Anger Following the Victorian Black Saturday Bushfires: Implications for Postdisaster Service Provision

ABSTRACT

Anger is a well-recognised but little understood emotion in postdisaster contexts. For service providers working in recovery environments, it is critical to understand anger to ensure effective supports and interventions are mobilised. This article describes findings from a study conducted four years after the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday bushfires. Thirty-eight community and service-provider participants were interviewed as individuals, dyads, or within focus groups about their own and others’ experiences of anger. Postdisaster anger was described as more immediate, intense, and frequent than predisaster, and seen by participants as destructive, productive, and justified. Experiences and understandings differed by gender, and related to aggression, violence, and family violence. Service provision was a key trigger for anger, with leadership styles, community expectations, and community members’ level of control over decision making being factors that shaped experience. Based on these findings, five proposed principles for anger-sensitive practice in disaster contexts, along with wider considerations for understanding anger, are provided.

IMPLICATIONS

• This article provides unique understandings of the experience of anger following disaster, which are useful for social workers, community members and leaders, and other service providers.

• Research findings about anger experiences and outcomes postdisaster are synthesised into proposed principles for practice with disaster-impacted communities (that can potentially build capability prior to disasters).

KEYWORDS:

• Disaster
• Disaster Response
• Anger
• Family Violence
• Domestic Violence
• Service Delivery
• Aggression
• Emotion
• Leadership
• Service Providers
• Australia
• Victoria
• Bushfires
• Community Recovery
• Social Work Practice
• Recovery Outcomes
• Service Provider Outcomes
• Community Expectations

Disasters are times when people are likely to be stretched to their maximum coping capacity (Forbes et al., 2015). The coalescence of traumatic and stressful circumstances can create a melting pot for anger. This article provides insights into the experience of anger following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, Australia.

Research Context: The Black Saturday Bushfires

The 2009 bushfires were active for more than a month in north-eastern Victoria, Australia, in the lead-up to, and following, the most lethal day, “Black Saturday”, on 7 February. Four hundred and fourteen people were physically injured and 173 people lost their lives, making the Black Saturday bushfires the most lethal in Australia’s history (Teague et al., 2010). Nearly half a million hectares of land were burnt, 3,500 buildings were destroyed (including approximately 2,000 homes), and there were enormous losses of flora and fauna.

Research Interest: Disasters and Anger

Global warming will see a continued increase in frequency and intensity of disaster events (IPPC, 2021). Disaster-mitigation practices have reduced disaster-related deaths but are concomitantly increasing numbers of survivors and therefore people who require support (Guha-Sapir et al., 2013). Best-practice service provision postdisaster is now critical to enable high quality, effective, and efficient service delivery by a disaster-response workforce under increasing demand. One of the key issues service providers continue to grapple with are community members’ experiences and expressions of anger during disaster recovery.

Anger is a commonly reported emotion post-trauma (Harms et al., 2021; Kessel et al., 2015; McAllan et al., 2011; Van Webber & Jones, 2013; Winkworth, 2009) and is a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (APA, 2013). Postdisaster studies strongly evidence the association between anger and PTSD (DePrince et al., 2011; Forbes et al., 2008, 2015; McHugh et al., 2012; Neria et al., 2008) among other emotions (Berkowitz & Harmon-Jones, 2004; Quigley & Tedeschi, 1996) and mental health impacts (Beaglehole et al., 2018; Silove et al., 2014). The percentage of postdisaster community members diagnosed with PTSD generally ranges from 5%–30% (Bonanno et al., 2010; Galea et al., 2002; Pietrzak et al., 2012). Evidence from these prevalence studies indicates that anger is mediated by “ongoing stressors”, which can be extensive in the disaster-recovery environment (Bonanno et al., 2007; Bryant et al., 2014; Forbes et al., 2015; Simeon et al., 2005). Anger is also implicated in studies of violence and gendered experiences post disaster (ABS, 2016; Boxall et al., 2020; Cowlishaw et al., 2021; Enarson & Dhar Chakrabati, 2009; Molyneaux et al., 2020).

