FACS Florida Atlantic Comparative Studies An Interdisciplinary Journal CATASTROPHE AND REPRESENTATION Volume 9 • 2006-2007  EDITORIAL STAFF CONTENTS Senior Editor PEGGY SCHALLER Foreword PEGGY SCHALLER ............................................................................................. i Editors REBECCA KUHN JILL KRIEGEL Saisir Ie desordre: Expressions Iitteraires de la catastrophe; ALESSANDRA SENZANI modalib~s et enjeux de sa verbalisation KRISTYL STADLER AMINATAHRI LOIS WOLFE The Morning After A Night to Remember: Faculty Advisory Board The Lesson of the Titanic LUIs DUNO GOTTBERG BREE HOSKIN .................................................................................................. 13 BRIAN MCCONNELL MARCELLA MUNSON Places That Disaster Leave Behind MYRIAM RUTHENBERG BRUCE JANZ .................................................................................................... 33 FACS Literary Journal Nuclear Families and Nuclear Catastrophe in Languages, Linguistics, and Comparative Literature Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) Florida Atlantic University PAUL WILLIAMS .............................................................................................. 53 777 Glades Road Boca Raton. FL 33431-0991 tel: (561) 297-3860· e-mail: [email protected] Personal History, Collective History: Mapping Shock and the Work of Analogy The views expressed ill FACS are those of its cOlltributors a/U/ 1I0t necessarily AMANDA IRWIN WILKINS ............................................................................ 71 those of the individual members of its editorial staff, or of the faculty, staff, or administration at Florida Atlantic Ulliversity. FACS is published through the gellerosity of FAU and SO and is free to all FAU students. It's What Isn't There That Is: Catastrophe, Denial, and Cover art: 2007 copyright © Jacqueline Studio Virtuale Non-Representation in Arshile Gorky's Art KIM THERIAULT .............................................................................................. 85 Arshile Gorky images used with permission courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; and Board of Trustees, CONTRIBUTORS....................................................................................... 109 National Gallery of Art, Washington. © 2006-2007 by Florida Atlantic Comparative Studies CALL FOR PAPERS .................................................................................. 111 All right reserved. ISSN 1088·4610 I ISBN ref# 1-58112-972-6  FACS I 1006-1007 PLACES THAT DISASTERS LEAVE BEHIND BRUCEJANZ The four hurricanes that hit Florida in August and September 2004 were popularly seen as unprecedemed, and as such the media struggled to narrate them. This article traces the construction ofthe hurricanes in the Orlando Sentinel over the two months and argues that the public narr(ltive of first hurricane, Charley, minimized and stigmatized opportunities for place-tnaking, despite the oft-repeated truism that "communities pull together during disasters." After this hurricane, heroes were depicted as official or corporate while individuals and communities were encouraged to remain passive. The overwhelming community response was put in economic terms and emphasized the protection of property from looting, scam artists, and price gougers. This differsfrom how other papers constructed the hurricane, notably the Ft. Myers News-Press. The construction ofthe Florida hurricanes is a window on our "place­ making imagination". Places do not simply spring into existence from nothing, but are imagined by those who have reason to care. If the socially legitimated frame of reference for all event precludes such imagination, one ends up with emaciated places. These places function on the most reductionist, individualist, and materialist tertns because no other options can be imagined. The responsibility ofthe newspaper at tillles like this is to not only report the facts and interpret them for the readers, but also to enrich place-making imagination. n 2004 Orlando Florida was hit with an almost unprecedented series I of storms and hurricanes. Within two months, Hurricanes Charley, Frances, and Jeanne struck, and Hurricane Ivan made a near miss. Billions of dollars of damage resulted from these disasters, and several dozen lives were lost. It is tempting, in the case of extreme events, to either regard them as having no need of interpretation (that is, as simply given, material events shared by everyone), or as a kind of rare window on the workings of a community.l In this paper I want to examine the public construction of the meaning of the hurricane in Orlando, particularly as represented in reports at the time in the major newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel. I am especially interested in place-making, that is, the ways in which places gain or fail to gain meaning in times of stress. I will suggest that opportunities for place-making were lost in Orlando because of the frame the events around 33 Janz / Disasters FACS / 2006-2007 Hurricane Charley were given. Hurricane Frances, though, was treated he tends to deal with philosophical analysis rather than rhetorical framing. differently in the Orlando press, and the discourse around the hurricanes of However, his point is legitimate-there is a relationship between our 2004 provides a contrast to the kind of rhetorical response that circulated imagination of place and the necessity or opportunity for change. Sack during the disastrous hun'icane season of 2005. argues that "we can gain moral insight by confronting our geographical In the case of some disasters, community is reinforced, and the nature" (5). In a sense, then, he addresses the connection between place­ skills of place-making are exercised. The reaction to Hurricane Charley making and morality. What we see in the example of the hurricanes in in Orlando, on the other hand, tended not to reinforce community, and Florida in 2004, as well as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, is that we do not tended nottocontribute to place-making. While it is extremely difficult to simply transform places