Paper short abstract:

What do professional responders and ordinary village folk really prepare for in disaster preparedness exercise? Looking at exercise practices of NDRF and women's group in a fishing village in South India, this paper looks at various forms of experience, expertise and their entanglements.

Paper long abstract:

The fishing village of Parangipettai in Tamil Nadu, South India, experiences cyclones regularly. In late 2004, it was swept over by the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Subsequently numerous (I) NGOs have worked in the area with local community groups and while most have long gone, their legacy is palpable in the village landscape. In November 2013, that is "in the aftermath of the aftermath" of disaster, a local women's group meets for a disaster preparedness refresher exercise, involving first aid, role playing and lots of giggles.

A month later, in a car park of conference venue in Chennai, Tamil Nadu's capital, tens of men in NDRF uniforms climb up buildings that are "on fire", sending down mannequins in wheel chairs and bringing down baby dolls in their arms, while others use diamond chain saws to extricate "victims" from underneath the rubble. The NDRF disaster response demonstration exercise is observed by applauding audiences of conference participants and college students.

The two exercises eloquently show the different practices deployed by officially designated disaster response experts and ordinary village folk who happen to experience disasters. My paper, based on the "Organising Disaster: Civil Protection and the Population" research project (2011-2015, Goldsmiths, University of London) explores the contrast between the designated expert and victim preparedness practices through analysing the content of their exercises and touching on concepts of certified and experiential expertise, and revealing their mutual entanglements.