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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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 CHAPTER 2

Learning as Sensemaking

Abstract This chapter presents a review of the sensemaking literature. I

show that sensemaking is prompted by equivocal circumstances and com-
prises seven characteristics. I then show how sensemaking has been used
within public inquiries as a way of learning from crises and disasters. I
conclude by bringing attention to the lack of focus in research studies that
seek to examine what happens in relation to sensemaking and learning
within emergency management organizations after a crisis and/or disaster.
This is important because to date research studies have focused on what
happens during a crisis and/or disaster event, but not afterward.
Accordingly, lessons learned have been developed without due regard for
future bushfires.

Keywords Sensemaking perspective • Equivocality • Emotion •

Antilearning

In this chapter, I review the sensemaking literature and show how it plays
an important role in learning. Scholars agree that sensemaking is a well-­
established theory or perspective that has had a significant influence on
organizations and the way in which they make meaning within their envi-
ronment (Colville et al., 2016; Holt & Cornelissen, 2014; Sandberg &
Tsoukas, 2015). In general, sensemaking has mainly been associated with
research that is “interpretive, social-constructionist, processual and

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

Switzerland AG 2022
G. Dwyer, Making Sense of Natural Disasters,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94778-1_2
16 G. DWYER

phenomenological” (Brown et al., 2015: 266). The variety of subject areas

that influence sensemaking has meant that the concept is usually defined
from a range of different perspectives (Colville et al., 2016; Sandberg &
Tsoukas, 2015). Sensemaking is ultimately a social process whereby indi-
viduals create plausible meaning and understandings when they encounter
novelty, anomalies, equivocality and/or discrepant cues in their environ-
ment (e.g. Maitlis, 2005; Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010; Sandberg &
Tsoukas, 2015).
Novelty and equivocality sit at the core of emergencies, crises and disas-
ters. However, they also persist during public inquiries following such
events and as emergency management practitioners and organizations seek
to make their own sense of bushfire events and to implement the recom-
mendations emerging from public review processes (Dwyer et al., 2021a).
Equivocality arises as individuals and groups experience novelty, ambiguity
and uncertainty. It is associated with the complexity and unpredictability
of organizational life in general, but is exacerbated when circumstances
such as bushfires (and other emergency events) arise (Brown et al., 2008;
Dwyer et al., 2021b).
Equivocality, and the circumstances that surround it, has been defined
in different ways by different scholars. Allard-Poesi (2005) associates it
with confusion and ambivalence, while Balogun and Johnson (2005) asso-
ciate it with uncertainty. Sometimes it is associated with ambiguity (e.g.
Sonenshein, 2007); sometimes, it is differentiated from it (e.g., Colville
et al., 2013; Brown et al., 2015). For the purposes of this book, I define
equivocality in general terms, where some form of confusion and ambigu-
ity leads to discrepant cues which, in turn, give rise to multiple interpreta-
tions that are reconciled through a social process of sensemaking (e.g.
Weick, 2001; Weick et al., 2005). Such equivocality can arise gradually or
rapidly, with sensemaking being a delineating “process by which organiza-
tional situations are framed, narrated or categorized through the words or
bodily gestures of agents in contexts, and how these structure subsequent
perceptions” (Holt & Cornelissen, 2014: 525). Accordingly, Weick et al.
(2005: 410) have suggested that “sensemaking and organization consti-
tute one another” because the organization will emerge “from an ongoing
process in which people organize to make sense of equivocal inputs and
enact that sense back into the world to make it more orderly”.
While the literature suggests that sensemaking can be prompted by
mundane, everyday moments in ‘sensible’ organizational environments
(Patriotta & Brown, 2011), there seems to be agreement among scholars
 2 LEARNING AS SENSEMAKING 17

that sensemaking (or its absence) is much more potent and visible in non-­
sensible environments such as crises and disasters, where inconsistent or
conflicting cues give rise to novelty and equivocality for individuals (Weick,
1993). In particular, studies show that disasters are often characterized by
“dynamic complexity” (Colville et al., 2013: 1201). In disaster situations,
scholars have observed that “the sense of what is occurring and the means
to rebuild that sense collapse together” (Weick, 1993: 634).
Given that disasters often result in significant damage and losses, gov-
ernments will usually establish public inquiries to make sense of them
(Stark, 2019a, 2019b). Public inquiries make sense of disasters through
ceremonies and rituals, including evidence hearings, from which indepen-
dent appointees of government construct an authoritative account of find-
ings and recommendations (Dwyer & Hardy, 2016; Gephart, 1984). Such
accounts are often expected to prompt changes within organizations
(Dwyer et al., 2021a). Hence, an important point of interest of this book
is what happens after such inquiries, and whether (as well as how) they
prompt learning.
We know little of the ways in which emergency management organiza-
tions make sense of public inquiry recommendations and findings. The
spur to sensemaking is the extent to which bushfires cause significant dam-
ages and losses to communities, and how they create complex and danger-
ous work environments for individuals who work in emergency
management organizations. After enduring such harrowing experiences,
emergency management practitioners are often required to recount their
traumas at public inquiry hearings, meaning that emotions may play an
important role (Dwyer, 2021a). We therefore need to know more about
the emotions that arise from such experiences (Dwyer et al., 2021b) and
their effects (Maitlis et al., 2013).
The remainder of this chapter elaborates on sensemaking as a concept –
a cluster of characteristics – and shows how it arises from equivocality, with
a particular focus on disasters. I then focus on the ways in which public
inquiries have made sense of such disasters. This is important as a way of
bringing attention to the way public review processes could be conducted
in a more meaningful way in the future and give rise to learning in emer-
gency management organizations. By examining the sensemaking litera-
ture with an emphasis on crises and disaster studies, I provide an insight
into the way that meaning is made by emergency management actors and
the organizations they work in. I then develop my areas of interest that
pertain to what happens afterward: How does sensemaking occur in
18 G. DWYER

emergency management organizations after the findings from public

inquiries have been published, and how do emotions influence meaning-­
making within these organizations? With this in mind, the next section
explains sensemaking as a cluster of related characteristics, providing the
conceptual foundation for identifying the way this notion shapes, influ-
ences and gives rise to learning.

2.1   What Is Sensemaking?

Sensemaking “…emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospec-
tive sense of what occurs” (Weick, 1993: 635). As such, sensemaking
comprises “at least seven distinguishing characteristics” in two broad, self-­
explanatory components (Weick, 1995: 17). The first component is sens-
ing, comprising two general characteristics:

• it is retrospective, and
• it is shaped by identity construction, founded on the premise that
people construct cognitive schemes that are built up over time from
lived experience (Gioia & Thomas, 1996; Helms-Mills, 2002;
Weick, 1995).

These guide people in their response to stimuli such as events, prompts,

triggers and surprises (Brown & Humphreys, 2003; Dutton & Dukerich,
1991; Schwandt, 2005; Weick et al., 2005; Weick, 1993).
The second component, making, has five general characteristics:

• the process is enactive of sensible environments

• it is social
• it is ongoing
• it focuses on extracted cues, and
• it is driven by plausibility rather than accuracy.

