Safety and conflict

The tap gives nothing. The corner shop is shut, and any supermarket that opens can sell only what remains on its shelves. The province expects the food distribution network to take weeks or months to recover. The fuel supply chains that move food may be inoperable. [1]

Getting bulk drinking water around the region remains difficult for the first several days. [2] People gather at water trucks, while disrupted communications make it harder to know where supplies will arrive. [2]

Past disasters give a consistent answer to what people do next. Most help one another. Theft and violence occur, but not as a general breakdown. [3] When conflict does happen, it tends to centre on scarce supplies, damaged shops or false rumours.

The public often expects disasters to descend into looting and violence. Some organisations that plan for and respond to disasters share that expectation. [4] More than half a century of social science research has compared those beliefs with what people actually do. [5]

Reports of looting often outnumber documented cases. After a 1952 tornado in Arkansas, in the United States, 58 per cent of people had heard stories of looting, but only 6 per cent thought they had been looted. Later studies found the same pattern. [6]

People caught in a disaster can share that fear. After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, many people in shelters feared being robbed there or having their empty homes burgled. [7]

Studies since the 1950s have found looting after natural disasters to be rare. When it occurs, it is usually opportunistic, carried out by individuals or small groups and condemned by the people around them. [6] Shared danger also changes how survivors act. They support one another, coordinate their work and expect help in return. [8]

After the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 in New Zealand, overall crime in Christchurch fell, with domestic violence the notable exception, even though crime rose in most neighbourhoods. [9] The communities that adapted most easily were the ones that already had community groups, tribal organisations and local leaders before the shaking. [10]

Reported crime in the three affected prefectures fell sharply after the 2011 earthquake in Japan. Burglaries of empty homes and shops and theft of fuel from cars were still common in the first month. Two to four months later, theft and domestic violence became common in shelters. [7]

Looting is one word for several different acts: taking food, water or medicine when there is nowhere to buy them, taking goods from a damaged shop, and breaking into homes people have left.

After the 2010 earthquake in Chile, many survivors in the south went into a third day without electricity, communications or fresh water. Looting spread across the south, and the president ordered 10,000 soldiers to protect supermarkets, pharmacies, banks and department stores. [11] In some places the government did not know for several days what local governments needed, and the looting surprised response officials and social scientists alike. [12]

In Concepción, trucks distributing water were attacked, and the mayor said nobody wanted to distribute water after that. Next door in San Pedro de la Paz, looters stripped a clinic of its medicine and supplies. In the same days, many people took their neighbours in, and volunteers brought tents and fresh water to families camped in the street. [11]

After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in the United States in 2005, there were documented cases of hijacking, rioting and looting. Reports of cooperation and mutual aid were much more common. [3] Some violence came from a neighbourhood militia. In Algiers Point, a man was shot in the days after the storm. More than four years later, a member of the militia was implicated, and the man who was shot said it was racially motivated. [13]

Violence at home follows a different pattern from theft. It was the exception to the fall in crime in Christchurch [9], and it became common in Japan’s shelters months after the earthquake. [7]

News coverage can exaggerate disorder

After Katrina, news coverage cast survivors first as civil unrest and later as something close to urban warfare, greatly exaggerating how much looting and lawlessness there was. That framing reinforced calls for a bigger military role in disasters. [4]

In Japan, baseless rumours spread in the month after the 2011 earthquake, alongside the burglaries the prefectural police were reporting. [7]

Studies link looting after disasters to poverty, weak social ties, media coverage and a lack of planning. They recommend that governments plan for looting, work with community groups and build social ties over time. [14]

Social ties and trust help explain why some neighbourhoods of Kobe, Japan, recovered after its 1995 earthquake while others stagnated. [15] Communities also organise their own protection. Municipalities hit by the 2010 earthquake in Chile saw lasting falls in property crime, consistent with stronger community life and neighbours working to prevent crime. [16]

Across Chile, living through a large earthquake raised measures of social cohesion, although the effect faded over time. [17] In Japan, volunteer crime prevention after the 2011 earthquake gave people a shared goal. [7]

Where rumours spread, accurate information from the media, the police and other officials is what reduces the fear. [7] What authorities assume about how people behave in an emergency shapes their preparedness, response and recovery, and with it how much the public can do as the first people on the scene. [18] The looting in Chile surprised officials, and the lesson drawn for California was to make security for damaged businesses a priority in planning. [12]

Households control one part of this: their own supplies. The province recommends keeping two weeks of food and water for an earthquake here. [19] Those supplies reduce the time a household spends waiting in a queue.