Despite this strong connection with anger as a postdisaster experience and a factor in PTSD, there is a limited qualitative understanding of anger—its triggers, nature, and responsiveness to intervention (Forbes et al., 2008). This limited understanding remains in relation to the potentially positive role of anger in disaster recovery and wellbeing. Social theorists suggest that while public reactions to risk can be dismissed and perceived as irrational by those in power (Freudenburg, 1993), anger also can be harnessed for action (Goodwin et al., 2004; Holmes, 2004). Anger can be seen as a productive emotion that can reinforce conformity as well as enable transgression (Clarke et al., 2006; Goodwin et al., 2004; Jasper, 2014; Lively & Weed, 2014; Pardy, 2011). A doctoral study was undertaken to explore experiences of anger to increase the disaster-related evidence base and guide service delivery in relation to emotion (Kellett, 2019). The study investigated the question “What are the experiences of anger postdisaster?”

This article presents findings from that study about (1) the nature of anger experiences, (2) the perceived gendered elements of these experiences, and (3) how service provision was a key trigger for anger. Based on these findings, we propose five principles that can inform interventions for disaster service providers, including social workers along with wider anger considerations in post-disaster contexts.

Method

Research Design

Individual and paired interviews (n = 27) and two focus groups (n = 11) with community members and service providers were conducted in 2013. These mixed methods of qualitative data collection were used to draw out divergent and common understandings and experiences (Liamputtong, 2020).

Participant Selection

Victorian bushfire-impacted community members and service providers were invited to participate in the study via email. The community-member participants were accessed through the Beyond Bushfires longitudinal study (Gibbs et al., 2013), a study of mental health and community resilience in low- to high-impacted communities affected by the Black Saturday fires (N = 1,056). Snowballing and purposive methods of recruitment were employed to recruit a diversity of participants in terms of gender, age, community location, and impact. Service providers were recruited from the same regions and selected to represent a range of emergency- and recovery-worker roles.

Thirty-eight participants were recruited, as described in Table 1. The participating service providers had been engaged in postdisaster work, and were employed in local or federal government agencies, community health, counselling, case management, emergency responder (fire and police services), and “bushfire hub” roles (one-stop shops with supporting agencies represented).

Table 1 Research Participants by Type of Data Collection, Bushfire Identity, and Gender

		Community members^a	Service providers^a	Total
Individual or paired interviews	Women	8	10	18
	Men	5	4	9
Focus groups	Women	4	5	9
	Men	0	2	2
Total by gender	Women	12	15	27
	Men	5	6	11
Totals		17	21	38

^a All participants identified as either a community member or service provider, without the opportunity to indicate identification as both.

Data Analysis

A narrative analysis methodology called the discourse-based “social interaction approach” (SIA) (De Fina, 2009; De Fina & Georgakopulou, 2008) was engaged. Interviews were approached as collaborative sites where narratives were coconstructed with the interviewer (CK). This meant the interviewer shared information from previous interviews, building on the narrative rather than conducting discrete interviews without prompts for participants. The subsequent coding of transcripts looked to identify thematic similarities or differences, diversity or individuality of narrative, or even nonlinear narratives or fragmented stories. A circular coding process was undertaken, returning to interviews to reinvestigate the coding of new themes or stories that were uncovered during the process. Initial data analysis was conducted by CK, with concurrent review and discussion of codes and themes with all of the named authors. This qualitative, exploratory study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee at The University of Melbourne (Reference #: 1137172.1).

Results

The interviews provided rich insights into the experiences of anger in the four years following the bushfires, as well as insights into the interplay with the way support services were provided.

Individual Experiences of Anger

Postdisaster experiences of anger were diverse. Anger was described by participants as more immediate and intense than they experienced prefires, and prolonged, absent, or intersecting with other emotions. All forms of anger had a wide range of triggers.