In the ‘making’ component of sensemaking, people attempt to enact

sensible environments through “conversational and social practices”
(Gephart, 1993: 1469) about specific events in order to arrive at an under-
standing about what is plausible, rather than objectively accurate.
Questioning, framing, bracketing and storytelling enliven the social pro-
cess at the heart of sensemaking (Balogun & Johnson, 2004; Brown &
Jones, 2000; Maitlis, 2005; Nigam & Ocasio, 2010). Generally, the
 2 LEARNING AS SENSEMAKING 19

making properties are informed by how people ontologically and episte-

mologically understand their environment (Fiss & Hirsch, 2005).
Collectively, these properties enable sensemaking to materialize and
unfold through “language, talk and communication”, which bring “situa-
tions, organizations and environments” into existence (Weick et al., 2005:
409). However, sensemaking has proved difficult to define. In fact, one of
sensemaking’s foremost scholars, Karl Weick, cautions against using these
properties in a definitive manner, arguing that they are better thought of
as a general guide for conceptualizing the sensemaking perspective (1995).
These properties have given sensemaking scholars a model by which they
can understand how “people develop some sort of sense regarding what
they are up against, what their own position is relative to what they sense,
and what they need to do” (Weick, 1999: 42). The remainder of this sec-
tion examines these characteristics in more detail.
Drawing on Schutz (1967), Weick (1995) highlights retrospective
thinking as an important property of sensemaking. Sensemaking involves
the ongoing retrospective development of plausible images that rational-
ize what people are doing (Weick et al., 2005: 409). The literature has
observed that past experience is a meaningful part of behavioural actions
(Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991; Humphreys et al., 2012; Maitlis, 2005;
Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010) and all sensemaking involves reflection on
past experiences (Gioia & Thomas, 1996). This implies that there can be
no sensemaking without reference to the past (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991;
Weick, 1993, 2010). Studies show that people use histories in the form of
stories (Humphreys & Brown, 2002) to justify action for change or proj-
ect desired future states (Brown & Humphreys, 2003). These are closely
related to personal experiences stored in cognitive schemes built up over
time to make sense of complex reality and influence how people behave
(Balogun, 2003; Louis, 1980; Louis & Sutton, 1991; Weick, 1995).
Change management initiatives often adopt a revisionist history focus,
with an emphasis on reconstructing, remembering and/or re-interpreting
images, identities and reputations (Orton & Weick, 1990; Porac et al.,
1989) as a foundation for meaning and understanding towards a desired
future (Gioia et al., 2002). In turn, this implies that meaning is made
according to the identity adopted by the sensemaker or the sensegiver at a
particular time (see Bartunek et al., 2006; Brown & Jones, 2000; Brown
et al., 2008).
Scholars have observed that an individual’s identity construction plays
a key role in how they ‘make sense’. The literature suggests that identity is
20 G. DWYER

constructed from an individual’s existing cognitive schemes or mental

modes, which are shaped by their lived experience and their environment.
Accordingly, the sensemaking literature suggests that, cognitively, peo-
ple’s identities are inseparable from how they think about their experi-
ences in life and from the values, attitudes and norms they live by (see
Louis, 1980). The literature posits that people will even enact different
identities from mental modes to fit with their environment (Brown et al.,
2008). Over time, people build ways of thinking within cognitive schemes,
which have been shown to be malleable as people will often alter their
identity to fit with that of their organization at any given time (Dutton &
Dukerich, 1991).
Cognitive schemes have been shown to influence the way that people
make sense of their environment as individuals (Balogun & Johnson,
2004; Maitlis, 2005). While sensemaking and identity have a cognitive
dimension, the literature shows that they are also socially constructed, in
that individuals seek to influence each other’s reality about what may be
occurring in organizational situations and environments (see Balogun &
Johnson, 2004, 2005; Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991; Mills & Weatherbee,
2006; Myers, 2007; Mullen et al., 2006).
Studies have also shown that individuals in groups socially construct
their identity (e.g. engineers during the space shuttle Challenger explo-
sion or the firefighters at Mann Gulch) by collectively interpreting data to
construct a shared meaning about what is unfolding in changing environ-
ments (see Vaughan, 1990, 2006). Disaster situations have been shown to
challenge individuals’ identities and hence their ability to make sense
(Shrivastava et al., 1988; Vaughan, 1990, 2006; Weick, 1988, 1993) as
they find their cognitive schemes have no previous cues that can enable
them to interpret the equivocality arising in their environment. During
disasters or times when equivocal cues are high, individuals (as well as
groups) will often become so overwhelmed that they lose the ability to
enact and interpret equivocal cues which, under normal circumstances,
would enable them to make and give sense (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991;
Maitlis, 2005; Weick et al., 2005).
Enactment is the mechanism by which people in organizations con-
struct their environment as they experience it (see Cornelissen et al., 2014;
Pondy & Mitroff, 1979). This feature of sensemaking as a social process
enables people to “bring events and structures into existence and set them
in motion”, resulting in new constraints and opportunities that did not
exist before they engaged in enactment (Maitlis, 2005; Weick, 1988: 306).
 2 LEARNING AS SENSEMAKING 21

The literature suggests that, through enactment, people and organizations

construct and act on new expectations of the future and/or interpreta-
tions of the past (Mullen et al., 2006; Weick, 1988, 1995) – before, dur-
ing and after an emergency, crisis or disaster event (Dwyer, 2021a). Such
studies also demonstrate how environments can be socially constructed, as
individuals bracket specific moments to subjectively interpret cues within
organizational routines, hierarchy and interactions (Cunliffe & Coupland,
2012; Maitlis & Lawrence, 2007; Weick, 1988, 1995, 2010) at the micro
level of the organization (Catino & Patriotta, 2013; Rouleau, 2005).
The literature illustrates sensemaking as a dynamically fluid, social and
ongoing process with no defined beginning or end (Weick, 1995), where
people interact within their environment through stories while moving
across and between existing cognitive schemes of experience to under-
stand novel situations (Cornelissen, 2012). “Talk, discourse and conversa-
tion” (Weick, 1995: 41) are the key mediators of these social sensemaking
processes (Geppert, 2003; Louis, 1980). Maitlis (2005) shows that sense-
making is omnipresent in organizations as a means for people to under-
stand and attribute meaning to their work lives through narrative
exchanges. It provides “clear questions and clear answers” (Weick, 1993:
636), and precedes and follows decisions at all levels within the hierarchy
(e.g. see Balogun & Johnson, 2004, 2005), while stimulating cognitive
triggers that drive sensemaking (Maitlis & Lawrence, 2007) and often
define the emotional response people have to situations (Maitlis &
Sonenshein, 2010).
As active participants in sensemaking processes, people interpret sense-
making cues, which “…are simple, familiar structures that are seeds from
which people develop a larger sense of what may be occurring” (Weick,
1995: 50). These cues provide people with the basis for scanning, notic-
ing, surveilling and framing intangible organizational phenomena. In
turn, this process enables these phenomena to be interpreted at all levels
in the organization to make and give sense about salient events that have
occurred, are occurring or may occur in the future (Weick et al., 2005;
Vaughan, 1990, 2006; Weick et al., 2008). Without cues there would be
no basis for people to intuitively engage in sensemaking and take action in
the organizational context (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Labianca et al.,
2000; Weick, 1993, 1995).
Bracketing, connecting and interpreting cues based on salient frames
are central to the process of developing plausible accounts of what is hap-
pening in organizational situations (Colville et al., 2013). As a subjective
22 G. DWYER

process, sensemaking can never be concerned with ‘accuracy’ or ‘truth’;