into what we think they should be as a moral measure sense of place or sense of community quantitatively, it is possible project. Rather, our moral and place-making projects become available to to make sense out of the interpretive tools people have at their disposal in us as we relate place to discourse, that is, as we narrate the nature of place a disaster. What comes out of all this. I think, is something I want to call and the events that have gone into constructing or altering place. Sustained "place-making imagination". This is analogous to the concept of "moral newspaper coverage of an event can contribute to the framing of a place, imagination" in ethics (M. Johnson). Our moral options extend as far as not merely through its inclusions but its exclusions. our imagination will allow. A person might boil the moral universe down Hurricane Charley hit the Florida peninsula late in the day on to polarized options-fight or flight, kill or be killed, choose Aor B-when Friday, August 13. 2004. While its arrival had been predicted several in fact a more cultivated and aware imagination may have afforded other days in advance, its fury surprised most people. It was upgraded from a options, perhaps better ones than either polarized one. But where category 2 to a category 4 hurricane just hours before it hit shore. It left 23 moral imagination come from? Under what conditions does it have the dead, thousands displaced, and billions of dollars of property destroyed. maximum possible reach? And, do people bear moral responsibility Everyone in the area was affected, either directly or through people close their lack of imagination? We might think about education, openness to to them. otherness and difference, tolerance, and other virtues as contributing to Understanding the nature of this disaster requires analyzing its moral imagination. representations. Hurricane Charley, I argue, was understood as a disaster for Place-making imagination is similar. Under what conditions property rather than for community, despite the fact that people were killed place be made? Only under those conditions in which it can be imagi and lives were disrupted. As a tragedy of property, the official institutional If the socially legitimated frame of reference for an event precludes and media response in Orlando was to very quickly place it in an economic imagination, places end up emaciated. And if, as Foucault would frame (as opposed to Ft. Myers, for instance, where the damage was more official discourse imagines heterotopic space, which establishes severe, and the displacement of people more serious). Events were framed and heteronormati ve categories, the possibility ofplace-making . in official terms, rather than community terms. Individual help to others become slim. These places function on the most reductionist, ind was discouraged both actively and by lack of coverage. One story, in and materialist terms because no other options can be imagined. fact, even pathologized the impulse to excessive help as survivor's guilt Robert Sack presents place-making as follows: ("People suffering survivor's guilt often push themselves to the limit trying In not accepting reality as it is, we transform it through place­ to help." ("Shock triggers emotional roller coaster"» despite the fact that making. The transformations may be large-scale and continuous, there was little evidence of the excessive compulsion to help. There was, or small-scale and infrequent. In place-making, we may create then, a double incentive to be passive - the tendency to highlight official something new, or retum to something that once was. Even specialization of responders, and an unofficial lack of place-making skills if we want to keep things as they are, we still transform as by relatively recent residents. we remove things that do not belong and prevent things from entering (Sack: 4-5). In Orlando there were few reported incidences of strangers coming together. While strangers would strike up conversations in restaurant Sack perhaps oversimplifies the issue-he does not consider lines (which could be prodigious, since so few were open - waits of 2.5 possibility of large-scale, infrequent transformations such as disasters, v 34 35 Janz I Disasters FACS I 2006-2007 - 3 hours were not uncommon), there was little documented evidence back on, and do not question when those across the street get their power in the media that people looked out for anyone but themselves. I within hours after the hurricane, while you wait for days. The response to asked a friend, a long-time resident of Florida, whether people in his the disaster in Orlando might have been well-planned, but one result of neighborhood had helped their neighbors, and he snorted, as if the idea that planning was that people were generally discouraged from coming was ridiculous. He opined that the disaster had not been severe enough together as a community, and were in the process encouraged to isolate to necessitate such interaction. themselves and wait for professional help. The point is not that "Orlandonians did not help each other" - that The Orlando Sentinel asked and answered the question of public would require a different kind of study than this, and in any case is involvement most directly in the headline: "Best Way To Help? Stay Out of probably not true. Rather, comments like this are what made me wonder the Way." ("Best Way"). Most ofthe story discouraged public involvement initially how the print media constructed the disaster. They drew my by describing its rigorous requirements and making clear that "[t]he call attention to the relationship between personal knowledge and officially for help is not an invitation to send garage-sale junk to the needy," as if presented accounts of the disaster. It was clear that families helped others there had been any call for help at all, and as if the first thing potentially in their family, and friends helped friends. In some places, strangers helped generous people needed to know was how to not be generous. The story strangers. And yet, even in those places, people I talked with mentioned did go on to add that if a person