Category: Weblogs

Emergency Warning: We really, really mean it

Posted on by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs2 Comments on Emergency Warning: We really, really mean it

There's an interesting experiment being conducted by the National Weather Service. Five weather stations in Kansas and Missouri will be using plain terminology to warn people of impending hurricanes.

One of the interesting phenomena we see in emergency management is that people do not respond to warnings immediately but seek verification before acting. They tend to look out the window, consult friends, check in with social media – in short anything but take the public warning at  face value. This is particularly true where authorities have to err on the side of caution and issue warnings for events that seldom occur.

To counter this, the weather stations will be couching their warnings in serious, straight-sounding language. Instead, "a tornado watch has been issued for the towns of…" residents will hear something along the lines of: 

THIS IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TORNADO WITH COMPLETE DEVASTATION LIKELY. … SEEK SHELTER NOW! … MOBILE HOMES AND OUTBUILDINGS WILL OFFER NO SHELTER FROM THIS TORNADO — ABANDON THEM IMMEDIATELY."

I'm not sure how well this will work. It's incredibly difficult to shock people out of their complacency, especially if these warnings have the same limited likelihood of occurrence as previous ones. But trying to communicate actual risk to people is always a good thing and a much better approach than a warning that just says a tornado of unspecified magnitude might occur. I'll be very interested to see the results of this experiment.

Pink slime: a media-generated crisis?

Posted on by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

"Pink slime" – sounds disgusting, doesn't it? And yet Americans have been eating it for some time. If you've been following the media buzz lately, you'll be aware that "pink slime" is a derogatory term coined by a USDA microbiologist in 2002 (that's right, 2002 – pink slime was approved for use in 2001) to refer to the filler made from beef scraps and connective tissue. The recovered product is  heated, processed, and treated with ammonia gas to kill contaminating organisms before being ground, pressed into blocks and flash frozen. The product is considered safe for use by the USDA, although other countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom don't allow it.

The controversy seems to have begun with a series of news broadcasts by ABC last month that featured a "whistle-blower" and "shocking revelations". The public outcry was so great that almost immediately major grocery stores such as Safeway and Vons and fast food outlets such as Taco Bell and MacDonald's announced that they were discontinuing the use of the additive. The result was that in a matter of weeks the manufacturer of the filler, Beef Products, Inc. announced that it was suspending operations at three of its four plants but would continue to pay workers for 60 days. Yesterday, AFA, one of the largest beef processors in the US filed for bankruptcy.

So what's going on here? I'm not debating the merits of this particular additive but rather looking at this from a crisis management perspective. The use of "lean, finely textured beef" has been going on for more than ten years, with estimates that over 70% of the ground beef sold in US supermarkets contain the additive. The product is made from beef, admittedly of low quality, and, one could argue, makes more efficient use of the meat. It can only make up 15% of the product. Ammonia, which seems to make people cringe, is a naturally-occurring product and found in beef. As early as April of 2011, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver premiered his second season of Food Revolution with an expose on pink slime. So why now?

I think there are several reasons for the immediate and savage public outcry. First, there's what I call the "ick" factor – this just sounds plain disgusting to the average American. (One can but hope that they never do an expose on sausage making.) The term "pink slime" contributes to this sense of this somehow being something unsafe for human consumption. It's catchy and it resonates. Secondly, you have a major network breaking the story and keeping the focus on in it for several weeks. Third, there is the whiff of scandal – the USDA undersecretary who approved the use of the filler left to join the board at BPI and made over a million dollars during her tenure there. Finally, there was no labeling and this is probably the worst thing for the average American – we don't like to feel like we've been cheated.

One wonders, though, if we'd still be eating pink slime if the USDA had required "lean, finely textured beef" to be noted on product labeling.

Social media and court of public opinion

Posted on by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

In my last blog, I spoke about the court of public opinion and how your constitutional rights tend to vanish when you're in the limelight. We're seeing another case study being played out in the recent shooting incident in Florida.

The public concern here is that the shooting was racially motivated and that the local police seem to be giving the shooter a pass under Florida's self-defense law. Since the suspect is not being tried in a court of law, he is now being tried in the court of public opinion.

What makes this interesting from a crisis management perspective is the way social media has been used to fuel public outrage. I first heard of the incident not on the news but on Facebook and each day brings more information about what people are doing to express their concern for justice. It is a reminder of the power of social media to mobilize communities and a reminder that you need to counter a social media campaign immediately.

