Social Team Disruptions:

 

Title: Social disruption and psychological stress in an Alaskan fishing community: The impact of the Exxon Valdex Oil Spill

Author: J. Steven Picou, Duane A. Gill, Christopher L. Dyer, Evans W. Curry

 Many things disrupt the forward movement of a team. One of the big things is a technology accidents that have serious negative social impacts upon a team. In this article the Exxon oil spill in Alaska, which is one of the largest oil spill in United States history, is examined in an attempt to understand the social impacts that a community experiences when a major sources of income is destroyed.

            In order to understand why there was such a large social impact this article made a point of distinguishing between a natural disaster and a technological disaster. Natural disasters are caused by nature, for example hurricanes and earthquakes. There is little to no perceived control over natural disasters and they do not produce damage that cannot be fixed. However, with technological disasters research has shown that those who survive have a sense of control taken from them as well as more severe PTSD. Technological disasters also damage a community more extremely because of the great social impacts.

            The Exxon oil spill impacted the community of Cordova, Alaska most, since it is where the oil spill occurred. Much wildlife was killed and the ocean where the spill occurred has irreversible damage. When the spill occurred Cordova was predominately a fishing community. Their economy dependent upon commercial fishing, making the oil spill into the ocean that much more devastating.

The town of Petersburg was used a control for the research in this article. The towns are incredibly similar in all aspects. People from both towns were interviewed at random, there was a wide range of ages as well as an even number of males and females. It was found that a more extreme case of PTSD was present in those living in Cordova. Meaning a greater social impact of the technological disaster was found in Cordova. Fifty-one percent of people in Cordova had made changes in their future plans because of the uncertainty brought about by the Exxon oil spill.

 

This event had a huge impact upon this community, but the impact was centralized to the one small town in Alaska based on the information gathered from Petersburg. Making this a severe social disruption on a small scale.