instead it is concerned with “plausibility, pragmatics, coherence, reason-
ableness, creation, invention and instrumentality” (Weick, 1995: 57; see
also Myers, 2007). Although accounts may not always be accurate, they
must be socially acceptable and credible if they are going to result in mean-
ing, understanding and action (Brown & Jones, 2000; Brown et al.,
2008). Scholars have found that stories as social constructions of individu-
als’ lived experience (Louis, 1980) play an important part in building
plausibility into sensemaking processes (see Colville et al., 2012;
Humphreys et al., 2012) because they show the “patterns that may already
exist in the puzzles an actor now faces, or patterns that could be created
anew in the interest of more order and sense in the future” (Weick,
1995: 61).
Scholars have suggested that sensemaking properties are best illustrated
when people are compelled to ask themselves who they are within the
context of their organizations, and forced to understand what is going on
around them in their environment (Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010). These
seven sensemaking properties have been used by scholars to show how
people ascribe meaning and understanding to what is going on in their
organization (e.g. see Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991; Maitlis, 2005; Thomas
et al., 1993; Weick, 1993). These characteristics as part of a sensemaking
process have also been shown to provide the basis for action such as orga-
nizational learning and change (Colville et al., 2016).
I define sensemaking as a social process of face-to-face interaction
among individuals, which is ongoing until plausible meaning is made of a
stimulus prompted by noticing, framing and bracketing cues emerging
from within the organization and its environment (Weick et al., 2005;
Weick, 1995). Sensemaking cues play a complex and nuanced role in the
meaning-making process and have received considerable attention in
research studies. Studies suggest that cues are signifiers that enhance
understanding. They can include ‘fragments’ that exist in organizations,
such as numerical readings from processes and systems, text from written
documents or talk from conversations among individuals, all of which may
prompt action insofar as they provide a basis for interpretation and the
creation of new meaning (Colville et al., 2014; Dwyer & Hardy, 2016;
Maitlis, 2005).
The literature suggests that as individuals interpret cues they begin to
negotiate, produce and collectively bring a new organizational reality into
existence, prompting a process of learning and sometimes even change
 2 LEARNING AS SENSEMAKING 23

(Currie & Brown, 2003; Schwandt, 2005). Sensemaking and its key char-
acteristics are often used in organizations to provide plausible explanations
about why certain cues are framed and used to justify learning (Colville
et al., 2014; Crossan et al., 1999; Weick, 1995). In this way, sensemaking
has been used to show how people seek to learn and implement change
(Bean & Hamilton, 2006; Brown & Humphreys, 2003; Turner, 1976),
while also showing how strategy creation, collective cognition, decision-­
making and knowledge creation unfold in different contexts. These prop-
erties give people a basis “to accept the diversity and mutation of the
world…so that this changing world shall not become meaningless”
(Fuentes, 1990: 49–50). This is particularly relevant for scholars seeking
to build more prospective sensemaking theory in the kinds of turbulent
environments in which emergency management organizations operate.
Scholars have suggested that sensemaking gives rise to sensegiving,
which is the process of attempting to influence the sensemaking and mean-
ing construction of others towards a preferred redefinition of a “new orga-
nizational reality” (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991: 443). Sensegiving is also
an interpretive process (Bartunek et al., 1999; Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991)
in which individuals – possibly from different hierarchical levels of the
organization – influence each other through persuasive or evocative lan-
guage choices (Dunford & Jones, 2000). Scholars have shown that sense-
giving is used by organizational leaders (Bartunek et al., 1999; Corley &
Gioia, 2004; Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991), middle managers (Balogun,
2003) and other specialists and/or employees in organizations (Maitlis,
2005). Moreover, sensegiving has been shown to influence the way in
which sensemaking (Maitlis, 2005) occurs, as individuals, usually manag-
ers, disseminate new understanding to individuals at lower levels of the
organizational hierarchy – information that ultimately shapes how they
understand themselves, their own work and that of others, as well as their
perceptions of emergency phenomena in their environment (Gioia &
Chittipeddi, 1991).

2.2   Equivocality and Sensemaking

Equivocality is a feature of everyday societal and organizational life. As
explained earlier, equivocality refers to organizational information that
gives rise to a range of different meanings or multiple interpretations,
which prompt individuals to begin sensemaking (Putnam & Sorenson,
1982). Equivocality can arise in many different ways: it may emanate from
24 G. DWYER

events in an organization that are very different to what has previously

occurred (e.g. Weick, 1993), or it may occur because of disagreements
about the interpretation of symbols and artefacts (e.g. Dutton & Dukerich,
1991). It can also result from factors that serve to violate expectations
(e.g. Bowman & Kunreuther, 1988; Christianson et al., 2009).
Circumstances that give rise to equivocality can then prompt sensemak-
ing, whereby individuals begin to inquire, probe and challenge themselves
and each other about what they are interpreting and observing in their
environment, in order to create a shared understanding of what is occur-
ring (Catino & Patriotta, 2013; Maitlis, 2005). Individuals may be able to
recreate “an intersubjective sense of shared meanings through conversa-
tion and non–verbal behavior in face-to-face settings where actors seek to
produce, negotiate, and maintain a shared sense of meaning” (Gephart
et al., 2010: 284–285), as long as they remain able to interpret the cues
from their environment. In this section, I examine two important contexts
of equivocality where sensemaking has been studied: during disasters and
in post-disaster inquiries.

2.2.1  Sensemaking During Disaster

A large amount of research on sensemaking has been carried out in rela-
tively stable environments, such as companies, orchestras, universities,
utilities, hospitals and religious orders (e.g. Porac et al., 1989; Maitlis,
2005; Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991; Labianca et al., 2000; Bartunek et al.,
2006; Nigam & Ocasio, 2010; Bean & Hamilton, 2006). However, sen-
semaking in the context of disasters has attracted particular attention from
scholars because equivocality is particularly high in such settings (Dwyer
et al., 2021; van Hulst & Tsoukas, 2021; Billings et al., 1980; Weick,
2010). By their very nature, disasters create what Colville et al. (2013:
1201) refer to as “circumstances that are suffused with dynamic complex-
ity”. This poses challenges for sensemaking at all levels in the organization,
as individuals have to make sense from ongoing, complex surprises emerg-
ing from the regular and rapid onset of “continuous discontinuous
change” (Colville et al., 2012: 8) that can threaten both the existence of
the organization and the lives of those managing the situation
(Weick, 1993).
Studies by various scholars shave shown that people often enact behav-
iours that cause, contribute to and/or exacerbate disasters (Christianson
et al., 2009; Vaughan, 1990, 2006; Weick, 1988, 1990, 1995, 2010).
 2 LEARNING AS SENSEMAKING 25

Disasters often have their origins in human error and entrenched habits,
routines and patterns; these may give rise to the disaster in the first place
and/or conspire to constrain people’s ability to engage in meaningful sen-
semaking during the disaster (Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010; Weick, 1988,
1990), as individuals fail to observe cues and generate plausible meanings
about what may be unfolding (Brown, 2000, 2004; Gephart, 1984, 1993;
Turner, 1976; Weick, 1993, 2010). For example, Perrow (1967, 1981:
18), using the example of an accident at a nuclear power plant, shows how
centralized authority stifles people’s ability to pick up on cues and enact
sensemaking behaviours that may avert a crisis. Weick’s (1990) case study
of a collision between two aircraft at Tenerife Airport in 1977 shows how
interruptions to routine generate false hypotheses about situations, which
may create a disaster as people fail to make sense of what is happening
(Termeer, 2009; Termeer & van den Brink, 2013; Weick, 1990). In the
case of the NASA space shuttle Columbia, Vaughan (2006) shows that an
absence of sensemaking can result in errors and misconduct, with disas-
trous consequences.
The disaster sensemaking literature has shown that the unpredictable
and rapidly changing conditions that occur during disasters affect people’s
ability to frame events, bracket cues and develop plausible accounts as
events unfold (Dwyer, 2021b; Howitt & Leonard, 2009; Weick, 2010).
Sensemaking is critical during disasters, but can be difficult to enact. This
is a particularly acute challenge for emergency management organizations
responsible for managing disasters (de Rond, 2017; Quarantelli, 1988),
when the result can be large numbers of fatalities and high levels of
destruction, often resulting in a review process conducted by either the
organization itself or the government through a public inquiry (Dwyer
et al., 2021).

