Rebel Food…Renegade Supplies: Convergence after the World Trade Center Attack 1 James M. Kendra jmkendra@udel.edu Tricia Wachtendorf twachten@udel.edu Disaster Research Center University of Delaware Newark, DE 19716 Abstract 2 The World Trade Center attack, though constituting an unprecedented disaster, nevertheless generated many of the features seen in other disasters in the U.S. Such features include the convergence of volunteers and donations of supplies, which are well- documented in the literature. Their appearance typically is problematic, since they both introduce needed resources and present additional management challenges for public officials already occupied with their emergency duties. This paper builds on existing theories of disaster-related collective behavior by examining convergence following the World Trade Center attack. It focuses on the proliferation of volunteers and donated supplies, and identifies a form of convergence not discussed by other researchers: that of supporters or fans. Relying on data gathered in over 750 collective hours of field observations and on documentary sources, the paper argues that the multifaceted aspect of the event—disaster, battlefield, and crime scene—and ambiguity about the extent of any continuing threat complicated the often (but not inevitably) problematic aspects of convergence in the response milieu. 1 This research was supported by grants from the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake and Engineering Research (MCEER), New Technologies in Emergency Management, No. 00-10-81 and Measure of Resilience, No. 99-32-01; by special supplemental funding provided by the National Science Foundation, and by the Public Entity Risk Institute No. 2001-70. This paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago, IL, Aug 17, 2002. 2 Citation: Kendra, James M., and Tricia Wachtendorf, 2002. Rebel Food…Renegade Supplies: Convergence after the World Trade Center Attack. Preliminary Paper 316, Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, Newark, DE. 1