Journal Record (Oklahoma City, OK)
Copyright 2007 Gale Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
An Oklahoma State University researcher is leading a national study on emergency responses after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing.
Gary Webb, OSU associate professor of sociology, is a co-principal investigator on the project examining how first responders used creativity, flexibility and improvisation after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
Webb and his collaborators, David Mendonca from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Carter Butts from the University of California at Irvine, received a $700,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to complete the study.
“These disasters happened so quickly and on such a scale that first responders had to solve problems without much of a plan - in effect, they were facing situations never before seen,” Webb said. “What we want to know is how people behave when plans don’t work.”
Mendonca and Butts will focus on the cognitive and network dimensions of improvisation. Webb will study the actual behaviors first responders engage in to solve disaster-induced problems.
“Human beings are resilient in the face of disasters not only because of their ability to plan, but also as a result of their ability to adapt,” Webb said. “A major goal of this research is to better understand how human ingenuity and creativity can be channeled toward more effective disaster responses in the future.”
Webb is a researcher with OSU’s Center for the Study of Disasters and Extreme Events.