ABSTRACT
Managing emergencies and hazards is business-as-usual for members of high-reliability organizations (HRO) in which members commonly face thin margins of error, fast work tempos, and dangerous conditions. This chapter analyzes interviews from 37 firefighters from two crews that specialize in helicopter rappel operations. It explores wildland firefighter sensemaking about “close-calls” in which they narrowly escaped life-threatening firefighting situations that began as business-as-usual, and the social sensemaking processes that helped them learn from those experiences. HROs are a kind of organization that operates in high-tempo situations with minimal margins of error. Cosmology events provide insights into ways that sensemaking processes are corporeal, material, and spatial. Sensemaking involves enactment of spaces, meaning that members take action in their physical environments through moving their bodies across landscapes, implementing tasks in terrain, arranging and rearranging material objects in space, and other activities.
