The Snapshot
Beverly Sauer uses a snapshot analogy to explain how a linear approach to creating accident reports shows the "disaster at a single moment of crisis" (394). With this analogy, we can see the connection of the concept of privileging information to Sauer's rejection of the linear method producing reports. A snapshot only gives us very basic information. The same is true for a report that uses the linear approach Sauer talks about. The fact that a miner was struck by a falling roof doesn't tell us a lot about what happened. We get a "snapshot" a look at an event that was in no way as static as the model implies. As Sauer notes of a sample Fault Tree Analysis diagram, "the sample diagram . . . does not show the logical or technical correspondence between 'unsupported roof,' 'inadequate roof support,' 'insufficient roof support,' 'defective roof support,' or 'improper roof support.' More importantly, however, the linear structure of the design produces a flat, lifeless diagram that fails to answer critical questions about the disaster" (402). What's hidden by such an analysis is the dynamic relationship of events that led to the disaster. Sauer notes that in the example of Wilbrerg Mine disaster, what's being silenced is "the complex texture of events in the catastrophe" (401).
Beverly Sauer and Privileging
Equal Ground
An Introduction?
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