Is Macy’s Really the Grinch?

Posted on December 10, 2010November 27, 2025 by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs4 Comments on Is Macy’s Really the Grinch?

By now you may have heard of "Santa John" Toomey, the popular seasonal worker who played Santa for over 20 years at Macy's in San Francisco. Toomey was fired last week for allegedly making an off-color joke to an older couple. The story spread from the local papers to the Internet and Toomey just appeared on the Jay Leno show. Based on the stories, it looks like a classic case of a heartless large corporation overreacting to a relatively minor incident.

But is Macy's really the Grinch in this Christmas story?

If you look carefully at the stories on the Internet, they are largely based on the original story in the San Francisco Chronicle. The story, in turn, is based on interviews with Toomey and his supporters. Macy's has declined comment on the basis that this is a personnel matter.

There are two lessons here for emergency managers, believe it or not. The first is how quickly a story can spread, particularly if it has elements that catch the public's attention. Here we have a story that is topical because of the season and has the classic "little guy against the bad corporation" theme.

The second lesson is that even where we are precluded from discussing specifics, we can't just ignore public reaction. Macy's has taken the classic head-in-the-sand approach. The company is quite correct in claiming that they cannot discuss a personnel matter. However, there is no reason to take the kind of hit to your reputation that Macy's is experiencing. You may not be able to tell your side of the story, but you can remind the public that there is another side.

It was clear from the beginning that this was a story that was going to grow with the telling and Macy's should have realized this and implemented a crisis communications plan. Consider what might have been difference if Macy's instead of saying in effect, "no comment," had said,

"While we cannot comment of the specifics of any personnel action, we take this type of complaint seriously. Any action we take in response to such a complaint is based on a thorough investigation of the facts and made after careful deliberation by senior managers."

Note that such a statement does not comment on the specifics of the case but does suggest that there is another side to the issue and that the decision was made at a high level after a review of the facts.

Actually communicating with the public instead of giving the appearance of hiding behind statutory responsibilities may not prevent damage to your reputation but it certainly go a long way to lessening that damage.

Crisis Management: Transparency Provides Protection

Posted on October 18, 2010November 27, 2025 by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

My colleague, Johnathan Bernstein, recently ended a blog on the Chilean mine rescue with this comment:

Truly successful crisis management does more than simply resolve the issues at hand. By making public the steps being taken to rectify and resolve issues, little room is left for damaging rumor and innuendo to creep in and stakeholders far are more likely to lend a sympathetic ear.

This is probably the most succinct statement of the role of crisis management that I have ever read.

As emergency managers, we tend to sometimes treat information as something that must be protected and doled out piecemeal. Part of this is because for years we've been trained that media is the enemy and forget that they can, in fact, be allies in our quest to get vital information to the public. Many times it's not enough to just do your job – you have to let the public know you are doing it and why you're doing it the way you are. Johnathan's statement reminds us that how well we handle the crisis today can save us considerable agony in the future.

Crisis Communications in the San Bruno Fire

Posted on October 13, 2010November 27, 2025 by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

For those readers who have been following the events following the explosion of a gas line in San Bruno, California, last month, it's now possible to access the dispatch communications from that terrible night. Dan Noyes, an investigative reporter for KGO 7, our local ABC affilliate, did an excellent report that captures the confusion and chaos initially faced by responders and how things were brought under control. In connection with this story, he has also posted an MP3 file of the dispatch communications.

The communications record offers a couple of teaching points for those of us who must manage crisis. First, we understand that the first few hours of any crisis is chaotic as we seek to gain information about the event. Sometimes our information is wrong, as were the initial reports in San Bruno that an airplane had crashed. We have to make the best decisions we can with the best available information. We understand this. However, the public does not always understand it. With access to our internal communications a matter of public record, we must be prepared to answer the inevitable questions that will arise after the crisis is over.

Secondly, we sometimes forget that everything we say is being recorded and is subject to review. Inside jokes, gallows humor, or fits of temper are part of how we communicate but taken out of context, they can make us seem callous or incompetent. In this day and age, we need to remember that everything we say on our "internal" communications will be accessible to anyone who wants to review it.

So the next time you key your mike, remember that it's not only operational communication, it's also crisis communication. 

Internet Security and the Paranoid Mindset

Posted on September 19, 2010November 27, 2025 by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

Ever give much thought to cyber-attack? A lot of us are at least familiar with the concept but would we know one if we experienced it?