Describing the immediacy and intensity of anger, this participant, who was a service provider, stated:

It was like an outer protective layer of skin had been removed from everybody … so long as you can just stay in your own little space it [was] okay, but once you bump against someone it’s really raw … We have a thing we used to refer to in our house as bushfire rage. It’s sort of short fused … kind of nought to 100 in zero seconds flat kind of responses to stuff … and we were a pretty mellow family.

Participants felt their anger was a justifiable consequence of traversing the recovery process, as illustrated in this community member’s comment:

The fire was a picnic compared to the stuff that happened afterwards. As far as I’m concerned, the trauma started the day after, not the day of the fire. And we were ongoingly traumatised repeatedly. Almost abusive in a way for weeks, months afterwards, by government and by authorities.

Some community members felt their anger was used as an excuse by service providers to exclude or ignore their views, as this community member noted:

When understood, anger can motivate change. When misinterpreted and allocated to some other cause then it acts to suppress. So, anger becomes an impermissible emotion after a while because of the way it might be interpreted [by a service provider].

An important function of immediate and intense anger, as expressed by both a community member and service provider, was its motivating, energising, and protective value:

Well, sometimes you need it to get out of bed. I mean if you’re sitting on that sort of precipice and [there is] blank depression on one side and feisty anger on the other, it might be that you need to tip over into anger to prevent yourself from going the other way … I think that it had a really important place initially.

However, service providers reported that anger ceased being motivating once it reached high intensity, was of long duration, or was related to mental illness.

If they [community members] can say “I’m at five” … that level is when you can use your head to be able to go that’s constructive, that’s going to help, that is going to turn that around. It is a really good energy at around 5 … If you are getting around 10 or if it’s prolonged and it’s almost depression … because the energy has now got so low … 

Blame, shame, guilt, and grief were revealed to have a relationship with anger. The complex emotional experience, occurring individually, sequentially, or in combination, required a nuanced response from service providers. As one service provider noted:

The overriding emotion [among community members], for the first little while at least, rather than anger is guilt … we had people who felt guilty because they still had a house … but we also had people feel guilty because they were there, they went, or they stayed. They felt guilty because their business was impacted but their home was not … I think it sits on the rail. There’s the guilt on the one hand and there is grief and sadness, and on the other hand is the anger and frustration.

Anger triggers were frequently described in the interviews. The most frequently discussed anger trigger was service provision irrespective of whether it was in relation to fire mitigation, crisis response, or recovery support. For some community members, the anger of the events on the day remained in the years afterwards, as this community participant highlights:

We didn’t see a policeman, we didn’t have any warning, there was nobody to look after me … we were kept out of Marysville for six weeks after the fires and that had an amazingly devastating impact.

Similarly, frustration with the role of the media was expressed by this service provider:

[There was a] barrage of the media coming in … going onto properties that they had no permission to go onto. Some people in the community were not used to having second-hand clothing and things like that, so to be in general shots was really distressing for them.

Multiple other problems were identified in the recovery phase, such as problems with the clean-up processes, postdisaster rebuilding, legal processes, and the distribution of donations and grants, all of which triggered community-member anger:

… and then there was the clean-up process … despite all of my efforts to make sure my chimneys weren’t smashed down … I discovered my chimney had been smashed and significantly more damage done to my property because they drove an excavator through the middle of it … . (Community member)

…  being told to rebuild my house is going to cost three times more than it cost to build [it] in the first place. I feel pretty angry about all those kinds of things. (Community member)

In the beginning people were angry that all the money wasn’t just being given straight to the people who lost their homes etc, then later the community resources that were created began to be appreciated and the need for it became more apparent. (Service provider)

Participants provided lengthy, detailed, and vivid accounts of their experiences. What they described was a diversity of how they and those around them experienced anger, how those who were trauma impacted were treated or supported, and a breadth of anger triggers.

