Abstract

Disaster research over the last few decades has effectively and extensively explored the conditions which increase vulnerability and risk and has explored the processes which unfold in organisations and communities throughout emergencies. Less attention has been paid to the ending of disasters – both how the endpoints of disasters and emergencies are socially constructed, and how this relates to the stories told in communities and in policymaking settings about disasters in their aftermath, as groups seek to engage in lesson identification and implementation. This session explores these endpoints through the lens of collective sensemaking during and after disaster and an exploration of how communities re-construct their sense of place – drawing on examples from tornadoes and hurricanes in North America; and emergency organisations in the context of bushfires and the covid-19 pandemic in Australia.