From crisis to community: the Pittsburgh oil spill

Abstract

The interdependence of metropolitan communities generates a stubborn paradox in crisis. The infrastructure created to link local systems in productive action operates, with equal facility, to transmit failure, distortion and neglect. This function serves to escalate failure in a single system to failure in multiple systems in the metropolitan community. This article examines the effects of interdependence in escalating the 1988 tank collapse at the Ashland Oil Com pany's storage site on the Monongahela River near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to a full-scale crisis spanning two weeks and three states, and affecting ad versely the lives of approximately 830,000 people. An interactive information system is proposed as an alternative method of reducing risk and facilitating response to minimize crisis in metropolitan communities.