2.2.2  Sensemaking During Public Inquiries

Public inquiries are temporary organizations that bring together relevant
individuals and/or groups in a facilitated manner to discuss and deliberate
on matters of public interest such as crises and disasters (Stark, 2019a,
2019b; Prasser, 2021; Gephart, 1984). Individuals may continue to expe-
rience equivocality following a disaster if there is no definitive account of
what happened and why losses or damages were so significant (Dwyer &
Hardy, 2016; Gephart, 1984, 1993). Public inquiries are often perceived
as an important way of making sense of such equivocality in a plausible, if
26 G. DWYER

not always accurate, manner (Dwyer, 2021a; Turner, 1976, 1978;

Vaughan, 1990, 2006). By bringing together different parties associated
with a disaster, public inquiries involve individuals and/or groups in a
deliberative process (Pascoe, 2009; Prasser, 2006), which allows for pro-
tracted debate and discussion about different aspects of disasters – recon-
structing and re-interpreting what happened (Gephart, 2007). This, in
turn, enables governments to create perceptions of transparency and
accountability in an authoritative manner (McKay, 2009; Prasser, 2006).
Inquiries are therefore mechanisms for rebuilding public confidence and
protecting organization legitimacy where failure is evident (see Boudes &
Laroche, 2009; Brown, 2000, 2004, 2005; ’t Hart, 1993; Turner, 1976),
as well as forms of coping and future policy development (Botterill, 2014).
Public inquiries range from informal ‘town hall’-style meetings in com-
munities with few rules as to how their deliberations are conducted, to
more formal arrangements provided for under statute and modelled on
quasi-judicial proceedings (Prasser, 2006). In the case of formal inquiries,
governments will usually appoint independent commissioners who can use
statutory powers to solicit testimony under oath from witnesses, who may
be subpoenaed (Pascoe, 2009). Where disasters are particularly complex,
commissioners and witnesses will usually be represented by legal counsel
(Pascoe, 2009). Governments often commission formal public inquiries to
provide an explanation of what happened and why in relation to high-­
profile disasters. These face-to-face ceremonial occasions adhere to various
rituals as they assemble representatives from organizations with varying
levels of involvement in the disaster (Brown, 2004).
In the course of an inquiry, commissioners ask a series of questions to
which witnesses respond, giving rise to a social process of sensemaking in
which rich descriptions of the disaster are built from different perspectives
in an authoritative forum (Brown, 2000, 2004). The process of sensemak-
ing is often extended through a series of public consultations, formal sub-
missions and exhibits from the community. These may support or refute
witness claims, shaping the final form of the commissioners’ report
(Boudes & Laroche, 2009; Bowman & Kunreuther, 1988; Gephart,
2007; Pascoe, 2009). The outcome of the inquiry is usually an authorita-
tive report, often supported by a collection of transcripts that record evi-
dence, hearings and cross-examinations. The report articulates the most
significant issues in the disaster under examination (Gephart et al., 1990),
as well as recommendations for future improvements to reduce the chances
of the disaster occurring again (Boin et al., 2009; Stern, 1997).
 2 LEARNING AS SENSEMAKING 27

Many researchers argue that, despite being perceived as authoritative,

public inquiry reports comprise a series of normative judgements (i.e. sub-
jective decisions informed by pre-existing values rather than objective
logic), coupled with authorial strategies of omission and selection, as com-
missioners seek to reconstruct what happened and why (Brown, 2000,
2004; Brown & Jones, 2000; Dwyer, 2021a). These accounts may be
more plausible than accurate in relation to accountability and responsibil-
ity (Gephart, 1984, 1988, 1993; Gephart et al., 1990, 2010; Brown,
2000, 2004, 2005; Brown & Jones, 2000). Scholars have suggested that
they are only one construction of events (Boudes & Laroche, 2009;
Gephart, 1984), and are the result of sensemaking by the authors con-
cerned and the decisions and selections made when constructing their
report (Gephart, 1984, 1988, 1993). They may emphasize blame rather
than transparency (Resodihardjo, 2020), and may be more concerned
with protecting the system rather than with the fate of individuals (’t Hart,
1993; Brown, 2004; Gephart, 1993). Nonetheless, the authoritative
nature of such reports means that they are expected to provide a basis for
action such as new policy, learning and change in organizations (Stark,
2020; Dwyer & Hardy, 2016; Pascoe, 2009).

2.2.3  Sensemaking and Learning

Public review and inquiry process have proved to be an important basis for
learning insofar as organizational actors can leverage knowledge from sys-
tems at the individual and group levels of the organization (Catino &
Patriotta, 2013; Buchanan, 2011; Argyris & Schön, 1978, 1996) so that
errors can be corrected and change can be made in an objective, fact-­
driven manner through intuiting, interpreting, integrating and institu-
tionalizing (Crossan et al., 1999).
Learning occurs in two ways (Argyris, 1976). Single-loop learning
occurs through error correction, but without altering the underlying gov-
erning values of the system and/or organization. Double-loop learning
occurs when errors are corrected by changing governing values and subse-
quent actions. Thus single-loop learning produces change within the
existing organizational culture, while double-loop learning leads organiza-
tions to re-evaluate governing values and potentially change their culture
and practices at a more fundamental level. Moving from single-loop to
double-loop learning allows organizations to adjust their culture so that
they can escape the ‘cultures of entrapment’ that produce antilearning
28 G. DWYER

(Weick and Sutcliffe, 2003: 73). This arises when organizational actors
(and/or processes) remain blind to incompetencies and inefficiencies, giv-
ing rise to inadequate performance that can harm the organization and its
stakeholders (Argyris, 1993; Argyris & Schön, 1996).