was willing to help, the best way would feeling isolated. It would no doubt be possible to perceive a difference be to give money, turning a potential community-building opportunity into of community sentiment in different regions of the city. The observation something much more anonymous and isolating ("Here's How to Find I make about the relative lack of community support is really a way Help"). The contrast to a story in the Ft. Myers News-Press (Ft. Myers understanding the social construction of the disaster. was hit by the same hurricane) titled simply "List of Relief Efforts"2 There was at least one person who made the Orlando Sentinel as is quite remarkable-instead of discouraging donations and framing "The Hero of Berwick Street" (P. Johnson). This person purchased two legitimate response as solely official, the News-Press story listed places chain saws, and was going around the neighborhood clearing trees that that would accept a range of goods, and managed to portray government, had fallen, and in some cases had damaged property. What is interesting local business, and community as equally mobilized and engaged ("List about this account is not the laudable effort of an individual, but that it of Relief Efforts"). No single group was portrayed as the only or official was deemed noteworthy, and that the reporter describes him as the lone solution to the problem, and the potential of community was not only gunslinger coming into town to clear out the riffraff (in fact, the story recognized, but fostered. started with: "He might have resembled Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti Most of the stories in the Orlando Sentinel emphasized official westem, packing six-shooters ready to save the town, except that he help, whether local, national, or corporate.3 The stories of communities a Dave Matthews Band T-shirt, sholts and hiking boots"). In other helping each other were almost non-existent. General Motors, for instance, this person's efforts were understood as the actions of a lone hero, not as was going to send gasoline-electric hybrid trucks, in a story that looked those of an individual responding to a community. His comment: more like an advertisement than an actual news release (Smith). FEMA are people sitting inside their houses and doing nothing," he said. moved its office to Orlando, emphasizing the speed of federal response. 4 you're able to help, I think that you should." The heroes were mostly official and corporate ones (Damron). What was Despite his plea, most of the official media in Orlando encoura missing in the Sentinel was a forum for the community to come together. people to do exactly the opposite. In spite of the occasional narrative While the Sentinel did run a "chat" blog, it was difficult to find, poorly individual heroism, there was a kind of enforced and officially manda~cu organized, not specific to the occasion, and hence little used. Compared passivity. If a resident tuned in to the radio or read the paper, the messag. to the Ft. Myers News-Press, there was almost nothing. The News-Press was to do nothing. Do not touch anything, do not use the water, do not. set up forums for a variety of topics, ranging from practical matters to drive around unnecessarily. Do not eat the food in your fridge, do not do discussions on questions like "Did you hide in a strange place?", "What anything to make matters worse. Do not ask when your power will strange stuff washed up on your lawn?", "What belongings did you choose 36 37 Janz I Disasters FACS I 2006-2007 to save?" and "Tell us about acts of kindness you saw."5 In other words, community, even a fleeting or virtual one, which the managers could see the newspaper facilitated an active community, and contributed to place­ or which they felt they might have any membership in. Interestingly, the making, rather than framing the events in official terms, contributing to lack of power forced people into the lobby, where they exchanged news further isolation among the people. and rumors. It became the LNN: the Lobby News Network. People did, in It is worth considering the tone of stories in the Orlando Sentinel in fact, help each other with flashlights, food, and other necessities, but the the days that followed, because this too contributed to the general lack of opportunity for the staff of the hotel to be part of that community was not place-making. A story on Tuesday, August 17 began as follows: even recognized, much less acted upon. Utility-company crews had restored electricity by Monday to While examples exist of this kind of official passivity, there are also half of the 1.5 million Central Florida residents who lost power examples of groups delivering material aid. Churches fed people, as well as in Hurricane Charley, but this success spawned new anxiety workers who had been displaced. Disney offered to contribute to the hotel and envy among those still left in the dark. costs of employees who had been displaced. Banks and other businesses helped their employees. And, there are many stories of neighbors helping "We've been hit heavy, and it seems like nobody's been out here," said Jane Sowers, a 41-year-old accountant and customer each other. Official passivity does not mean that no one helped anyone, but of Progress Energy Florida in south Seminole County (Tracy & that the disaster was constructed in such a way as to discourage or ignore Salamone). those who assisted others in favor of officially mandated responses. 