Unfortunately, the facts of the case as reported in the media are not as straight forward as these various groups would have you believe. There is physical evidence and several eyewitnesses that suggest that an altercation might have taken place. It may well be the case that there are insufficient grounds to prosecute the shooter, who is, of course, innocent until proven guilty.

However, constitutional rights are irrelevant here. The local police were unable to convince the public that they had done a thorough investigation and that there was insufficient evidence to charge the shooter thereby sparking the social media campaign. The use of the hoodie provides a strong visual image that is resonating across the country.

The court of public opinion has already decided that the shooter must stand trial, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. This public outcry has already sparked two separate investigations and we may yet see the shooter brought to trial.

It will be interesting to see what happens if the investigations reach the same conclusions as the local police.

 

Crisis management: guilty until proven innocent?

Posted on by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

"Your lawyers may be giving you sensible advice, to stay quiet and not make a move. That will work in court. But it will kill you with the public."

This quote is from a recent article by my former boss, Willie L. Brown, Jr., who is, among his many other talents, a weekly columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Mayor Brown was speaking in reference to the case of our recently-elected Sheriff who has pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of false imprisonment and now faces removal from office. Brown's point is that if you're in the public eye, the rules are different. Brown reminds us, "when…you stand accused in the court of public opinion, all your constitutional rights go out the window."

Willie Brown is no stranger to controversy, having served for eighteen years in our State legislature and as Mayor of San Francisco for two four-year terms. One of the many lessons I learned from him as his Director of Emergency Services is that you have to counter controversy immediately and truthfully. If you screwed up, you will be found out and the story will no longer be about the screw up but about your attempts to cover it up. You're always better off coming clean immediately by providing the facts and what you plan to do to correct the problem. This is counter to the advice you usually get from your attorney.

When you're dealing with crisis, the rules are different and what normally works for you in court or in public information briefings may not work in crisis situations. All the more reason to have a crisis communications plan that pre-identifies your team of advisers. You're going to need them.

 

Emergency Planning: The impact is relative

Posted on by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

We spend a lot of time trying to define the differences between emergencies, disasters and catastrophes and with good reason. We know that there are qualitative differences between events that influence how we respond. But that's the big picture – the strategic level. It's easy to forget that at the victim level, disasters are relative. It's all about how it affects me, the victim.

I was reminded of this yesterday. We had a couple of minor earthquakes in the Bay Area along the very active Hayward fault. The temblors occurred early in the morning and only minor damage was reported. I slept through most of it.

Later that evening, we had a minor power interruption in San Francisco that affected 6000+ customers for an hour. Which do you think had the most impact on those people in the outage zone? Everyone was talking about the earthquake but this minor outage probably affected more people directly.

So the point to remember is that there are no "minor" emergencies from the victim's perspective. We need to watch how we refer to events and make sure that our response is driven by need and not just magnitude.

Tsunami warning budget cuts a false economy

Posted on by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs1 Comment on Tsunami warning budget cuts a false economy

The San Jose Mercury News reports that the White House is proposing to hit the National National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with a $4.6 million cut to tsunami programs put in place after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. The cuts include a $1 million reduction to the system of buoys that provide early warning of tsunamis. We are assured that this reduction won't affect public safety as most of the system will still operate. It just means that repairs will be a bit slower.

Following the 2004 tsunami, the warning system was increased from 6 buoys to 39 in acknowledgement of the risk tsunamis posed to coastal communities in the United States. Currently 10 of the bouys are out of service and NOAA says they will "do their best" after the budget cuts to make sure that no more than 11 are ever out of service at any given time.

Is someone unclear on the concept here? Would we accept it if 25% of a building's fire alarms were inoperable? What about the warning systems on nuclear power plants? What if that annoying "check engine" light on you car only worked 75% of the time?

It's a pretty simple concept: early warning saves lives.  The better the data, the more accurate the prediction. The more accurate the prediction, the better we do at safeguarding lives. Knowing that something is heading your way gives you time to prepare and, if necessary, evacuate at-risk populations.

Over the past few years we've send a severe deterioration in our natural hazards warning systems. NOAA has had to make significant cuts to the US Geological Survey, which deals with earthquake predictions, and to the National Weather Service, which provides early warning for storms, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

What's particularly galling about this latest cut is that it's a false economy that is totally unnecessary in budget terms. Rounding errors in the national budget probably exceed a million dollars. It's chump change. Hell, you could probably find it in the seat cushions in the White House.

