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Gender and Disasters: Are we fully addressing all needs in our planning?
Featured Article for November/December 2017
Gender and Disasters:
Are we fully addressing all needs in our planning?
Official Visits: The Second Disaster?
Featured Article for February 2017
Official Visits: The Second Disaster?
Do officials on scene help or hinder?
When Did We Solve the Ebola Crisis?
Did I miss something? Judging from the lack of news coverage, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Ebola crisis has been solved. My morning paper didn’t carry a single article on Ebola and even the respected Facebook site Ebola Virus Info has not had an entry since November 4. What few stories I have been able to find have had little substance. Instead, the news is all about the recent elections.
This, of course, is not unusual. We’ve conditioned the public to have a short attention span. Problem surfaces, public concern is elevated, the government overreacts, a new story emerges – problem solved. Unfortunately, problems don’t go away; they’re still there even though our attention has moved on to something else. As I have noted in a previous blog, one would expect that our experiences with SARS and H1N1 would’ve made it clear that pandemics are a very real risk and that we need to maintain the capacity to deal with them. Yet judging from our reaction to the Ebola “crisis” we still lack the capacity to deal with a biological threat, no matter the cause.
This myopia does not pertain to just biological threats. We see the same lack of judgment when we rebuild on barrier islands, in floodplains, and below levies following a disaster. We seem to have an inherent belief that if we ignore risk it doesn’t exist.
All the more reason than for those who work in emergency management to remain focused on incrementally building capacity to deal with actual risk. During the run up to Y2K, the public’s attention was fully engaged in dealing with vague predictions of catastrophic, world ending computer failures. But in addition to addressing these public concerns, emergency planners around the country were quietly developing a metropolitan medical response systems and task forces to respond to a potential terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction. When September 11 occurred, that capacity was already in place and we were beginning to focus on pandemic planning.
The real trick is to remain focused on actual rather than perceived risk. When everyone around you is running around screaming about the sky falling, it’s tough to be the one saying, “No, the real problem is that the river is rising.” You won’t be thanked and you won’t be appreciated but, in the long run, you will make a difference.
Water shortages and the “yuck” factor revisited
Last month my white paper, Public Relations and the "Yuck" Factor, talked about how one community responded to a person urinating in a reservoir. The jurisdiction drained the reservoir at a cost of over $30k. I questioned whether this was an over-reaction or a clever ploy to gain support for the water department's budget.
Today I received a link to an article about a town in Texas that is planning to recycle its wastewater. The town is considering using a system similar to that used by NASA in the space program to provide drinking water for astronauts. The article also notes that Los Angeles is considering a $700 million project to use recycled wastewater to recharge underground wells.
Despite a bit of sensationalism in the article, this really isn't something new. Recycled wastewater has been used all over the world in arid regions out of necessity. Both the Texas town of Big Spring and Los Angeles are pursuing wastewater recycling for the same reason: water is becoming scarce because of drought and increasing populations. Wastewater recycling may well be the way of the future for a lot of major cities.
Sort of puts the reaction to 6-8 ounces of urine in 8 million gallons of water in perspective doesn't it?
Crisis communications: what do social media and jazz have in common?
Several years ago my brother treated me to a jazz concert. I remember being incredibly disappointed in how bored I was (even fell asleep). He, being an aficionado, thoroughly enjoyed himself. In the discussion that followed, I realized two things. The first was that jazz is esoteric – you need to have an understanding of what's going on to truly appreciate it. The second was that I really didn't like jazz and that what I thought was jazz was really the blues.
What's this got to do with social media? As I spend more time learning about social media, I'm beginning to realize that Twitter is a lot like jazz – it's pretty hard to appreciate it if you don't take the time to understand it. The aficionados think it's the best thing since sliced bread while the rest of us scratch our heads trying to decipher twitter-speak and figure out how to use a hash tag. Secondly, once you do begin to understand it, you begin to learn its limitations and find it may not really be what you're looking for to solve your crisis communications problems.
