Taking off the Heat: Narrative Sensemaking in Post-crisis Inquiry Reports

Crises represent moments when sensemaking fails. Official reports of post-crisis analyses re-establish patterns of sensemaking. Whereas scholars agree on the narrative basis of post-crisis sensemaking, the means by which meaning is recreated about the confusing events have not been fully investigated. To fill this gap, empirical data are drawn from the series of investigations that took place after the sudden and deadly heat wave that occurred in France during the summer of 2003. Introducing tools from narratology, this article analyses how these reports restore meaning by addressing the following questions: What happened? Was it foreseeable? and Who is responsible? The key narrative choices implied are mapped. A typology of crisis plots is proposed. Building on this typology, the article demonstrates that successive reports progressively built a focused, simplified story about the crisis. Methodological and practical implications for scholars and practitioners using inquiry reports for research and learning are also discussed.