Give our experience last year with damage to the West Coast from the Japanese tsunami, degrading our early warning system is just plain dumb.

Drought, climate change, and slow-onset disasters

Posted on by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

We spend a lot of our time planning for the sudden, unexpected event. These are the events that leave you in little doubt that they are significant – major floods, earthquakes, fires, etc. But what about the slow-onset events that sneak up on you? These are less easy to identify. It's hard to recognize the point at which a problem becomes an emergency and then crosses the line into disaster.

The problem with slow-onset disasters is that they usually slip under the emergency services radar. They typically begin as someone else's problem and emergency services are not engaged until the situation becomes a crisis. Consequently, we spend a lot of time determining who owns the problem and who should head the crisis management team.

Case in point is the worsening drought situation in the United States. The most recent US Drought Monitor shows roughly half of the United States in a state of drought and almost a third in the highest category, exceptional drought.

US Drought Monitor, February 7, 2012

The problem is not confined to the United States. A  2010 study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research showed worsening conditions worldwide over the next 30 years. The author of the study, Aiguo Dai, says:

“We are facing the possibility of widespread drought in the coming decades, but this has yet to be fully recognized by both the public and the climate change research community. If the projections in this study come even close to being realized, the consequences for society worldwide will be enormous.”

Drought is the classic slow-onset disaster and mitigating its effects require measures that take time to put in place. If we are to be effective planners, we need to start thinking about this problem now in strategic, long-range terms. Drought does not require first responders until the situation has truly deteriorated to a crisis. And by then it will be too little, too late.

Earthquake Risk: A blueprint for disaster housing

Posted on by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) has just issued a new report, Safe Enough to Stay, that examines housing needs in San Francisco following a major earthquake.  SPUR estimates that a loss of just 5% of housing stock could result in a major outmigration that could significantly slow recovery. SPUR's analysis suggests that 25% of our housing stock is at risk. The goal of the report is to make recommendations to gradually increase the ability of citizens to remain in their homes during repairs, reducing the dependency on congregate shelters.

What makes this report so interesting is that SPUR makes specific and logical recommendations based on a careful estimation of the potential impact of a major earthquake in San Francisco. While so many of these reports make sweeping generalizations that are short on the "how-to", the SPUR report offers a practical blueprint for increasing resilience. What the report says about the need for housing and its recommendations for a pre-earthquake evaluation engineering standard is useful reading for any jurisdiction that has a seismic risk.

SPUR's interest in earthquakes comes as no surprise: the organization was founded in 1910 to improve the quality of housing following the 1906 earthquake and fires. This report is just the latest achievement in a long line of significant contributions to disaster planning.

Public warning takes a step forward

Posted on by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

The folks on the Google Crisis Response Team have come up with an interesting concept. By making use of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), they are able to post warnings from credible sources to Google maps to create a public alerting system. Currently the system is only providing warnings from the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, the US Geological Survey and the National Weather Service. However, they have a mechanism to include warnings from state and local government organizations and expect the system to grow rapidly.

Many of my colleagues have been working on CAP since 2001 and it's great to see the protocol making the leap to social media. This is exactly what CAP is intended to do – allow warning information to be freely exchanged across multiple platforms.

Currently the Google system is displayed when you perform searches on Google maps. However, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that someone will quickly figure out a way to push warnings to the end user. Meanwhile, the Google public alerting system has the potential to be a one-stop source for warning information, something we've been needing for a long time. 

Social media is not a substitute fax machine

Posted on by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs2 Comments on Social media is not a substitute fax machine

For the past few years I've been blogging and writing on why government agencies are having problems adapting to social media. In a recent article on his blog, homeland security expert Chris Battle sums up the issues very eloquently. In speaking to his law enforcement colleagues, Battle reminds them in very direct language that social media is about a dialog and that government agencies can no longer control the message.

If we continue to look at social media as simply a means of getting our message out, we fail both to engage the public and to make full use of this new medium. As Battle points out, social media is not merely a news aggregator or a substitute fax machine. It's not simply about sending routine information. It's about a willingness to hold a conversation. It's about understanding that each form of social media requires different composition – you can't just tweet your press release. It's about understanding that each platform may connect with a different audience.

So stop thinking about social media as press tools. Think instead about building a constituency. If you want credibility during crisis, you need to have credibility before the crisis.