Gendered Experiences of Anger

Gender was identified as a factor influencing anger experiences. When women’s anger was discussed, it tended to be described as “repressed” or managed, whereas men’s anger was described as more aggressively expressed. Yet men were often reported as refusing anger support despite novel attempts to engage them. The following responses from participants highlight these observations:

The men I’ve seen through the bushfire experience express whatever anger is in a more aggressive way and women express it in a different way. (Community member)

So, for a lot of men that happened, and they just bottled it up and left it and left it and eventually something happened, someone didn’t get A’s at school, their kid or something and they just explode. (Service provider)

They were holding groups for women, and they were holding them to get to the men. (Service provider)

Anger was described as having a role in relation to family discord, conflict, and breakdown:

After the fires nearly all the families split up. We were very aware of the relationship breakdowns. (Service provider)

The role that anger has played in my life … is quite significant, quite substantial. Probably some of the things it led to—the breakdown of my marriage … (Community member)

For some participants, this also was seen in the reports of increased family violence, as this service provider stated:

 …  domestic violence was now being reported through the roof, the amount of intervention orders went through the roof, but before that was the health complaints and then the relationship stuff started coming out.

Some women described men’s aggression in the following way:

 …  he has been very, very, very verbally abusive, then really regretful and then try[ing] to make up for it. (Service provider)

I was really shy of conflict, and I would retreat, the kids would retreat and just back off from him. He wanted it that way, so he would become more angry sooner because he … [knew] we [were] all going to run away. (Community member)

Such narratives revealed the postdisaster potential for a complex weave of anger, aggression, and violence used by men in the context of trauma. In these cases, anger was expressed as the primary and sometimes only emotion, with destructive impacts upon relationships, and, at its extreme, the accompanying harmful behaviours of aggression and violence.

Leadership and Anger

Leadership was discussed from both a community-member and service-provider perspective in relation to how it increased or reduced anger and increased or reduced a sense of control for communities:

They are not smarter than we are, and they don’t know better than what we know. The problem is that power is taken away from us. We are left powerless and the control is taken away. (Community member)

The importance of leadership styles tailored to individual communities was highlighted:

That included accurate assessment of individual needs, combined with development of functional and effective leadership that was responsive to those needs. (Service provider)

For example, a service provider stated:

I think you’ve got to read the environment too to see where different communities are at, at different times. We used to have a line that “each community to their own time, and to their own way”. You can’t cookie-cut it. You’ve got to take it with each group to each place.

However, there were complexities involved with this capacity and time to “read the environment” as this community member stated:

There seemed to be so many conflicting messages: “You take time, you’ve got to go at your own pace. Do what you want to do, but you’ve got to do it by this date, you know”.

Positive leadership was seen when this alignment between capacity for community development and time to “read the environment” was achieved, according to these two service providers:

In time I think those local governments who were able to work with the community to develop a mutual expectation and deliver a service that [was] on par with those expectations then that went really well. (Service provider)

Quite a strong relationship was built which broke down a lot of barriers … And that only happens when decision-makers come out and spend time getting to know us, so we can advocate freely and honestly for people … I had almost a hotline to Centrelink. (Service provider)

Participants generally experienced leadership style and decisions as being highly impactful on emotions, the recovery trajectory, and postdisaster outcomes.

Discussion

The aim of this study was to identify the nature of anger in postdisaster communities from the perspective of community members and service providers, and the perceived triggers for anger. The generous participant contributions to this research have revealed the important role of service-provision approaches in mitigating or exacerbating anger experiences for postdisaster community members. This increased understanding will enable future sensitive response through service provision and will assist communities to normalise the experience and manage their anger safely, proactively, and productively. In discussing our findings, we have framed them as proposed principles for practice in disaster-impacted communities, recognising that further evidence is needed to confirm their relevance across disaster types and population groups. We have framed them with a focus on social workers, but we see these proposed principles as valuable for all practitioners and leaders involved in disaster management.

