Sverige

kris och lärdom 7
can take place elsewhere and sometimes even far away
from the local area. Almost all of these events have a
beginning and an end, in that an event takes place and
causes a response that is concluded at a specific time.
According to ’t Hart & Boins (2001) typology,
most of the disasters in this study can be defined as
fast burning crises because they began and ended suddenly.
Some, like floods, can be described as slow-burning
crises. There are hardly any examples of disasters
with a slow start and a fast end. The most serious historical
disasters can be described as a fourth category,
long-shadow crises, which erupt suddenly and have
a prolonged aftermath, typically Chernobyl, Estonia,
the Gothenburg disco fire and the environmental damage
caused by the construction of the Halland Ridge
tunnel. Because of the damage that was caused, one
of the two disasters in this study, the January storm,
can be classed as the latter. The tsunami disaster also
belongs to this category at national level, but hardly
at local level because there were no prolonged repercussions
at local level.
The discussion in research circles that crises do
not end but become part of an ongoing process can
be both confirmed and contradicted by the cases in
this study. Several crises have had a definite beginning
and a definite end. At the same time, a number
of localities and regions have been affected by several
recurring disasters which could make the crisis phenomenon
ongoing, even though the events have taken a
different form. During recent years, however, it seems
that some localities and areas have experienced repeated
natural disasters such as storms, floods, snow
storms and even train accidents. At the time of writing
(2007), municipalities in Småland are experiencing a
new storm, similar to the January storm of 2005.
Whether these extreme events have constituted a
crisis in the sense that they caused a critical and serious
situation is another question. Whether something
creates a crisis is based on two main factors– that the
event caused widespread and serious or irreparable
damage in the local community of various kinds, and
that the response operation and communication led
to legitimacy problems for officials and the concerned
authorities.
The events in this study– the tsunami disaster and
the storm – differ somewhat from each other in this
respect. The tsunami was certainly a serious crisis situation
internationally because it took place on another
continent and the victims came from many different
countries. This did not constitute a crisis for Swedish
municipalities in terms of loss or legitimacy, apart
from metropolitan areas where loss took the form of
many dead inhabitants. The tsunami disaster created
a legitimacy crisis at government level, however (SOU
2005). The storm disaster should be categorized as a
local crisis, however, because local communities experienced
major damage of different kinds, but the efforts
to handle the crisis and communicate during the
crisis can hardly be described in crisis terms (except
for one point, the power and telecom companies’ response
and communication in the storm case).
Neither can the “old” extreme events or serious social
disruptions that are included in this study be considered
crises in the sense of a critical outcome. They
are mostly incidents that have not entailed any loss
of legitimacy for the political or public administration
system nor caused irreparable damage in most cases.
Organization
The definitions used by local emergency and disaster
response organizations are often based on whether
assistance is required from national level or from
external organisations with specific disaster management
competence. This conclusion emanates however
from US-based studies where the local authority (equivalent
to a Swedish municipality) usually has fewer
resources and less responsibility than in Sweden. Swe-