ABSTRACT
This chapter is a tentative approach to the natural hazards field by an ecological anthropologist. The members of communities concerned only rarely have a role in shaping the outcome of professionally directed research or action programmes. In the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, the apparently illegitimate insertion of federal troops and their forcing of unselective evacuation prevented people from saving moveable belongings and from preventing or fighting fires in their dwellings and businesses. Similar problems arose in the 1980 Italian earthquake disaster. Scientific investigators reporting on development, environmental hazards, social change, planning and the like are often at a loss to explain the great variability to be observed between individuals and between groups subjected to seemingly similar circumstances. An obvious operational problem in connection with this and other features is that of identity of problems and of responses.