As an emergency manager, one of the things I really worry about is the slow-onset disaster – the event that starts low key and progresses so slowly that by the time you recognize something is happening, you're already behind the power curve. Training yourself to anticipate this kind of disaster means you sometimes come across as a bit paranoid.

So what's this got to do with cyber-attack? Consider the following:

• On September 13, Chase bank experienced problems with it's website after software from a third–party database company corrupted information in its systems causing over two days of downtime and affecting millions of customers. Chase stated that this was a technical error.
• On September 17, American Express suffered a systems outage. This was nothing major and the system was soon restored.

So, was this just a coincidence that two major financial institutions suffer outages within days of each other? That's certainly possible. Or is something more insidious going on here?

I guess it really depends on your level of paranoia.

Pacific Gas and Electric another BP?

Posted on September 13, 2010November 27, 2025 by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

Many of you I know have been following the recent tragedy in San Bruno, California. This one is a bit personal for me as I frequently drove by the area damaged by the gas explosion, some of the dead were friends of friends, and many of my colleagues are working on the scene, either in their official capacity or as volunteers.

We've reached that stage in disaster response where the shock is wearing off and the finger-pointing is beginning. Pacific Gas and Electric is taking flak for its maintenance procedures and has just been ordered to inspect more than 5,700 miles of pipeline. At this point, they're probably wishing they'd spent more on maintenance.

PG&E is cooperating fully with investigators and has pledged $100 million to help rebuild San Bruno. The pipeline was inspected in March and passed and rumors of complaints about the smell of gas days prior to the explosion do not seem to be substantiated. A portion of the damaged line was scheduled for replacement. This is all good news for PG&E.

However, PG&E is also supporting a proposal before the California Public Utilities Commission that would require customers to pay the uninsured portion of catastrophic fires, such as the one in San Bruno. It doesn't help that a lot of locals recall that PG&E spent about $40 million in the last election to defeat a public power initiative. Both of these are decisions based on the business needs of the company and were in place before the explosion. However, they do not play well with the public and are already beginning to affect PG&E's reputation. If it also emerges that there were corners cut in maintenance or delays in replacing the pipeline because of cost, PG&E may well find it itself in the same position BP did – in the cross-hairs with no place to hide.

Emergency Preparedness – Shifting the focus for emergency management

Posted on September 8, 2010November 27, 2025 by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

September is National Preparedness Monthin the United States and Mother Nature is certainly doing her best to remind us of the importance of being prepared. Since September 1st we've seen a hurricane along the East Coast, a tropical storm in Texas that caused tornado watches, and a major wildfire in Colorado. As I write this, another tropical storm is building in the Atlantic. On the international scene, we've experienced a volcanic eruption in Indonesia, a tropical storm in Bermuda, and an earthquake in New Zealand. And the month isn't half over yet!

As an emergency manager, I'm a big supporter of anything that helps motivate people to prepare. However, I'm always a bit concerned when we launch one of these ad campaigns that we are not really making much of a difference. Dr. Dennis Mileti spoke at the International Association of Emergency Managers conference a few years ago and pointed out that a lot of how we try to influence behavior is not consistent with what social science research shows is really effective. Simply put, warnings and scare tactics don't work. People instead will do what everybody else is doing.

Part of the problem as I see it, is that we have made preparedness an end in itself and closely associated it with disasters. We focus on specific plans and kits and train in skills related to disaster. None of this is bad, of course, and I firmly support programs such as community emergency response teams (CERT). However, our approach tends to make preparedness something outside of every day life when it really should be part of how we live our lives. For example, most homes have a flashlight because it has multiple uses, not just because we need it in an earthquake. I'm also willing to bet that the flashlight you use daily works while the one in your emergency kit hasn't been checked since you bought it.

So let's try something a bit different for this National Preparedness Month. Rather than repeating a lot of the same material we always use, let's keep our preparedness advice grounded in the realities of day-to-day life. Let's encourage people to prepare because it helps us deal with daily life.

Preparedness – it's not just for disasters!

Disasters and Social Media

Posted on August 11, 2010November 27, 2025 by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs3 Comments on Disasters and Social Media

In my July newsletter I briefly discussed the Ushahidi Program as an example of the growing use of social media in disasters using. On August 9, the Red Cross released a survey showing just how important social media is becoming. The results are striking:

• 69% of respondents believed emergency responders should be monitoring social media
• 74% expected a response in less than an hour after a tweet or Facebook posting
• 20% would contact responders through digital means if 911 was not answering

If respondents knew of someone in trouble, they would also turn to social media.

