Looking Back on a Post-Disaster Response: Analyzing Medical Activities to Understand the Transformation of Public Buildings to Medical Facilities

The Halifax Explosion in December of 1917 in Nova Scotia, Canada resulted when a munitions ship collided with another ship in the Halifax Harbor during World War I. This resulted in approximately 12,000 damaged buildings, 6,000 people left homeless, approximately 1,600 people dead, and close to 9,000 people injured (Kitz 1989: 23). This was the largest human-caused explosion prior to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during WWII, causing a tsunami in the Halifax Harbour as well as total destruction for miles.Numerous perspectives on the Explosion exist including historical accounts, literary expressions, scientific studies, and relief responses. However, the medical aspect of the disaster has not been analyzed in a way that provides a reconstruction of the post-disaster built environment in Halifax that emerged to handle the injured and the remains of the dead. Numerous public buildings were quickly transformed into medical facilities such as dressing stations, depots for medical supplies, eye surgery clinics, emergency hospitals, and a city morgue.This research is an analysis of the descriptions of the post-disaster behavioral activities of the medical personnel to help construct an accurate representation of the post-disaster built environment. My argument is that by looking at the documented human behavior and activities of the medical personnel, the socio-spatial characteristics of the newly transformed medical buildings will be reflected in much the same way that the opposite approach of behavioral plan analysis works to reveal behavioral implications.My research questions include, what architectural characteristics of the buildings enabled the transformation from one building type to a medical facility building type? How well did these buildings accommodate the new programmatic requirements? Careful review of the activities and physical setting descriptions found in personal narratives, letters, newspaper articles, committee notes, and pension claims documents found in the provincial archives have revealed how people managed and experienced the immediate medical response required and the physical settings that accommodated these activities.Halifax had preparedness unlike other disasters because it happened during World War I, it was a major military port, and at that time in Halifax, there were numerous trained medical personnel, military and convalescent hospitals, as well as many war-time activities done by volunteers and an infrastructure already in place for returning war veterans. This interpretive-historical study contributes new insights to the existing perceptions of the post-disaster phase of the Halifax Explosion. It also contributes to the research on ‘disaster healthcare’ illustrating how types of disaster readiness and the transformation of the built environment can contribute to a reduction in medical complications and deaths.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.