Percepção de riscos e comportamento da comunidade diante de acidentes ambientais em áreas portuárias de Santos e de São Sebastião

Abstract

Major environmental accidents in harbour sites have potential to cause negative socioenvironmental and economic damages, including many life losses. So, it is necessary to invest in prevention and preparedness measures in order to know how to deal with these hazardous events when they happen. The first step is to know the risk perception of people who daily walk around in these sites, as a way to better develop risk management and risk communication programs. This is the purpose of this paper. A survey was conducted involving two hundred and sixty one persons local residents, visitors, tourists and sportsmen in the Santos and São Sebastião Ports, both in the Southeast Brazilian Coast. The qualitative and the quantitative researches intent to know about risk perception and reactions of those people, facing a hypothetical explosion followed by a fire in a ship or in a petrochemical terminal. The results demonstrated that the interviewed people showed a good comprehension level about the possible consequences of such incidents, both on the health and safety of the people involved and on the environment. Similarly they showed good willingness towards helping victims and the environment. The survey also demonstrated that people would not get closer to the incident site and would attempt to flee to distant places from the harbour area as well that television and internet were regarded as the most important media channel to obtain information. But, analyzing real cases from the past, in the Brazilian Coast and in other countries, we noticed that there is a real tendency for onlookers to get closer to the incident site just by curiosity and/or in order to take advantage of this situation, a fact that can amplify the socioenvironmental consequences