Coping with a threat to quality of life: the case of the Prestige disaster Faire face à une menace pour la qualité de vie : le cas du naufrage du Prestige

The Prestige disaster occurred off the Galician coast (North-West Spain), after the sinking of Prestige oil tanker in November 2002. The breaking up and sinking of the ship in heavy seas resulted in the discharge of thousands of tones of toxic and heavy oil. The oil was washed up not only on the Galician coast, but also along the North coast of Spain, and the West of France. A year later, the consequences of this accident on the quality of life of Galician people are only beginning to become apparent. The present study evaluates the inhabitants’ and volunteers’ perceptions and evaluations of the social impact of the disaster and its effect on the population. This paper also provides a diagnosis of the changing relationship between a damaged environment and a human community, both immediately and a year after the catastrophe. A total of 1491 and 1504 interviews were undertaken in Galicia in two phases of the research amongst people over 18 years old. This paper reports on the changes in the attitudes of the population in several respects: the degree to which they were affected by the catastrophe, their understanding of what happened, their attribution of responsibility and the assessment of the consequences, and finally, their feelings and assessment of satisfaction and credibility of the political institutions, organizations, and the media.

[1]  Daniel A. Powers,et al.  Statistical Methods for Categorical Data Analysis , 1999 .

[2]  P. Slovic.  Perception of risk. , 1987, Science.

[3]  P. Berger,et al.  The Social Construction of Reality , 1966 .

[4]  Robert D. Bullard,et al.  Dumping In Dixie: Race, Class, And Environmental Quality, Third Edition , 1994 .

[5]  P. Slovic,et al.  The Role of Affect and Worldviews as Orienting Dispositions in the Perception and Acceptance of Nuclear Power1 , 1996 .

[6]  Peter Burke,et al.  Log-linear models , 1980 .

[7]  V T Covello,et al.  The Determinants of Trust and Credibility in Environmental Risk Communication: An Empirical Study , 1997, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[8]  Michael R. Edelstein,et al.  Contaminated Communities: The Social And Psychological Impacts Of Residential Toxic Exposure , 1989 .

[9]  T. McGee.  Private Responses and Individual Action , 1999 .

[10]  Michael Greenberg,et al.  Determinants of Trust Perceptions among Residents Surrounding the Savannah River Nuclear Weapons Site , 1999 .

[11]  David Uzzell,et al.  Place Identification, Social Cohesion, and Enviornmental Sustainability , 2002 .

[12]  Daniel Levi,et al.  Technological Disasters in Natural and Built Environments , 2001 .

[13]  M. Greenberg,et al.  Ethical oxymora for risk assessment practitioners. , 1991, Accountability in research.

[14]  A. Alesina,et al.  The Determinants of Trust , 2000 .

[15]  L. Perloff,et al.  Self–other judgments and perceived vulnerability to victimization. , 1986 .

[16]  David Uzzell,et al.  THE PSYCHO-SPATIAL DIMENSION OF GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS , 2000 .

[17]  J. Douglas Carroll,et al.  Chapter 13 – APPLICATIONS OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES SCALING TO STUDIES OF HUMAN PERCEPTION AND JUDGMENT , 1974 .

[18]  M. Blaustein.  Overview: Natural Disasters and Psychiatric Response , 1991 .

[19]  D. Winterfeldt,et al.  Beyond acceptable risk: On the social acceptability of technologies , 1982 .

[20]  Adeline Gordon Levine,et al.  Love Canal: Science, Politics, and People. , 1983 .

[21]  Paul Slovic,et al.  Perceived risk, trust, and democracy , 1993 .

[22]  Phil Brown,et al.  No Safe Place: Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action , 1992 .

[23]  M. Reich.  Toxic Politics: Responding to Chemical Disasters , 1991 .

[24]  Invisible Trauma: the Psychosocial Effects of Invisible Environmental Contaminants, H.M. Vyner. D. C. Heath and Company, Boulder, Colorado (1988), ISBN 0-699-12804-X , 1990 .

[25]  Laura M. Davidson,et al.  Natural Disaster and Technological Catastrophe , 1983 .

[26]  T. Blocker,et al.  Coping with "Natural" Hazards as Stressors , 1991 .

[27]  L. Weisaeth.  Individual and Community Responses to Trauma and Disaster: Psychological and psychiatric aspects of technological disasters , 1994 .