Introduction

We live in a time of great uncertainty when whole communities live close to the edge. People are aware that a single traumatic event can tip a whole community into a sense of deep fear and turmoil. Recently, for example, people in the United States remembered the tenth anniversary of the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building. Whole communities are missing, and others still rebuilding along the shores of the Indian Ocean from the 2005 Boxing Day Tsunami. Memories of disaster are ever-present. Single words such as"Granville,""Port Arthur,""Thredbo," and"911" trigger traumatic memories and impact many in ways previously beyond their imagining. Disaster changes lives.1

In December 2004, the Asian Tsunami brought loss of life and property on a world-wide scale. The loss of life over a wide area and the drama of the event were without precedent in peacetime.2 Since that time, Hurricane Katrina in the United States and Cyclone Larry in Australia have brought home the power of nature to overwhelm developed nations.

Since the 1980s, the fields of trauma management, critical incident management, and associated psychological disciplines have dealt with a growing societal current of fear and pain. In recent times, the impact of modern life, accidents, and disasters reported in the mass media have been compounded with the impact of terrorism. Bombings on trains in Spain and London have heightened this awareness and brought the spectre of potential disaster into the psyche of the western world.

The literature and psychology of trauma management recognises that trauma is subjective. The term"psychological trauma" is used to describe"an acute emotional state of discomfort due to an extraordinary stressful event or situation which was overwhelming for the person involved."3 The inability to cope in a normal sense underscores this book's understanding of trauma. Trauma is personal. The term personal disaster has been used to describe a traumatic event such as a motor vehicle accident or assault injury, in comparison to a community disaster which affects a whole community.4 To many people who encounter a personal traumatic event, terms such as"emergency","catastrophe", and"disaster" are interchangeable. The loss of a child will be more catastrophic and traumatic to the parents than reports of a thousand strangers' deaths.

On this understanding, ministry in disaster settings is a common occurrence for ministers offering pastoral care and will be encountered on a daily basis. Many books have been written in relation to personal and relational crises. This book deals with crises in contexts where traumatic and sudden loss of life has affected numerous people, often over an extended period of time. The definition of"disaster" used in this book is adopted from the Emergency Management Australia definition:

A serious disruption to community life which threatens death or injury in that community and/or damage to property which is beyond the day-to-day capacity of the prescribed