We found that anger was described as a quicker, more intense, and frequent response postdisaster. It also was varied in presentation. Anger was triggered by specific events and was frequently associated with service provision. Despite a reported change in anger presentation postdisaster, anger was described by participants as still occurring for “good reason”, as “justified” and possible to avert if feelings were heard and legitimised. Yet there were reports that disaster-affected community members were disregarded when angry or emotional. This finding is consistent with other studies that have found disaster-impacted community members who make complaints and agitate for change can be labelled as showing “ignorance and irrationality” by those in authority (Freudenburg, 1993). Traumatised community members reported that they wanted to be heard, to determine their own needs, and to be temporarily supported until they could meet those needs independently. Therefore, our first proposed principle is that practitioners frame their practice response with an understanding of the diversity of anger experiences that can emerge postdisaster.

We found that anger intersected with other complex postdisaster emotions. Blame, shame, and guilt are other emotions that have been shown to co-occur with anger (Berkowitz & Harmon-Jones, 2004; Quigley & Tedeschi, 1996). They create a complex emotional web that require management at the recovery- and service-delivery interfaces, potentially impacting recovery experiences and trajectories on all levels of functioning including mental health, interpersonal relationships, employment, rebuilding, and family cohesion. Therefore, our second proposed principle is that practitioners listen to and address other emotions such as blame, shame, and guilt that impact upon anger responses postdisaster.

Critical differences between gendered responses to disaster were identified, with men reported as showing greater outward expression of anger through aggression and violence, albeit sometimes delayed due to efforts to contain their emotions. Women were described as more likely to withdraw, although a separate quantitative analysis from the Beyond Bushfires study showed women were more likely to report significant anger problems five years after the bushfires (Cowlishaw et al., 2021). Molyneaux et al. (2020) revealed that following the Black Saturday bushfires, in communities that were highly impacted by the bushfires, women were seven times more likely to report experiences of violence compared to women from comparison communities with low or no bushfire impact. It is suggested that this high experience of violence was likely related to family violence, the violence most experienced by women and shown to increase postdisaster (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016; Boxall et al., 2020). The women’s exposure to violence also was associated with income loss and more severe posttraumatic stress and depression symptoms (Molyneaux et al., 2020). Stories from this research confirmed anger can be a trigger for violence—though notably use of violence is always a choice. When combined with the increased likelihood that women are often bound to the domestic sphere postdisaster to provide care to the young, elderly, and disabled (Enarson & Dhar Chakrabarti, 2009), the risk of harm to women and children postdisaster in the domestic sphere is brought into relief. Our third proposed principle is that practitioners understand the connection between anger and gender identity, violence, and family violence to ensure safe service provision postdisaster.

The myriad of service-delivery triggers for anger that were named often related to response measures (in particular, roadblocks and inability to access homes) as well as recovery processes: funding for counselling, land-clearing practices, rebuilding, distribution of grants, as well as the loss of community facilities such as childcare. These factors all contributed to individual and community frustration and stress. With so many services provided as a result of the magnitude of the disaster, there were many opportunities for service errors, negative impacts, and opportunities for service providers and leaders to fail to meet the expectations they had created. This research affirms and extends upon previous research that indicates service-provider intervention linked to ongoing stressors increases the risk for deleterious outcomes for those who are trauma impacted (Bryant et al., 2014; Forbes et al., 2015; Simeon et al., 2005). Therefore, this identifies quality and reliability of intervention as the foremost focus for service providers irrespective of the quantity of intervention required. Community members report their capacity to tolerate the unavoidable nature of disasters but not poor service provision (Harms et al., 2021; Van Kessel et al., 2015) including poor leadership. Given the degree of anger expressed in relation to loss of control over daily choices and service-delivery options, consistent with many other disaster research studies (McAllan et al., 2011; Webber & Jones, 2013; Winkworth et al., 2009), we propose that practitioners and leaders use a community-based, bottom-up, collaborative approach that enables the creation of realistic expectations that can be met for community members postdisaster.

