34. , Cities and Catastrophes, passim; Dieter Schott, “Stadt und Katastrophe,” Informationen zur Modernen Stadtgeschichte 1 (2003): 4–18; Kay Peter Jankrift, Brände, Stürme, Hungersnöte, Katastrophen in der mittelalterlichen Lebenswelt (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003), passim. 35. Mariano Barriendos, “Climate and Culture in Spain, Religious Responses to Extreme Climatic Events in the Hispanic Kingdoms (16th–19th centuries),” in Cultural Consequences of the Little Ice Age, W. Behringer, H. Lehman, and C.

27 Measures were taken to protect people from several types of hazard, including fires, pests, epizootics, and floods and such objectives became a topic of political discourse. 1: A Functional Model of Disaster Response educated professionals to develop disaster-prevention policies. The conventional mode refers to learning that does not result in modifications but which instead implements measures that mirror those taken during preceding disasters of the same kind. 33 Learning processes included the regulation of domestic and industrial fireplaces, the appointment of neighborhood fire patrols, and the obligation of every household to possess a water bucket.

Many historical studies refer to adaptive and mitigative practices without taking into account the conditions under which they developed. Because objectives, forms, and contexts of challenges change during the course of a disaster, dividing that process into distinct phases is of fundamental importance. Time and local initiative matter most in the emergency phase. Mobilization of resources through the state bureaucracies has become crucial in the damage-compensation phase, as Poliwoda demonstrates in his study of Saxony and as I have shown in my analysis of disaster-relief campaigns in Switzerland.