2.3   What Happens After Disaster and Public

Inquiry Sensemaking?
Scholarly work has recently examined sensemaking (or a lack thereof) sur-
rounding and following specific disasters, but there has been little atten-
tion focused on what happens after an inquiry into a disaster has finished
its deliberations, including the responses it sparks within emergency man-
agement organizations (Dwyer et al., 2021). Given the role that these
organizations play in preparing for and responding to disasters and provid-
ing evidence to public inquiries, their responses would seem to be impor-
tant, especially as public inquiries are established, at least ostensibly, to
stimulate and implement learning from the event. Research has recently
found evidence that this occurs when public administration organizations
undergo a process of conceptual mapping in relation to lessons learned
following the release of public inquiry findings and recommendations
(Stark, 2019a, b, 2020). Turner (1976, 1978) systematically analyzed sig-
nificant disasters in the UK between 1966 and 1974 to show that readjust-
ing culture was necessary in state organizations to manage and alter the
institutional behaviours that preceded disasters, in order to try to prevent
them from happening in the first place. Disaster inquiries may therefore
provide valuable opportunities for single- and double-loop learning and
organizational change; this may prevent behaviours contributing to non-­
conformance, deviance and errors that have played a role in the disaster
(Ashford, 1990; Elliott, 2009; Elliot & McGuiness, 2002; Lalonde,
2007). However, this continues to be contested, as scholars have reported
evidence suggesting that public inquiry recommendations are not imple-
mented in an efficient and effective manner (Tolhurst, 2019, 2020).
From existing theory, we know that stable hierarchies enable individu-
als at different levels to make sense of equivocal cues through the social
processes of sensemaking and sensegiving so that over time they can con-
struct plausible meaning as they reflect on their experiences (see
Thackaberry, 2004; Balogun, 2003; Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Gioia &
Chittipeddi, 1991; Weick, 1995). A study by Thackaberry (2004) found
 2 LEARNING AS SENSEMAKING 29

that, although self-reflection comprising sensemaking and sensegiving

activities within the US Forest Service may engender new ways of thinking
and diagnoses about firefighter safety issues, bureaucratic management
may obstruct cultural change. Furthermore, while studies suggest that
hierarchy plays an important enabling role for senior management to ‘give
sense’ to people at lower levels of an organization (e.g. Gioia & Chittipeddi,
1991), it has also been shown to contribute to disasters by prompting
action that exacerbates or escalates an emergency situation (Cornelissen
et al., 2014). For example, Vaughan (1990, 2006) has highlighted several
ways in which hierarchical structures contributed to the disintegration of
space shuttle Columbia:

Cultural traits and organizational practices detrimental to safety were

allowed to develop, including: reliance on past success as a substitute for
sound engineering practices (such as testing to understand why systems
were not performing in accordance with requirements); organizational bar-
riers that prevented effective communication of critical safety information
and stifled professional differences of opinion; lack of integrated manage-
ment across program elements; and the evolution of an informal chain of
command and decision-making processes that operated outside the organi-
zation’s rules. (CAIB, vol. 1, 2003: 9)

This research suggests that hierarchy may have played a role in contribut-
ing to the Columbia disaster. But what part did it play afterward, as orga-
nizations sought to respond to the lessons learned from the disaster? What
emotions surfaced as different actors were called before the inquiry to
explain what happened and why? Did the findings give rise to organiza-
tional change that addressed the issues raised by the inquiry?
We still know relatively little about what happens within organizations
after public inquiries have concluded their work and made their findings
known. Do emergency management organizations ever actually make
sense of and interpret the recommendations from public inquiries and
does this enable them to ameliorate the future effects of disasters? We
know that public inquiries can prompt managers to implement change in
emergency management organizations (Dwyer et al., 2021a; Stark, 2020),
though others have claimed that the ritualized and political aspects of pub-
lic inquiries inhibit learning (Buchanan, 2011) and have led to a politiciza-
tion of public review processes. This is problematic because emergency
management organizations have become preoccupied with accountability,
30 G. DWYER

which has diminished their ability to reduce the impact of bushfires

(Tolhurst, 2019). Such claims suggest that sensemaking and learning in
disaster and crisis contexts are in tension with each other (Schwandt,
2005). Indeed, studies have shown that public inquiry recommendations
can give rise to learning in present moments that has limited meaning in
any prospective sense (Dwyer et al., 2021a). This suggests that public
inquiries must become more prospective in their approach to improving
organizational function in order to improve future emergency planning,
response and recovery.

2.4   Sensemaking and Emotion

When sensemaking takes place during disasters and also during inquiries,
where individuals often experience considerable equivocality, it is likely
that these individuals will also experience different emotions. The emer-
gence of equivocality in organizations can trigger a condition referred to
as cognitive loading (Sweller, 1994), as individuals seek to interpret ambig-
uous cues through sensemaking and sensegiving (Gioia & Chittipeddi,
1991; Thomas et al., 1993) when learning from past crises and recogniz-
ing future ones (Lerbinger, 2012). This section discusses the influence of
cognitive loading on people’s response to changes in organizational con-
ditions, suggesting that it gives rise to different emotions when individuals
make sense of equivocality before, during and after disasters (Thatcher
et al., 2015).
Cognitive loading is the use of the brain’s working memory to absorb
information from outside world inputs (based on Sweller, 1994). The
brain’s ability to attribute meaning and understanding to these inputs is
determined by its amount of available working memory (Paas et al., 2003),
which is often hindered as disasters unfold (Thatcher et al., 2015). The
more working memory available, the more likely it is that people will be
able to attribute meaning and understanding from outside world inputs to
their experience and relate it to knowledge residing within their cognitive
schemes (Sweller, 1994). Sweller (1994), Paas et al. (2003) and Van
Merrienboer and Sweller (2005) identify three types of cognitive loading
that, when combined, equal the sum of total cognitive loading that people
experience. Intrinsic loading is the level of difficulty associated with the
new experience, which will be higher if a person’s brain has multiple fac-
tors to consider at once. Intrinsic loading is minimized where people can
process factors progressively, from simple to complex. Extraneous loading
Another random document with
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 Fig. 2. Union Railway Station, Springfield, Massachusetts
The first roads that improved on the Indian trails were, of course,
made for wagons. The gorge of the Westfield was so rugged that a
hundred years ago it seemed almost impossible to make a good
wagon road through it. There were some people, however, who
thought that it could be done and who determined to do it. Their
courage won, and before long there was a good highway all along
the roaring river. The bowlders were rolled out of the way, the trees
were cut, the roadbed was made, and people could go east and west
in the stages without risk of losing their lives or even of breaking their
bones. This was accomplished soon after 1825, but it did not solve
all the problems of the Massachusetts people, for, as we shall soon
learn fully, the Erie canal was finished in that year, and a long string
of canal boats began to carry produce from the West to New York.
The good people of Boston watched all this going on. Every load
of grain was headed straight eastward as if it were coming to
Massachusetts bay, thence to go by vessel to Europe. But when it
reached the Hudson it was sure to turn off down that river to help
load ships at the piers of New York. And New England had only a
wagon road across the mountains! A wagon road will never draw
trade away from a tidal river, and thus we can understand why a
prominent Massachusetts man, Charles Francis Adams, spoke of
the Hudson as “a river so fatal to Boston.” Boston might have all the
ships she wanted, but if she could not get cargoes for them they
would be of no use. Shipowners, seeing that there was plenty of
western freight in New York, sent their boats there. It was indeed
time that Boston people began to ask themselves what they could
do.
They still had ships, but these were usually “down East”
coasters, and the noble vessels from far eastern ports, laden with
spices and teas, silks, and all the spoils of Europe and Asia, rarely
came to Boston, but brought more and greater loads to New York
and Baltimore, where they could lay in corn and wheat for the return
voyage. Even the Cunards transferred most of their boats and finally
all their mail steamers to New York.
 Fig. 3. The Valley of Deerfield River at Charlemont,
Massachusetts, on the Line of the Boston and Maine
Railroad
The people of Boston first said, “We will build another canal, up
the Hoosick and down the Deerfield valley, and then the canal boats
will keep on to the east.” As states often do, they appointed a
commission to see if the canal could be built, and what it would cost.
But what were they to do about Hoosac mountain, which stood a
thousand feet high, of solid rock, between the Hoosick valley on the
west and the Deerfield valley on the east?
They decided that they would tunnel it for the water way. Rather
strangely they thought it could be done for a little less than a million
dollars. A wise engineer made the survey for the canal, and when he
remarked, “It seems as if the finger of Providence had pointed out
this route from the east to the west,” some one who stood near
replied, “It’s a great pity that the same finger wasn’t thrust through
the mountain.” The plans for the canal were finally given up, and
though many years later such a tunnel was made, it was not for a
canal, nor was the work done for a million dollars.
 Every one was talking now of railways, but few thought that rails
could be laid across the Berkshires. It was even said in a Boston
paper that such a road could never be built to Albany; that it would
cost as much to do it as all Massachusetts would sell for; and that if
it should be finished, everybody with common sense knew it would
be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon. We need not
be too hard on this writer, for it was five years later when the De Witt
Clinton train climbed the hill from Albany and carried its handful of
passengers to Schenectady.
One of the friends of the railway scheme was Abner Phelps.
When he was a senior at Williams College, in 1806, he had thought
of it, for he had heard about the tram cars in the English coal
regions. In 1826 he became a member of the legislature of
Massachusetts, and the second day he was there he proposed that
the road should be built.
In time the project went through, but at first it was planned to pull
the cars with horses, and on the down grades to take the horses on
the cars and let them ride. We do not know how it was intended that
the cars should be held back, for it was long before the invention of
air brakes. The line was built to its western end on the Hudson in
1842, and thus Boston, Worcester, Springfield, and Albany were
bound together by iron rails.
There was only a single track and the grades were heavy. The
road brought little trade to Boston, and most of the goods from the
West still went by way of the Hudson to New York. It was, however, a
beginning, and it showed that the mountain wall could be crossed.
The subject of a Hoosac tunnel now came up again. It would
take a long time to tell how the tunnel was made; indeed, it was a
long time in making. It was begun in 1850 or soon afterwards, and
the work went slowly, with many stops and misfortunes, so that the
hole through the mountain was not finished until November 27, 1873.
On that day the last blast was set off, which made the opening from
the east to the west side; and the first regular passenger train ran
through July 8, 1875, fifty years after it had been planned to make a
canal under the mountain.
 In order to help on the work the engineers sunk a shaft a
thousand feet deep from the top of the mountain to the level of the
tunnel, and from the bottom worked east and west. This gave them
four faces, or “headings,” on which to work, instead of two, and
hastened the finishing. The whole cost was about fourteen million
dollars.

