In such situations waiting runs the risk of becoming chronic – spread over years, decades, lifetimes. Zivilschutz risks becoming trapped in an endless present where training and exercises become the primary focus of organisational activity, rather than responding to disasters. “We practice constantly for the event that hopefully will never happen,” one Zivilschutz Commander told me. My research showed how Zivilschutz’s struggle to achieve relevance leads to two forms of waiting: on standby, and just waiting. In waiting as standby, the organisation waits for their big moment to arrive. They are ready to be activated at any point, to deploy their targeted practices towards the effects of an unfolding disaster. These anticipated activities make their actions in the present relevant. But when they are just waiting, time merely passes, and a goal-directed present is replaced by the more vague hope that their long period of waiting will suddenly be justified by a change in the situation. Over two years of attending exercises and interviewing personnel, it became clear Zivilschutz can struggle for relevance as they await events that call them into action, and how they undertake activities of attempted ‘relevance-making’. Infrastructures are put in place, such as the recruitment, training and drilling of troops, and exercises are designed and carried out. The assumption is that at any moment, this training and preparedness could be replaced by the more intense activity of dealing with the unfolding chaos of disaster. Rather than dealing with disasters themselves, it is activities like this that a typical disaster preparedness organisation are more routinely concerned with in the continued absence of disaster. For participants, successful exercises and other forms of training keep them engaged and focused on the task at hand, but there is always the threat of boredom or disengagement, the chance they could turn from training into a bonding exercise, or an opportunity for comedy, a chance to marvel at its farcical nature. One traffic direction exercise I observed, for example, in which cadets pretended to be cars, led to much mirth among participants at its ridiculous nature. Disaster is at its most relevant when the danger is real – when infrastructures collapse, when casualties need assistance – but because disasters are so rare the feeling of threat often has to be created in other ways, such as taking troops to the location of past disasters, simulating a post-disaster landscape, having actors play victims, or simulating psychological pressures. Such preparedness work serves a purpose not just for those taking part but also for wider audience. This includes showing that Zivilschutz is relevant to the work of government, and to the lives of Swiss people at large. In many exercises, efforts are taken to assemble an audience and to actively put on a show. At SEISMO 12, key moments of the exercise were timed around the arrival of key people, such as the federal government, federal agencies and the press, giving the exercises purpose beyond preparing troops. But it is a disaster that gives training a true purpose, and the longer it doesn’t happen, the more tenuous Zivilschutz’s relevance to disaster becomes, as standby dissolves into just waiting. Since my research was completed, the Covid-19 pandemic has turned the world upside down. In Switzerland, it led to almost 10,000 deaths at the time of writing, and saw the active deployment of Zivilschutz to support health services in hospitals and care homes. Could Covid turn out to be the event some in Civil Protection were, perhaps guiltily, hoping for? Promotional videos and press released by Zivilschutz show similar attempts to showcase their work to different audiences. But will the pandemic be enough to cement their relevance? Only time will tell. Dr Joe Deville is a Senior Lecturer based jointly in the Department of Organisation, Work & Technology and the Department of Sociology. His paper, Waiting on Standby: The Relevance of Disaster Preparedness, is published in the journal ephemera in a special issue on the theme of standby. j.deville@lancaster.ac.uk FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 13
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