• 44% would ask social media contacts to notify authorities
• 35% would post a request for help on an agency's Facebook page
• 28% would send a direct Twitter message to responders

Another finding that isof interest to emergency managers is that more web users say they get emergency information from Facebook than from NOAA weather radio.

I believe it no no longer matters whether emergency managers choose to take social media seriously. We really have no choice. Our profession is driven, to a large extent, by public expectation. In this case, that expectation is clear – the traditional methods by which we communicate with the public are no longer sufficient.

Solar Storms – Do They Matter?

Posted on August 4, 2010November 27, 2025 by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs2 Comments on Solar Storms – Do They Matter?

Effective emergency management begins with an assessment of risk. The problem is in identifying hazards and their potential impact on the people and organizations we serve. It seems there's a never ending stream of hazards.

Some of them are not very noticeable. According to NASA, on August 1 there was considerable activity on the earth-facing side of the sun: a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism lifting off the stellar surface, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts.

The activity also included two coronal mass ejections (CME), one of which sparked a G-2 (on a scale of G-1 to G-5) magnetic storm on earth on August 3 that lasted 12 hours. Sounds ominous but it did little more than spark Northern Lights over Europe and North America. The second is still on the way and, according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, may produce a major magnetic storm tomorrow.

Here's NASA's definition of a CME:

CMEs are large clouds of charged particles that are ejected from the sun over the course of several hours and can carry up to ten billion tons of plasma. They expand away from the sun at speeds as high as a million miles an hour. A CME can make the 93-million-mile journey to Earth in just two to four days. Stronger solar storms could cause adverse impacts to space-based assets and technological infrastructure on Earth.

So what's my point? As I've said many times, risk is relative. For most of us, solar storms have no discernible effect, beyond putting on a natural light show. However, large scale storms have the capacity to damage power systems, disrupt communications, and degrade high-tech navigation systems. If you work with or rely on these systems, you should at least be aware of the potential impacts of solar storms. Monitoring solar activity might be cheap insurance.

My thanks to my friend and colleague, Regina Phelps, whose blog H1N1 (Swine Flu):  If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another…Solar Tsunami to Strike Earth, inspired this article!

Disaster Mythology in Maryland

Posted on July 16, 2010November 27, 2025 by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs1 Comment on Disaster Mythology in Maryland

I just received an interesting note from my friend and colleague, Rocky Lopes. It seems that the recent 3.6 earthquake in Maryland rattled a bit more than windows. Here in California, we use 5.0 earthquakes to stir our coffee, so a 3.6 would probably not be noticed in most places. However, Maryland rarely gets earthquakes, so this one got their attention. Unfortunately, according to Rocky, a lot of the information and comments making the rounds after the temblor were based on what we call disaster mythology – something very akin to folklore. These included things like the old "stand in the door" response. On the plus side, Rocky was asked to appear on a local news show and did his best to correct some of the misinformation.

There are a couple of lessons here. The first is that we truly have to be all-hazards in our planning. As we do our risk analysis, we should plan not only for the most likely event but for other possible events as well and that planning should include pre-scripted public safety announcements. Secondly, in this age of rapid communications, we need to get our message out to the public almost immediately. We can't afford to wait and then try to counter rumors and old folk tales.

Does foreseeability equal responsibility? Another lesson from BP.

Posted on July 7, 2010November 27, 2025 by Lucien Canton | Posted in Weblogs

Here's another for the "you can't make this stuff up" category.

One of the basics of liability is the concept that if an event is foreseeable, you need to have at least considered it in your planning. This usually comes down to proving whether or not an event was foreseeable, a question usually decided by a jury. To prove foreseeability, attorneys will usually go after things like company memos, emails between executives, studies and so forth.

So let's suppose you're sitting on a jury deciding whether BP's oil spill was foreseeable. BP, of course, is arguing that it was not. Then the plaintiff's attorney trots out the following:

Yes, there it is – a 30 year old board game from BP where four players compete to be the first to make the big bucks. One of the hazards is:  "Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick cleanup costs. Pay $1 million."

Thanks to the good people at The Consumerist for brightening my morning. You can find more photos of the game at BoardGameGeek.

There are two lessons here for us. As I have said repeatedly, there really is nothing new under the sun. Any disaster you can come up with has happened at some point in history (okay, you wise guys, maybe not extraterrestrial invasion, unless you're fan of Erich von Daniken), so everything really is foreseeable. Secondly, the Internet never, ever forgets!

So how do you vote, Juror Number Five?