This article aims to analyse the crisis management and learning responses of two public organizations during two sequences of failures in order to develop theory on the relationship between crisis and learning. It is found that organizations initially respond rigidly to crisis signals and that crisis-induced creativity and learning tends to be initiated in the acute crisis management phase. The findings are also discussed in relation to their implications for the nexus between crisis and organizational learning and it is found that politicization in the crisis aftermath may generate organizational learning.