7 When Note the implication in these lines. The solution to the problems spontaneous communities did form in various neighborhoods, they formed come from official sources (the utility companies), but those solutions were in spite of the official construction of the events, rather than because of it. isolating and ended up being divisive. Abandonment meant abandonment In fact, we could take this a step further. Foucault argues that there are by official actors, not by other people. This particular story has some "other spaces" ,heterotopias, which define liminality (e.g., the spaces inhabited context: there is a history of suspicion toward Progress Energy in during rites of passage) or deviance (Foucault). He imagines a heterotopia Orlando area (Winter Park, an Orlando suburb, had a referendum in the as an arrangement of existing space which serves to demarcate social order, fall of 2003 in which they decided to drop Progress Energy as the and reinforce normativity. He argues that the heterotopias from past times, energy provider6). But the beginning of the story establishes in the reader's which he calls "heterotopias of crisis" because they are where people in mind that the solutions are economic ones, dealing with propelty relations, crisis temporarily retreat to, are giving way to "heterotopias of deviance", so and that these solutions may not be equitable. Readers are set against called because they are more permanent spaces where a person's very identity readers, and against the official problem-solvers, even as those qualifies them for otherness. He does not, however, consider the possibility problem-solvers are put forward as the only response to the present that the space itself moves, that is, that the physicality of space undergoes The narrative of conflict is between active and passive agents - the such a radical change that new discursive forms are required. But discourse problem-solvers are ambiguous saviors - they rush to aid, but are percei does not appear from nowhere, and the changes in physical form amount to to violate principles of distributive justice. The response of the a simultaneous imposition of dystopia and heterotopia upon a previously agents can only be verbal (the complaint) or emotional (the familiar space. The dystopic space is the space offear and uncertainty, while since their passivity has been already established. This narrative may the heterotopic space is the space of imposed otherness, unfamiliarity, and newspapers (conflict always sells, as does emotion) but it does nothing lack of recognition. Foucault imagined the heterotopia as distinct from the foster community or place identity. utopia (and by implication, the dystopia), but disaster brings these together. In another example of official passivity, a new colleague of mine The inscription of this new, liminal, temporary space has the potential to town for job orientation found herself in a local hotel. When the storm fulfill the fantasies of official narrators (as in Orlando), and reveal carefully the power went out. The hotel staff deemed it an "act of God", and as hidden fissures and aporias (as in New Orleans in 2005). The fantasies may they refused to help the residents in any way. They did not even repl not be universally shared, of course, and the fissures may have always been depleted emergency light batteries (surely an illegal act). There was apparent to those willing to look, but the disaster necessitates a new official 38 39  ) Janz I Disasters FACS I 2006-2007 narrative, that can return things to order, or more likely, oppOltunistically is much easier to come together as humans. When the tragedy is framed create a new order. as one of property, though, especially in the US where property is seen By August 19, a few stories started appearing in as an individual attribute, it is more likely that people will look out for which seemed to suggest there was community spirit and place-making themselves rather than each other. The assumption of economic exchange imagination. Even these, though, need to be understood as something could be felt in Orlando even before the storm came from the many radio other than stories that encourage place-making. For example, a story and television stories on how to prepare for hurricanes. titled "Generating Good Will" (Santich) seemed to be about a community One of the first and most persistent messages in the media was that coming together, but in fact was a story about the foresight of the (upscale) price gouging would not be tolerated (Dawson), People were encouraged inhabitants in having purchased a generator for the community the previous to report those who they believed were raising prices opportunistically. year. The writer emphasizes the bourgeois comforts that these residents Again the tragedy was put in economic terms rather than human ones,9 could continue to enjoy: Specifically, this makes the disaster into an issue of individual exchange Super and Murray brought margaritas. Churchill Thompson rather than communal meaning. Price gouging is an affront to the whipped up shrimp in a garlic-curry sauce. Kelley Gangle individual, not to the group, and certainly not to any group that might form baked her secret-family-recipe crumb cake. The next night spontaneously in response to the tragedy. As well, since the tragedy was it was Mediterranean pasta with calamata olives, chickpeas economic, a central fear was the disruption of the legitimate economic and chicken, a mixed green salad with feta and goat cheese, and hot-chocolate croissants for dessert. This -- while half of structures by "scam artists", It is noteworthy that the potential problem Orlando hunted for an open McDonald's. was given a higher profile in the Sentinel, which framed the disaster as economic, than in the News-Press, which framed the disaster differently, There was also a column on August 19 that praised Orlando's as one of community rather than property (Dawson). There were also many cohesiveness as a community. What was remarkable about the aIticle was stories about the possibility of looting, even though these stories tended to that not a single example was given of this community cohesiveness. be about fears of looting rather than actual reports of it (e.g., Mercado). article echoed the received wisdom about disasters, which is that people Focusing on the fear oflooters tends to create anxiety over one's property, come together and community is enhanced. As I have argued, even and plays the economic values against community values, The message of this happened, the media's construction of events supported a different the price gouging, scam artist and looting articles is that one's neighbOrs conclusion. August 19 brought the first column about citizens' dnn~tinn!L (or strangers in general) are not to be trusted, an attitude which