Fig. 4. Eastern Portal of the Hoosac Tunnel, Boston and

Maine Railroad
It took great skill to sink the shaft on just the right line, and to
make the parts of the tunnel exactly meet, as the men worked in
from opposite directions. They brought the ends together under the
mountain with a difference of only five sixteenths of an inch! You can
measure this on a finger nail and see how much it is. The
tremendous task was successfully accomplished, and Boston was
no longer shut off from the rest of the country by the mountains.
 Fig. 5. The South Station, Boston
The end of it all is not that Boston has won all the ships away
from New York, but that gradually she has been getting her share.
Now she has great Cunarders, White Star Liners, and the Leyland
boats,—all giant ships sailing for Liverpool,—and many other stately
vessels bound for southern ports or foreign lands. Now you may see
in Boston harbor not a forest of masts but great funnels painted to
show the lines to which the boats belong, and marking a grander
commerce than that which put out for the Indies long years ago; for
to-day Boston is the second American port. The great freight yards
of the railways are close upon the docks, and travelers from the
West may come into either of two great stations, one of which is the
largest railway terminal in the world. In and about Boston are more
than a million people, reaching out with one hand for the riches of
the great land to the west, and with the other passing them over the
seas to the nations on the farther side.
Man has taken a land of dense forests, stony hills, and wild
valleys, and subdued it. It is dotted with cities, crossed by roads, and
is one of the great gateways of North America.
 CHAPTER II
PIONEERS OF THE MOHAWK AND THE
HUDSON