My point is that not all of us are going to take the time to learn the intricacies of jazz and, even if we do, we may not like it. The same is true of Twitter. It's a great tool for some but is not the answer for all. Let's continue to keep diversity in our crisis communications.
BP’s Crisis Communications Strategy
There's been an interesting development in the ongoing oil spill saga. BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg has replaced CEO Tony Hayward as the person in charge of the oil spill cleanup with Managing Director Robert Dudley. Ostensibly, the change is being brought about by Hayward's rather abysmal handling of public relations and demonstrates decisive leadership by Svanberg.
However, this move is right out of the crisis communications handbook. It axiomatic that you never use your top person as your spokesperson in a crisis. This allows for plausible deniability if your initial message goes south and allows your top person to step in and "resolve" the crisis.
While there is no question that Hayward has committed some serious gaffes, one has to wonder why. BP certainly can afford to hire the very best crisis management consultants and for a crisis of this magnitude, it is inconceivable that they haven't. Yet it seems that Hayward has not had access to competent crisis communications advice.
Even someone new to the concept of crisis communications could have suggested that denying your responsibility for the oil spill in a Congressional hearing is a non-starter. I'm willing to believe that Hayward really didn't know about the bad decisions surrounding the spill. After all, it's good management to delegate decisions to the lowest level. However, when you're the CEO, you're responsible for those decisions.
And what about the yacht race vacation in the middle of the crisis? Certainly, Hayward is not really essential to day-to-day operations and is entitled to some time off. But again, even a crisis communications neophyte could explain the importance of symbolism and sending the wrong message.
So one has to wonder – has BP been using a very subtle strategy all along or are they really inept at crisis communications?
Volcanic Ash Disrupts European Airspace
Here's an example of the type of cascading effect that is hard to predict when you're doing a risk analysis. The eruption of a volcano in Iceland created an ash plume somewhere between 20,000 to 36,000 feet in height very close to the Atlantic air routes that link the United States and Europe. The drifting cloud forced closures of airports in England, Ireland and France resulting in thousands of flights being grounded indefinitely.
Think beyond just the many travelers that have been affected by this. Just as on 9/11, this type of mass grounding will have an impact on air cargo, mail, and shipping.
How do you predict his sort of thing? Well, you don't. However, since we do have the example of 9/11 and now the volcano at Eyjafjallajokull, we can predict that a disruption to supply chain can and will occur. Are you ready?
Creative Incident Command System Training
I recently had the pleasure of attending the Colorado Governor's Emergency Management Conferenceas one of the presenters. As I was wandering around the breakout rooms, I noticed a small conference room filled with communications equipment and very intense looking people. When I asked, I was told that the Colorado Division of Emergency Management had brought in an ICS overhead team and established an alternate emergency operations center. The EOC was supporting conference activities but was prepared to switch to actual operations if necessary. With so many emergency managers at the conference, they felt that this was a prudent precaution.
We complain about never having enough money to train, but how often do we take the opportunity to use what we have? My old friend, Kent Paxton, introduced me to the concept many years ago – he used local civic events as opportunities to train his incident management team and test communications. I later did the same in San Francisco.
Supporting non-emergency events provide a number of benefits besides just the training opportunity. It also allows you to demonstrate value to the communityby providing the planning and coordination skills that are often lacking in such events. My team in San Francisco once provided planning support during a garbage strike and scored a lot of points with the Mayor's staff.
A second benefit is that it positions you to react in case something does go wrong. I was at a field command post observing a search and rescue exercise using multiple scenarios in San Bernadino when an actual missing persons search was requested. The incident management team switched several teams off their scenarios and deployed them on the real mission while continuing to coordinate the other teams involved in the exercise. It was smooth and professionally done.
So the next time you're asked to help out a non-emergency event, don't duck it. Consider whether it might not be an opportunity to do some serious training at little cost!