The final, critical finding of the research is that service providers and community members identified the importance that anger could hold as a motivator for recovery. It can fuel the extraordinary effort required for disaster recovery—particularly for those participants who might otherwise be too exhausted or depressed to act. Participants reported that anger sometimes fuelled transgression of boundaries and social norms to enable them to negotiate with government, challenge recovery processes, and forge their own alternate recovery pathways. Hence, anger should not simply be dismissed or reduced without seeking understanding of its meaning and functionality for individuals and communities. Finally, therefore, we propose that practitioners respect the potential for anger to act as a motivational force postdisaster. The insights from this research informed the development of proposed principles for anger-sensitive practice for social work practitioners working in disaster affected communities (see Box 1).

Box 1 Principles for Anger-Sensitive Practice in Disaster-Impacted Communities

1. Practitioners should frame their practice response with an understanding of the diversity of anger experiences that can emerge postdisaster.

2. Practitioners should listen to, and address other emotions such as blame, shame, and guilt that impact upon anger responses postdisaster.

3. Practitioners should understand the connection between anger and gender identity, violence, and family violence to ensure safe service provision postdisaster.

4. Practitioners and leaders should use a community-based, bottom-up, collaborative approach that enables the creation of realistic expectations that can be met for community members postdisaster.

5. Practitioners should respect the potential for anger to act as a motivational force postdisaster.

Further insights are provided in Box 2 to support a wider consideration of anger response in disaster recovery contexts.

Box 2 Anger Considerations in Disaster Recovery: For Community Members, Social Workers, Other Response Practitioners, and Leadership

1. Community members, social workers, other response practitioners, and leaders need to be provided with training, including (1) managing and reducing anger while understanding its force as motivating and protective within recovery, (2) how to reduce and manage ongoing recovery stressors, (3) the association between anger and emotions (such as blame, shame, guilt), and (4) gendered responses and its interaction with anger and associated behaviours that lead to family discord, violence, and family violence.

2. Social workers and other response practitioners need to provide impacted individuals and communities with support in understanding and managing anger and determining whether it should be reduced or harnessed as a potentially motivating and protective recovery factor. Gendered differences in anger experience and behaviour need to be understood, acknowledged, and responded to within post-trauma environments to decrease distress and harm.

3. Leadership approaches need to acknowledge community trauma while creating realistic expectations for service provision. They need to utilise a model of practice which allows enhanced community control through bottom-up, community-led response processes.

Limitations and Strengths

To our knowledge, this is the first qualitative study focused on anger experiences after bushfire experiences and as such provides unique insights into the complexity and intersectionality of this intense and frequent emotion. Future research could benefit from a more structured, mixed-methods approach to build upon the breadth of anger understandings that were uncovered through this research. Further research also could explore experiences of anger following disasters arising from different types of hazards and different types of trauma.

Conclusion

To date, qualitative understandings of postdisaster anger and service-provider responses have been limited. This article provides an initial evidence base for these responses and shows how understandings of them can inform social workers, other practitioners, and leaders in the field of emergency management. Study findings include the diversity of anger experiences, the complex interplay of emotions associated with anger, gendered elements of anger that are linked to aggression and violence, the influence of service provision approaches and leadership styles, and the potential for anger to act as a motivational force for action. Use of this knowledge will promote post-trauma resilience, reduce distress, and increase postdisaster social work practice. Further research might confirm the appropriateness of the proposed practice principles for use in diverse postdisaster communities, in training practitioners and leaders, and in more general post-trauma work.

Acknowledgements

We humbly thank all 38 participants in the research. We thank them for their candour, their thoughtfulness, their labour, and for their commitment to contribute towards change and improvement for others.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [Grant Number LP100200164].