Manchester Bomb, 1996

Emergency services, evacuation & ethno-methods

Resumo

This paper is a single-case analysis of “doing security”, using data transcribed from a
corpus of tape-recorded interviews. On the twentieth anniversary of the Manchester City
Centre bomb of June 15 1996, this paper presents a preliminary discussion of the work of the
Emergency Services. At more than 3300lb of fertilizer packed into a lorry, the bomb was the
largest terrorist device to explode in Great Britain. Many people’s lives were changed with
the explosion, as some suffered severe injuries or, with the extensive damage to buildings,
had their livelihoods destroyed. This paper outlines some of the ethno-methods used by
members of the police and fire services in the logistical work of searching for the bomb, and
in the logistical work of evacuating more than 80,000 people from the vicinity of the device.
As an initial move in the analysis of “doing security”, this paper provides background and
explication of Harold Garfinkel’s “Documentary Method of Interpretation” in the contexts of
receiving coded warnings of a bomb, and the search for the bomb, in Manchester.