hardly which had been organized by a radio station and local businesses opens one up to the possibility of place-making in a time of crisis. Promotion of these charity efforts was a step toward place-making, The economic nature of the tragedy is underscored by the speed with after five days of discouraging or ignoring such activities, it seemed a which officials "re-opened" Florida for tourist business (Jackson). While contribution to place, amidst the continuing stories of official salvation the governor made a pro forma statement about the need to "be sensitive" passive citizens. When the Sentinel organized their hurricane stories to those who had suffered tragedy, the message was that the real tragedy a daily basis (a useful thing to do), they subtitled August 22's was economic, and the way out of it was to attract tourists. The need to as "Neighbor helps neighbor as the recovery process continues."x be sensitive was interpreted economically by those on the tourist board: was more than a week after the hurricane, when one might expect that "Tourism executives agreed that it is important not to trumpet the state too "hard" news had all been reported, but even at that point, surprisingly loudly, in part because hurricane season is still under way and more threats of the stories on the page bore the theme of community response could arise quickly and prompt the need for even more emergency ad some did deal with individual heroism or generosity, this is not the spending later on." In other words, the real problem was not that peoples' as place-making). trials might be trivialized by a rush back to economic business as usual, but There is another aspect of the tragedy which seems to contribute that the effort could backfire if another disaster occurred. The economic overall passivity, and that has to do with the social construction of the again trumped the human. event as essentially an economic tragedy. When the tragedy is human, 40 41 Janz / Disasters FACS /2006-2007 It is worth noting in passing that the story in which Governor Jeb Bush Many hotels in the area had been adversely affected. There is an economic spoke of being sensitive, he also made one of the only calls for community. logic to this-when everything else is closed, the place that is open can involvement that appeared in the Sentinel. The story ends with the sentence. make a lot of money. There was also no doubt a human logic in play as ascribed to the governor, that "it is time for Floridians to 'roll up the sleeves' well - visitors had come from far away, paying a lot of money for their one and help in any way possible." No details were given as to what kind of week in the sun, and would be annoyed if some of that was taken away (or help might be possible, and in fact, a clearer message about this would not perhaps, pleasantly surprised if Disneyworld managed to open so quickly appear in any other reports in the newspaper or on the radio. after a devastating event). But it is not the logic that I am interested in, The political implications of the situation were not lost on some but rather the image of devastation all around while the colorful fantasy observers. 2004 was an election year, and Florida is a swing state, governed of Disney remained intact. Disney truly must be the Magic Kingdom, it by the brother of the president. The question was raised in at least one story: seems, to survive the disaster that laid low everything else in the area. The Republican governor denied his decision to visit heavily And those who were drawn there (by all accounts, the park was packed) Hispanic Poinciana was based on political calculations, though could withdraw from reality into fantasy, safely oblivious to the immediate winning support in the area could be doubly important in the tragedy and loss. November presidential election. His brother President Bush and Understanding a disaster in individualist terms can be translated as Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry are wooing the crucial psychological. Indeed, several newspaper stories framed the effects of Hispanic vote, and Poinciana is part of the Interstate 4 corridor the hurricane in individualist terms (Shrieves; Shelton 19 August 2004; where both nominees are waging a fierce battle (Mariano). Shelton 20 August 2004). These psychological accounts described the The relatively low profile given to political issues related events in cause and effect terms-the hurricane caused a variety of stress­ HUiTicane Charley is noteworthy. The previous major hun-icane which hit related conditions, and counselors were ready and willing to explain how Florida, Hurricane Andrew in 1992, also came in an election year, to deal with these conditions. These reports also tended to frame the human the previous President Bush was finishing off a first term and running for effects of the storm in individual rather than in collective terms. But these a second. Michael Sal wen performed a quantitative rhetorical analysis psychological accounts of peoples' actions, motivations, and stressors stories at the local and national level to identify the kinds of sources obscure the ways in which place is made socially available. The issue here and the resulting stories that were told during Hurricane Andrew (Sal wen). is to account for how those who have the power to make sense of the events He was particularly interested in the relationship between local and federal do so, and how these meanings solidify power relationships between state bodies, and found a great deal of tension. Individuals, local, and state and corporate structures and people in communities. The question is, is officials quoted in stories tended to praise other individuals or local place made available in this dramatic set of events, and if so, how? And, state officials rather than federal agencies (Sal wen: 835). It is no given that a disaster is a form of Foucauldian heterotopia, how do official that Hurricane Andrew became a political issue in 1992, when there narrators take control of the public narrative about place, and create or fail a Republican president and a Democratic governor (Lawton M. Chi to