If a stranger from a distant land should come to New York, he

might take an elevated train at the Battery and ride to the upper end
of Harlem. He would then have seen Manhattan island, so named by
the Indians, who but three hundred years ago built their wigwams
there and paddled their canoes in the waters where great ships now
wait for their cargoes. If the visitor should stay for a time, he might
find that Harlem used to be spelled Haarlem, from a famous old town
in Holland. He might walk through Bleecker street, or Cortlandt
street, or see Stuyvesant square, and learn that these hard names
belonged to old Dutch families; and if he studied history, he would
find that the town was once called New Amsterdam and was settled
by Dutchmen from Holland. They named the river on the west of the
island the Great North river, to distinguish it from the Delaware, or
Great South river, and they planned to keep all the land about these
two streams and to call it New Netherland.
Rocks and trees covered most of Manhattan island at that time,
but the Dutch had a small village at its south end, where they built a
fort and set up windmills, which ground the corn and made the place
look like a town in Holland. The Indians did not like the windmills with
their “big teeth biting the corn in pieces,” but they were usually
friendly with the settlers, sometimes sitting before the fireplaces in
the houses and eating supawn, or mush and milk, with their white
friends. Little did the Indian dream what a bargain he offered to the
white man when he consented to sell the whole island for a sum
equal to twenty-four dollars; and the Dutchman, to do him justice,
was equally ignorant.
 All this came about because Henry Hudson with a Dutch vessel,
the Half Moon, had sailed into the harbor in 1609, and had explored
the river for a long distance from its mouth. Hudson was an
Englishman, but with most people he has had to pass for a
Dutchman. He has come down in stories as Hendrick instead of
Henry, no doubt because he commanded a ship belonging to a
Dutch company, and because a Dutch colony was soon planted at
the mouth of the river which he discovered.
Hudson spent a month of early autumn about Manhattan and on
the river which afterwards took his name. Sailing was easy, for the
channel is cut so deep into the land that the tides, which rise and fall
on the ocean border by day and night, push far up the Hudson and
make it like an inland sea. In what we call the Highlands Hudson
found the river narrow, with rocky cliffs rising far above him. Beyond
he saw lowlands covered with trees, and stretching west to the foot
of the Catskill mountains. He went at least as far as the place where
Albany now stands, but there he found the water shallow and turned
his ship about, giving up the idea of reaching the Indies by going that
way. He did not know that a few miles to the west a deep valley lies
open through the mountains, a valley which is now full of busy
people and is more important for travel and trade than a dozen
northwest passages to China would be.
 Fig. 6. Henry Hudson
It was not long before this valley which leads to the west was
found, and by a real Dutchman. Only five years after Hudson’s
voyage Dutch traders built a fort near the spot where Albany now
stands. Shortly afterwards, in 1624, the first settlers came and
founded Fort Orange, which is now Albany. Arent Van Curler came
over from Holland in 1630 and made his home near Fort Orange. He
was an able man and became friendly with the Indians. They called
him “Brother Corlear” and spoke of him as their “good friend.” A few
years ago a diary kept by Van Curler was found in an old Dutch
garret, where it had lain for two hundred and sixty years. It told the
story of a journey that he made in 1634, only four years after he
came to America. Setting out on December 11, he traveled up the
valley of the Mohawk until he reached the home of the Oneida
Indians in central New York. He stayed with them nearly two weeks,
and then returned to Fort Orange, where he arrived on January 19.
This is the earliest record of a white man’s journey through a region
which now contains large towns and is traversed by many railway
trains every day in the year.
No one knows how long there had been Indians and Indian trails
in the Mohawk valley. These trails Van Curler followed, often coming
upon some of the red men themselves, and visiting them in a friendly
way. They, as well as the white settlers who followed them, chose
the flat, rich lands along the river, for here it was easy to beat a path,
and with their bark canoes they could travel and fish. The Indians
entertained Van Curler with baked pumpkins, turkey, bear meat, and
venison. As the turkey is an American bird, we may be sure that it
was new to the Dutch explorer.
These Indians, with whom Van Curler and all the New York
colonists had much to do, were of several tribes,—the Mohawks,
Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. All together they
were known as the Iroquois (ĭr-ṓ-kwoi´), or Iroquois Nation, a kind of
confederation which met in council and went forth together to war.
They called their five-fold league The Long House, from the style of
dwelling which was common among them,—a long house in which
as many as twenty families sometimes lived. The Iroquois built
villages, cultivated plots of land, and sometimes planted apple
orchards. They were often eloquent orators and always fierce
fighters. Among the surrounding tribes they were greatly feared.
They sailed on lake Ontario and lake Erie in their birch-bark canoes,
and they followed the trails far eastward down the Mohawk valley.
Before the white men came these fierce warriors occasionally
invaded New England, to the terror of the weaker tribes. Sometimes
they followed up their conquests by exacting a tribute of wampum.
After Fort Orange was founded they went there with their packs of
beaver skins and other furs to trade for clothes and trinkets.
In fact the white man’s principal interest for many years was to
barter for furs. The Dutch, and soon afterwards the English, bid for
the trade from their settlements on the Hudson, and the French did
the same from their forts on the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes.
Thus there was much letter writing and much fighting among the
colonists, while each side tried to make friends of the Indians and get
the whole of the fur trade. The result was that either in war or in
trade the white men and the savages were always going up and
down the Mohawk valley, which thus was a well-traveled path long
before there were turnpike roads, canals, or steam cars.
When Van Curler made his journey into the Indian country, he
did not reach the Mohawk river at once on leaving Fort Orange, but
traveled for about sixteen miles across a sandy and half-barren
stretch of scrubby pine woods. He came down to the river where its
rich bottom lands spread out widely and where several large islands
are inclosed by parts of the stream. South and east of these flats are
the sand barrens, and on the west are high hills through which, by a
deep, narrow gap, the Mohawk flows. The Indians called this place
“Schonowe,” or “gateway.” It was well named, for entering by this
gate one can go to the foot of the Rocky mountains without climbing
any heights.
A few years before his death Van Curler led a small band of
colonists from Fort Orange, bought the “great flats” from the Mohawk
Indians, and founded a town, calling it Schenectady, which is the old
Indian name changed in its spelling. No easy time did these settlers
have, for theirs was for many years the frontier town and they never
knew when hostile savages might come down upon them to burn
their houses and take their scalps. In 1690, twenty-eight years after
the town was founded, a company of French and Indians from
Montreal surprised Schenectady in the night, burned most of the
houses, and killed about sixty of the people, taking others captive.
But Dutchmen rarely give up an undertaking, and they soon rebuilt
their town. It was an important place, for here was the end of the
“carry” over the pine barrens from the Hudson, and here began the
navigation of the river, which for a hundred years was the best
means of carrying supplies up the valley and into central New York.
The traveler of to-day on the New York Central Railway sees on
Van Curler’s “great flats” the flourishing city of Schenectady, with its
shops and houses, its college, and its vast factories for the
manufacture of locomotives and electrical supplies.
 Fig. 7. Sir William
Johnson
See Fort Johnson, Fig. 9

It is true that the Dutch pioneers played an important part in the

early history of the state and are still widely represented by their
descendants in the Mohawk valley, but the leading spirit of colonial
days on the river was a native of Ireland who came when a young
man to manage his uncle’s estates in America. This was in 1738,
nearly fifty years after the Schenectady massacre. The young man,
who was in the confidence of the governor of New York and of the
king as well, is known to all readers of American history as Sir
William Johnson.
He built a fine stone mansion a short distance west of the
present city of Amsterdam and lived there many years. He also
founded Johnstown, a few miles to the north, now a thriving little city.
He dealt honestly with the Indians, when many tried to get their lands
by fraud, and he served as a high officer in the French and Indian
wars.
As the Dutch settled the lower Mohawk valley, so the upper parts
were taken up and the forests cleared by Yankees from New
England. One of these was Hugh White, a sturdy man with several
grown children. He left Middletown, Connecticut, in 1784, and came
by water to Albany, sending one of his sons overland to drive two
pair of oxen. Father and son met in Albany and went together across
the sands to Schenectady, where they bought a boat to take some of
the goods up the river. Four miles west of where Utica now stands
they stopped, cut a few trees, and built a hut to shelter them until
they could raise crops and have a better home. Thus the ancient
village of Whitesboro was founded. White was one of many hardy
and brave men who settled in central New York at that time, and they
doubtless thought that they had gone a long way “out West.”
Certainly their journey took more time than the emigrant would now
need to reach California or Oregon.
To cut the trees, build cabins, guard against the savages, and
get enough to eat and wear gave the settlers plenty to do. Only the
simplest ways of living were possible. Until a grist mill was built they
often used samp mortars, such as the Indians made. They took a
section of white ash log three feet long, and putting coals of fire on
one end, kept them burning with a hand bellows until the hole was
deep enough to hold the corn, which was then pounded for their
meals of hominy. By and by a mill was built, and here settlers often
came from a distance of many miles, sometimes carrying their grists
on their backs. A dozen years after White came, General William
Floyd set up another mill in the northern part of what is now Oneida
county. He was one of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence.
One settler cleared several acres and planted corn with pumpkin
seeds sprinkled in. The pigeons pulled up all the corn, but hundreds
of great pumpkins grew and ripened. Since the crop was hardly
enough, however, for either men or beasts, the latter had to be fed
the next winter on the small top boughs of the elm, maple, and
basswood.
Much use was made of the river, for the only roads were Indian
paths through the woods on the river flats. People and freight were
carried in long, light boats suited to river traffic and known as
bateaux (bȧ-tō̟ s´). These could be propelled with oars, but poles
were necessary going upstream against a stiff current. It was
impossible to go up the Mohawk from the Hudson above Albany, on
account of the great falls at Cohoes; hence the long carry to
Schenectady. From that place, by hard work, the boatmen could
make their way up to Little Falls, where the water descends forty feet
in roaring rapids. Here the loads and the bateaux had to be carried
along the banks to the still water above, where, with many windings
and doublings on their course, the voyagers could reach the Oneida
Carrying Place, or Fort Stanwix. There they unloaded again, and for
a mile or more tramped across low ground to Wood creek, a little
stream flowing into Oneida lake, and thence into Oswego river and
lake Ontario. The city of Rome stands exactly on the road followed
by the “carry.” This was an important place, and was called by the
Dutch Trow Plat, while to the Indians it was De-o-wain-sta, “the place
where canoes are carried across.” Several forts were built there, of
which the most famous was Fort Stanwix. We should think Wood
creek a difficult bit of navigation. It was a small stream, very crooked,
and often interrupted by fallen trees. In times of low water the boats
were dragged up and even down the creek by horses walking in the
water.

