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In the book, The Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive Era, historian Jacob A.C. Remes, analyzes social and political structures in regard to responses to devastating fires in the towns of the Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada) in 1914 and Salem (Massachusetts, U.S.) in 1917. It examines those social and political structures that existed prior to the Progressive era. The Progressive government did not understand the concept of communities coming together and helping each other. The author describes how during that era prior social and political structures that had already been in place adversely influenced the events that followed these disasters, as a result. Remes, in his effort to fully understand this situation takes into consideration the writings of political and social scientists on the subject social and political structures at that time. The author shows that in these two disasters, at the social level, people in these communities understood how to react and interact with their neighbors and within their communities, and in fact responded to the disasters more efficiently than government institutions did. For people on the ground, the government was a faceless, soulless entity that the citizens preferred to avoid dealing with, and they didn’t believe that the government could be relied on to help them. The government tried to impose solutions based on an incorrect theories about what the problems were, and this only added to the disconnection between the institution and the citizens in need on the ground.
In Halifax, after the explosion, people initially went to check on their families. Those who had not been injured or who could help “often without direction or even suggestion…went to the devastate[ed] areas or to hospitals to help the rescue effort…they created order and efficiency without direction” (p.29). In the Halifax disaster, Remes uses “archives of letters, reports, and, most important, oral history. “This archive is primary in this chapter” (p.27). In the Salem disaster, the author shows how people on the ground were assisting voluntarily, including some military people on site, and were more effective than the military that was sent later by the government and brought only confusion: “the local order that allowed families to save their possessions was lost, and all that remained was confusion” (p.59). The military off duty and not sent by the government were helpful and were coordinating with the people on the ground, responding to their needs as the situation warranted. The minute the government got involved, efficiency disappeared in Salem. Remes expresses that memory fades, and nobody remembers the government, but still remembers their neighbors’ help seven decades later (p.47). The lack of timely aid from relief organizations on the ground drew people and communities together, unifying them in response to the occurring event in a way that the government seemed incapable of doing.
Community support without regard to territorial borders is also seen in the Fugitive Landscape, by Truett, wherein the legal boundaries, government officials, and their involvement were ignored by people on the ground, showing a disconnection between the average person and government officials and organizations. As Robert and higbeejonathan agreed in regards to Truett’s Fugitive Lanscape “…most Americans have long forgotten the history of th[e] area or have no interest in it,” but that history traced in Truett’s and Remes’ works shows a clear pattern of the early enterprise among citizens and the disconnect of a distant government. Finally, both authors successfully immerse the reader in the historical events of the past with great details, effectively connecting the past to the present.