create places that are in the interests of those who live in the place. In Jr.), and did not become a political issue in 2004 when the president this case, as I have argued, the narration was quite insufficient to the public governor were not only from the same party but from the same family imagination of renewed place. There were stories about peoples' reactions well. Instead of vilification of official sources of aid, the Sentinel depi to the events ("Siren's Song"), but only one of these stories had to do with those sources as the solution to the problems that the hurricane created. community or place-making, and it was about patching up long-standing As perhaps befits Orlando, while the opportunity to create grudges while removing a fallen tree (Patterson), was not taken, a kind of simulated place creation did occur. As one might The point of all this is that an opportunity for place-making presented expect, when simulated places are concerned, Disney was involved. itself, and was largely lost as the tragedy was constructed primarily as an had employees stay on site the evening of the hurricane, and they began economic event to be handled by experts. One colleague mused that the cleanup immediately after the storm subsided. They managed to open difference between this event and the events of 9/11 was that 9/l1 was far three of the four parks the next day, only two hours late (at 9:30 a.m.). 42 43 Janz I Disasters FACS I 2006-2007 worse, in a way that forced people to rely on each other. That event had terms; in the second case, there was still a framing of the response as official, to be constructed as human, even though the economic loss was vast. This but officialdom started to have a face. In "City Workers Leave Their Desks hurricane, bad as it was, was not bad enough in terms of the loss of life to Pitch In" (Schleub), the response to the threat was shown to be more (cel1ainly not as bad as the following year in New Orleans) to cause people personal and community-oriented. The mayor urged individuals to help: to turn to each other. In fact, while there was loss of property, another Mayor Buddy Dyer urged residents with pickups to help clear their colleague thought that she noticed a kind of excitement in some people, as streets of branches before Hurricane Frances can tum them into if the chaos was a welcome break in an otherwise boring existence. projectiles. Many heeded the call. By early afternoon, Schaefer The significance of disasters for place is in the way in which events said, nearly a hundred residents had dumped loads at just one of three collection sites the city has established (Schleub). make places available, for better or worse. Dramatic events hold forth the promise of both showing places for what they are, but also of making This plea, and its response, stands in contrast to the official framing of new places available. This is why we memorialize dramatic events in Hurricane Charley and the message that passivity was the best response. material ways. We create places where there were none before, or where As the disaster progressed, the difference in coverage in the Sentinel they have now become available. If the effect of Hun'icane Charley will be became more apparent. For one thing, the blog which was previously memorialized, it seems clear to me that Ft. Myers will do that long before hidden and ineffective became a central feature of the website. l1 It Orlando does. In Orlando it is more likely that, once peoples' lives have contained stories by Sentinel staff about people and how they coped with returned to normal and the city has been cleaned up, Hurricane Charley the hurricane. There were fewer stories which framed the disaster in terms will be forgotten until it can be used as the yardstick for efficient official of property alone. People were not encouraged to remain passive, and response at the next disaster. fewer stories framed the response in solely official terms. While not many Three weeks after Hurricane Charley, on September 4, 2004, specific ideas were given as to how a person could participate, the picture Hurricane Frances appeared on the east coast of Florida. Frances was of Hurricane Charley was one of a storm that had assailed the community a much larger hurricane, with cloud cover the size of Texas and winds as a whole, not simply individuals or their economic interests. higher than Charley. It also moved much more slowly, which meant that There were also some stories reported about communities coming the destructive force had longer to act over land. In response, Florida state together. In "Bowling Alley Rides Out Storm" Slewinski profiled a local oflicials enacted the largest evacuation in the state's history in the days business that had a history of providing refuge for local people. In "Bar prior to Frances' landfall. lO Owner Bounces Back to Feed Fellow Islanders" Roy told the story of Patty The construction of this second hurricane was framed by the first. McGee, who stayed near her bar and restaurant and was able to open when People were weary from the first - insurance claims from Charley there was no other food available. While these stories were still relatively still being addressed, and a great deal of debris had yet to be cleared rare, they did exist. curbs. Orlando in pat1icular stood to take heavy damage a second time. There were still plenty of stories about property damage due to In fact, Frances did not cause as much physical damage as Charley (the Frances, but it was notable that there was less emphasis on disruptions to slow movement meant that the coast was hit much harder than Orlando, the economic order, in the form of price gouging, scam artists and looters. miles inland), but with a weakened infrastructure, any more damage It is particularly notable since more looters were reported after Frances too much. It is interesting to note the differences in the public construction than were reported after Charley. These activities were treated as actual of the second hurricane, and to theorize about why these differences crimes after Frances, rather than as abstract threats. have occurred. Again, these reflections