape. It may live for nearly a week in this prison; but at
last it dies. Its body decays, and is taken in as food by the cells set
apart for that purpose.
 Strangely enough, though we ourselves do not hesitate to kill
animals for food, and sometimes, I am sorry to say, for nothing but
amusement, we give a little shiver of disgust when we find these
plants doing the same thing. Some lines that came out in one of the
magazines a few years ago express this feeling:—

“What’s this I hear

About the new Carnivora?
Can little plants
Eat bugs and ants
And gnats and flies?
A sort of retrograding!
Surely the fare
Of flowers is air,
Or sunshine sweet.
They shouldn’t eat
Or do aught so degrading.”
 MORE CRUEL TRAPS

T HE plants about which we read in the last chapter do not take

any active part in capturing insects. They set their traps, and
then keep quiet. But there are plants which lay hold of their poor
victims, and crush the life out of them in a way that seems almost
uncanny.
This leaf (Fig. 155) belongs to a plant which lives in North
Carolina. It is called Venus’s flytrap.

Fig. 155

You see that the upper, rounded part of the leaf is divided by a rib
into two halves. From the edges of these rounded halves run out a
number of long, sharp teeth; and three stout bristles stand out from
the central part of each half. When an insect alights upon this
horrible leaf, the two halves come suddenly together, and the teeth
which fringe their edges are locked into one another like the fingers
of clasped hands.
The poor body that is caught in this cruel trap is crushed to pieces.
Certain cells in the leaf then send out an acid in which it is dissolved,
and other cells swallow the solution.
After this performance the leaf remains closed for from one to
three weeks. When finally it reopens, the insect’s body has
disappeared, and the trap is set and ready for another victim.
 The next picture (Fig. 156) shows you a little plant which is very
common in our swamps,—so common that some of you ought to find
it without difficulty next summer, and try upon it some experiments of
your own.

Fig. 156

It is called the “sundew.” This name has been given to it because

in the sunshine its leaves look as though wet with dew. But the pretty
drops which sparkle like dew do not seem so innocent when you
know their object. You feel that they are no more pleasing than is the
bit of cheese in the mouse trap.
When you see this plant growing in the swamp among the
cranberry vines and the pink orchids, you admire its little white
flowers, and its round red-haired leaves, and think it a pretty,
harmless thing. But bend down and pluck it up, root and all, out of
the wet, black earth. Carry it home with you, and, if you have a
magnifying glass, examine one of its leaves.
The picture (Fig. 157) shows you a leaf much larger than it is in
life. The red hairs look like pins stuck in a cushion, and the head of
each pin glistens with the drop that looks like dew.
 Fig. 157

But the ants and flies do not take these drops for dew. They
believe them to be the sweet nectar for which they long, and they
climb or light upon the leaves in this belief.
And then what happens?
The next two pictures will show you (Figs. 158, 159).

Fig. 158

Fig. 159
 The red hairs close slowly but surely over the insect whose legs
are already caught and held fast by the sticky drops it mistook for
nectar, and they hold it imprisoned till it dies and its juices are
sucked in by the leaf.
I should like you to satisfy yourselves that these leaves act in the
way I have described. But a bit of fresh meat will excite the red hairs
to do their work quite as well as an insect, and I hope in your
experiments you will be merciful as well as inquiring.
So you see that the little sundew is quite as cruel in its way as the
other insect-eating plants. But its gentle looks seem to have
deceived the poet Swinburne, who wonders how and what these
little plants feel, whether like ourselves they love life and air and
sunshine.

“A little marsh-plant, yellow-green

And tipped at lip with tender red,
Tread close, and either way you tread,
Some faint, black water jets between
Lest you should bruise its curious head.

“You call it sundew; how it grows,

If with its color it have breath,
If life taste sweet to it, if death
Pain its soft petal, no man knows,
Man has no sight or sense that saith.”
 THE FALL OF THE LEAF

Y OU know that in autumn nearly all the leaves fall from the trees.
To be sure, a few trees (such as the pines and hemlocks) and
some plants (such as the laurel and wintergreen and partridge vine)
do hold fast their leaves all winter; but these are so few as compared
with the many plants which lose their leaves, that they hardly count.
Perhaps you never stopped to wonder why most plants get rid of
their leaves before winter comes on; but you feel pretty sure now
that there is some good reason for a habit that is adopted by nearly
all the plants that live in this part of the country.
When we were talking about the way in which leaves defend
themselves from different dangers, we found that evergreen leaves,
the leaves which hold fast to the tree and keep fresh all winter,
manage to keep their water safe inside their cells by wearing a very
thick skin, and by not having too many little leaf mouths. For when a
leaf has a thin skin and a great many mouths, its water leaks away
very quickly. And if many such leaves should remain upon a plant
into the winter, might it not happen that they would let off all its water
at a time when its roots could not find any more in the frozen
ground? And thus might not the leaves kill the plant by draining it
quite dry?
So you can see why it is well for most plants to shed their leaves
before winter comes on and the root’s drinking water is turned into
ice.
But when a plant is about to shed its leaves, it takes care not to
waste the precious food which they hold. This food it draws back into
its stem and roots, laying it away in safe places beneath the buds
which are to burst another year.
It is this action on the part of the plant which changes the color of
the leaves every fall. That material which makes them green is
broken up, and part of it is taken away. That which is left is usually
yellow or brown or reddish, and gives the leaves the beautiful colors
we see in our October woods.
So whenever you see the woods changing color, losing their fresh
green and turning red and yellow, you can be sure that the trees
have begun to prepare for winter. You know that they are stowing
away their food in warmer, safer places than can be supplied by the
delicate leaves. And when all the food has been drawn out of the
leaves, and packed away in the right spots, then the plant finishes a
piece of work it began some time before. This piece of work is the
building-up of a row of little cells just where the leafstalk joins the
stem or branch. When this row is complete, it acts almost like a
knife, loosening the stalk from the stem.
Then the leaf’s life work is over; and with the first breeze, the
empty shell, which is all that is left, breaks away from the parent
plant, and drifts earthward.
 Part VI—Flowers