Fig. 8. Genesee Street, Utica

Part of the old Genesee road
 The first merchant of old Fort Schuyler (Utica) was John Post,
who had served his country well through the Revolution. In 1790 he
brought hither his wife, three little children, and a carpenter from
Schenectady, after a voyage of about nine days up the river. Near
the long-used fording place he built a store, at the foot of what is now
Genesee street. Here he supplied the simple needs of the few
families in the new hamlet, and bought furs and ginseng of the
Indians, giving in exchange paint, powder, shot, cloth, beads,
mirrors, and, it must be added, rum also. Thus the fact that the river
was shallow at this point and could be passed without a bridge or a
boat led to the founding of the city of Utica.
The first regular mail reached the settlement in 1793, the post
rider being allowed twenty-eight hours to come up from Canajoharie,
a distance of about forty miles, now traversed by many trains in
much less than an hour. On one occasion the Fort Schuyler
settlement received six letters in one mail. The people would hardly
believe this astonishing fact until John Post, who had been made
postmaster, assured them that it was true. Post established stages
and lines of boats to Schenectady, and soon had a large business,
for people were pouring into western New York to settle upon its
fertile lands.
All the boats did not go down to Oswego and lake Ontario. Some
turned and entered the Seneca river, following its slow and winding
waters to the country now lying between Syracuse and Rochester.
But these boats were not equal to the traffic, for the new farms were
producing grain to be transported, and the people needed many
articles from the older towns on the Atlantic coast. Hence about a
dozen years after Hugh White built his first cabin by the river, the
state legislature took up the question of transportation and built a
great road, a hundred miles long, from Fort Schuyler, or the future
Utica, to Geneva, at the foot of Seneca lake.
The road as laid out was six rods wide. It was improved for a
width of four rods by the use of gravel and logs where the ground
was soft and swampy, as much of it was in those days, being flat and
shaded by trees. Over the famous Genesee road, as it was called,
thousands of people went not only to the rich valley of the Genesee
in western New York but also on to Ohio, and even to the prairies of
the Mississippi river. Genesee street in Utica and Genesee street in
Syracuse are parts of this road. The historian tells of it as a triumph,
for it was an Indian path in June, and before September was over a
stage had started at Fort Schuyler, and on the afternoon of the third
day had deposited its four passengers at the hotel in Geneva. After
this wagons and stages began to run frequently between Albany and
Geneva. A wagon could carry fourteen barrels of flour eastward, and
in about a month could return to Geneva from Albany with a load of
needed supplies. In five weeks, one winter, five hundred and seventy
sleighs carrying families passed through Geneva to lands farther
west.
Geneva was quite a metropolis in those days, when there was
nothing but woods where Syracuse and Rochester now are. Regular
markets were held there, for there were fine farms and orchards
about the beautiful shores of Seneca lake. It is recorded as
remarkable that one settler had “dressed up” an old Indian orchard
and made “one hundred barrels of cyder.”
We might think that the founders of the city of Rochester would
have come in by the Genesee road, but they did not. Far to the
south, at Hagerstown in Maryland, a country already old, lived
Colonel Rochester. He heard of the Genesee lands and at last
bought, with his partners, a hundred acres by the falls, where the city
now stands. When the little family procession passed down the
street and entered upon the long journey up the Susquehanna valley
to western New York, Rochester’s friends in Hagerstown wept to see
him go. They thought that he had thrown his money away in buying
swamp lands where only mosquitoes, rattlesnakes, and bears could
live, but he saw farther than they did. If he had been unwilling to take
any risk, he would never have laid out the first streets of the
prosperous city which now bears his name.
 Fig. 9. Old Fort Johnson, Amsterdam, New York
Built by Sir William Johnson, 1742
Syracuse, like Utica and Rochester, had its own way of
beginning. We can truly say that at first salt made the city. The beds
of salt are not directly under Syracuse, but are in the hills not far
away. The water from the rains and springs dissolves some of this
salt, and as it flows down it fills the gravels in and around the town.
While all was yet forest the Indian women had made salt from the
brine which oozed up in the springs. So long ago as 1770, five years
before the Revolution, the Delaware Indians went after Onondaga
salt, and a little of it was now and then brought down to Albany.
Sometimes it was sold far down the St. Lawrence in Quebec.
 New York
New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad —————
Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad .....................
New York Central and Hudson River Railroad ---------
New York, Ontario and Western Railroad -·-·-·-·-·-·-·-
Delaware and Hudson Railroad +-+-+-+-+-+
Erie Canal (old location) =========

The pioneers first made salt there in 1788. This was several
years before the Genesee road was cut through the woods. One of
these men, a Mr. Danforth, whose name a suburb of Syracuse now
bears, used to put his coat on his head for a cushion and on that
carry out a large kettle to the springs. He would put a pole across
crotched sticks, hang up the kettle, and go to work to make salt.
When he had made enough for the time he would hide his kettle in
the bushes and bring home his salt. By and by so many hundreds of
bushels were made by the settlers that the government of the state
framed laws to regulate the making and selling of the salt, and as
time went on a town arose and grew into a city. Many years later
rock salt was found deep down under the surface farther west, and
since that discovery the business of Syracuse has become more and
more varied in character.
The history of the state of New York shows well how the New
World was settled along the whole Atlantic coast. The white men
from Europe found first Manhattan island and the harbor. Then they
followed the lead of a river and made a settlement that was to be
Albany. Still they let a river guide them, this time the Mohawk, and it
led them westward. They pushed their boats up the stream, and on
land they widened the trails of the red men. Near its head the
Mohawk valley led out into the wide, rich plains south and east of
lake Ontario. Soon there were so many people that a good road
became necessary. When the good road was made it brought more
people, and thus the foundations of the Empire State were laid.
 CHAPTER III
ORISKANY, A BATTLE OF THE REVOLUTION

About halfway between old Fort Schuyler, or Utica, and Fort

Stanwix, which is now Rome, is the village of Oriskany. A mile or two
west of this small town, in a field south of the Mohawk river, stands a
monument raised in memory of a fierce battle fought on that slope in
the year following the Declaration of Independence. On the pedestal
are four tablets in bronze, one of which shows a wounded general
sitting on the ground in the woods, with his hand raised, giving
orders to his men. The time was 1777, the strife was the battle of
Oriskany, and the brave and suffering general was Nicholas
Herkimer.
On another of the tablets is this inscription:
Here was fought
The battle of Oriskany
On the 6th day of August, 1777.
Here British invasion was checked and thwarted.
Here General Nicholas Herkimer,
Intrepid leader of the American forces,
Though mortally wounded kept his command of the fight
Till the enemy had fled.
The life blood of more than
Two hundred patriot heroes
Made this battle ground
Sacred forever.
After the battle Herkimer was carried down the valley to his
home, where a few days later he died. On the field he had calmly
lighted his pipe and smoked it as he gave his orders, refusing to be