are not based on a sociological Why did the tone of the coverage in the Sentinel change from one analysis of the responses of the public, but on an analysis of media sources hurricane to the next? There are some obvious answers to that. First, in their construction of the second event. Charley was the first real hurricane Orlando had endured for decades. To There was a subtle change in the stories leading up to this second some extent, the editorial staff had to learn how to report a hurricane to hurricane. The construction of the first hurricane was in anonymous oflicial their own community. Frances came in Charley's wake, and it is quite 44 45 Janz f Disasters FACS f 2006-2007 possible that the news staff had time to reflect on the overall impression of the state and local level. Thus. the response to Katrina could not simply be the stories by the time they had to report on Frances. And. as one journalist seen as incompetence, inexperience or even cronyism, but had to be seen for the Sentinel mentioned to me. both the staff and the public after Charley as having political overtones. Florida in 2004, a wealthy swing state with a were suffering from "hurricane fatigue". Repolting on Frances under those Republican governor in an election year. mattered more than Louisiana in conditions may have allowed some interpretive shift to occur. 2005. a poor, largely black Democratic state in a non-election year. But it is also possible that with the second hurricane there came a What was more interesting. in comparing the disasters of 2004 in realization that place did matter, and that the community was not well­ Florida and 2005 in the Gulf Coast, was the difference in the sense of place served by the earlier framing. Disasters do not just reveal place. Depending that accompanied the rhetoric. The places hit hardest were very different on how they are understood, they give occasion for the making of place. places in both the public and the local imagination. Orlando is highly But things are not quite so simple, because those narratives about place transient. with most of the population being from somewhere else; New are not created out of nothing. We narrate place based on the kinds of Orleans is a place where generations of a family live within the same few individual or collective losses that are felt in a disaster. If peoples' roots are blocks. Orlando is associated with clean, family friendly tourism; New shallow in a community (as is the case in Orlando, where there has been Orleans is associated (at least for some) with decadent tourism. But more explosive growth through an influx of people from elsewhere), then loss is importantly, Orlando is a place continually in search of itself. a place that understood in terms of individual property. There are few places that have has largely traded history for theme parks. New Orleans, on the other hand. shared meaning. and therefore few that have shared loss. I may feel sorry is continually faced with its own well documented and celebrated past. if someone else loses their house. but that house was not meaningful to me Place-making imagination was limited in each case. although in in a direct way. If. however. there are public spaces, shared meaningful different ways. Disasters tend to oversimplify place imagination, as the spaces that are lost, then we can narrate the loss together. and perhaps find a need to act takes precedence over the need to analyze. In Orlando, though. way to come together in that situation. Orlando is not devoid of signi the simplification of place imagination served to underscore the importance places, but it takes work to find them; they are more easily simulated than of federal aid. while in New Orleans the simplification of place imagination created, and it is easier to report on individual, economic losses and official served to justify the absence of that aid. In New Orleans, the local and state corporate responses. After these easy stories were told. the more humane governments were portrayed by federal sources as being incompetent, as stories started to emerge. not having asked for help. Local people were portrayed as self-interested Frances was not the final hurricane to hit Florida in 2004. Ivan 12 and and violent (even though later media reports of this violence were largely Jeanne 13 both went through. making 2004 the most active hurricane season debunked). In Orlando the aid flowed in, while in New Orleans aid was to date for Florida. But the depiction of hurricanes became a slow in coming, and even when it was promised it was not delivered concern in 2005 with the arrival of three hurricanes that quickly. All of these depictions reveal a different kind of heterotopia from category 5 status at some point in their lives: Hurricane Katrina in New Orlando. one which could not easily be re-inscribed by an appeal to official Orleans and Mississippi, Hurricane Rita further west on the Gulf and corporate sources. The disaster in New Orleans was far larger. But the and Hurricane Wilma in the south of Florida. Especially with narration in the media took an interesting tum, as New Orleans in general Katrina. the rhetoric of hurricanes became more obviously political. as and the Superdome in particular started being compared to a refugee inflections of race and class became foregrounded and as the press took up situation. This thinly veiled reference to race ("refugee" rarely is applied a more traditional and (in recent years) forgotten role as crusader for to first world whites) established a narrative that was largely absent from downtrodden. The fact that the hurricanes were understood in official and Orlando's situation a year earlier. The heterotopia became inscribed on bureaucratic terms in 2004 meant that the absence of such a response in and by the skin of the people, as the implication circulated that disaster 2005 became all the starker. It was not just that FEMA had failed to respond might be the true and natural state for the people who could not leave New to Katrina; it was that FEMA had been cast just the previous year as the Orleans to avoid the storm. Place-making imagination in 2004 in