THE BUILDING PLAN OF THE CHERRY

BLOSSOM

O NE day your teacher brought to school a branch broken from

the cherry tree. This she placed in water, standing the tumbler
on the sunny window sill; and now its buds have burst into a glory of
white blossoms.
To-day I want you to study the flower of the cherry; for if you know
all about this flower, which is put together in a rather simple way, one
that is easy to study, it will not be so difficult for you to understand
other, less simple flowers.
You may wonder why I do not wait till the cherry tree outside is in
blossom; but if we waited till May, other flowers, which are not built
on quite so simple a plan, would have come and gone, and you
would not have been able to understand them so well as if you had
first studied the simple make-up of the cherry blossom.
Last fall we learned a little about this flower, but we had only its
picture to help us in our work: so I think it well to begin all over again.
In looking at the cherry blossom (Fig. 160), we should first notice
the green cup which holds the rest of the flower.
This cup is divided into five green leaves.
During the babyhood of the flower, when it was quite too young to
face the cold, windy world, these green leaves were folded together
so as to shut away from all harm its more delicate parts.
 Above this green cup we see a circle made up of five white leaves.
These pretty leaves are spread outward as if they were quite proud
of themselves, and eager to attract attention.
And that is just what they are trying to do; for the cherry blossom is
not wise enough to know that here in the schoolroom there are no
bee visitors to bring it yellow dust, and to help it grow into a cherry.
These leaves are the little handkerchiefs which the cherry tree, just
like the apple tree we read about long ago, uses in signaling the
bees.

Fig. 160

Within the circle of white leaves you see a quantity of what we

named “pins with dust boxes.” You remember that these dust boxes
hold the powdery material which is as wonderful as Cinderella’s fairy
godmother in its power to do strange and surprising things.
And in the very center of the flower you find a single “pin,” as we
called it, with a flat top which is not a dust box.
But you remember that at the foot of this pin is another sort of box,
a seedbox (Fig. 161).
And you have not forgotten that it is on the flat top of this pin that
the bee brushes the yellow dust which gives new life to the seed
below, and turns the little case of the seedbox into the juicy cherry.
So now what do we find in the cherry blossom? We find
1. A green cup cut above into separate leaves.
 2. A circle of white leaves.
3. Some pins with dust boxes.
4. One pin with a seedbox.

Fig. 161

Here you have the plan on which the cherry blossom is built (for
flowers, like houses, are built on different plans), and the building
plan of the cherry blossom is one of the simplest of all. So it is well,
before studying more difficult flowers, to feel quite at home with this
one. And you must try to remember first what work each part of the
flower is expected to perform; for you see that the leaves of the
green cup, the pretty white leaves, the pins with dust boxes, and the
pin with a seedbox, have each and all their special task,—a task
which they alone are able to accomplish.
Now, in talking about a flower it is troublesome to use a great
many words where one would answer every purpose, so I will tell
you what these different parts of the flower have been named; and
by taking a little trouble to remember these names, we can save a
good deal of time.
The green cup is called the “calyx.”
“Calyx” is a Greek word meaning “cup.”
The circle of leaves which grow above the green cup or calyx is
called the “corolla.”
“Corolla” comes from a word which means “crown.”
The pins with dust boxes are called “stamens.”
“Stamen” comes from a word meaning “to stand.”
The pin with a seedbox is called the “pistil.”
 “Pistil” is another form of the word “pestle.” A pestle is an
instrument used in the drug shops for pounding and mixing
medicines. You might ask to look at one the next time you are sent to
the drug shop, and then you can see for yourselves if it really looks
like its namesake, the pin with a seedbox.
Perhaps at first you may find it a little difficult to bear in mind these
four words with their meanings; but soon they will become quite
easy, and will save you much trouble.
Green cup,—calyx.
Circle of flower leaves,—corolla.
Pins with dust boxes,—stamens.
Pin with seedbox,—pistil.
If you remember the names of these four parts of the flower, how
the different parts look, and what they do, you will have made a good
start in the study of flowers.