Florida efficient responder to hurricanes. as the seamless conduit of federal aid to constructed official and corporate places. which served to render social 46 47 Janz I Disasters FACS I 2006-2007 actors passive; in 2005 in New Orleans, it constructed racialized places, Notes which served to render citizens foreign. I. [E]xtreme events ...are marked by "an excessiveness which allows us better to perceive the In each case, though, the imagination of place became limited, as facts than in those places where, although no less essential, they still remain small-scale and involuted" (Klinenberg: 23). the crisis forced people to rely on what they thought they knew about 2. For a full list of stories from the Ft. Myers News-Press on the hurricane, go to http://www. the places affected. And this is the central problem in crisis situations news-press.comlnews/weatherlhurricane/index.html of any sort-place-making imagination must be limited, in the i 3. For all the Hurricane Charley coverage from the Orlando Sentinel, see http://www. of action. This is the lingering danger of disasters, that they can tend to orlandosentinel.comlnewslweather/orl-charley-gallery,0,507073 r.storygallery solidify existing and problematic senses of place, making what is fluid 4. And, in contrast to the tension between state and federal bodies during Hurricane Andrew and provisional into something permanent. In most cases, disasters pass, in 1992, local officials were quick to downplay divisions in favor of creating a single official response: "I think the response we received from state and federal officials has been and places become complex again. But in a country that exists in the wake very timely, very accurate and reliable," [County Manager Mike Herr] said (Mahlburg). of terrorist attacks, the representation of a hun'icane such as Charley can 5.http://www.news-press.comlnewslweather/hurricanelindex.html become metonymical, a small image of the larger limitations of place­ 6. One writer did make the connection, jokingly, between the Winter Park vote and the making imagination. Places of terror come to pass through narratives perceived slowness in bringing back their power (fhomas). of terror, that is, narratives that take the results of threat as a given, and 7. One story did suggest that there was help between strangers, though, amidst reports of construct places in response to that threat. So, when disaster strikes, the jealousy between those who had utilities and those who did not (Kunerth et. al.). available narratives that can feed place-making imagination have already 8. http://www.orlandosentinel.comlnews/locallstatelorl-charley-gallery -day II ,0,5835426. been limited. story gallery Place-making imagination operates within existing narratives, but ia 9.1 am fully aware that this contrast is a problematic one for many including those followers of Adam Smith and other who see economic activity as the quintessential human activity not limited to them. Heterotopias that come to pass in the wake of disasten (to be human is to trade). 1 stand by the contrast, however, since 1 argue that framing draw on previous ways of framing disasters. So, while there are surely the disaster in terms of property stands against other interpretive frames, and tends to undermine place-making in anything but the most limited sense. The point is not that differences between the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005, and between property should be ignored, but that it should not be the framing principle. natural disasters and the attacks of Sept. II, 200 I, these heterotopilll 10. For full Orlando Sentinel Hurricane Frances coverage, see http://www.orlandosentineI. share their narratives, transforming and adapting them for new situations. comlnewslweather/orl-frances-gallery, I ,2699972.storygallery? There is, then, the illusion of community cooperation even as passivity 11.1t is worth noting that the newspapers'websites were an importantsourceofinformation. "At reinforced. In 2004, just as in the aftermath of 9/11, the responses OrlandoSentinel.com, traffic doubled Thursday and continued above nonnal throughout the weekend, said Anthony Moor, editor of the Sentinel's Web site" (Mendelsohn). overwhelmingly framed as official and corporate. In New Orleans, the other hand, the heterotopia is about the racialized other, mirroring 12. For full Orlando Sentinel Hurricane Ivan coverage. see http://www.orlandosentinel.coml news/weather/ort-ivan-gallery, I ,2382534 .storygallery construction of us/them places, places of civilization vs. places of raci 13.For full Orlando Sentinel Hurricane Jeanne coverage, see hup:llwww.orlandosentinel. inflected squalor and dirt. cOmlnewslweather/orl-jeanne-gallery,1 Al76215.storygailery And these heterotopias become a kind ofdomicide (Porteous & not in a literal sense of the destruction of home, but in a narrative sense, the disaster first takes the home away, and then the narrative the space left, so that home is no longer possible in the same way. PI making imagination, in this situation of domicide, must find ways to discourse rich again, rich enough that the easy, misleading constr"O't;n.... ,1 of place cannot easily take root. This place-making imagination with alternate media accounts of events of this sort, and must necessarily include m1istic, academic, and public attempts to counter the sli move between heterotopias of crisis and heterotopias of deviation. 48 49 Janz I Disasters FACS 12()(}6-2()()7 Works Cited Porteous, J. Douglas & Sandra E. Smith. Domicide: The Global Destruction "Best Way To Help? Stay Out of the Way." Orlando Sentinel 17 August ofHome. Montreal: McGill-Queen's P, 2001. 2004: 31. Roy, Roger. "Bar Owner Bounces Back to Feed Fellow Islanders." Orlando "Here's How to Find Help. Help Others." Orlando Sentinel 17 August Sentinel 7 September 2004: A16. 2004: A16. Sack, Robert. A Geographical Guide to the Real and the Good. London: "List of Relief Efforts." Ft. Myers News-Press 18 August 2004. Accessed Routledge, 2003. 21 March 2005. http://www.news-press.com!news!weather/hurricanef Sal wen, Michael B. 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