How do you measure the effectiveness of an emergency management program? More specifically, how do you show that the money you invest in preparedness has been well-spent? Traditionally, we have used quantitative measures because "things" are easy to measure. So we count "things" like the number of plans written, the number of exercises held, the […]
There's an interesting debate going on here in the Bay Area. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency has been dealing with a lot of fallout since an officer involved shooting a few weeks ago, including one major disruption by protesters that I blogged about on July 12. In anticipation of another major protest last week, BART temporarily turned […]
My friend Regina Phelps just posted a fascinating article on how Twitter and Facebook are being used to organize the post-riot cleanup in London. At this writing the page @Riotcleanup has over 87,000 followers exchanging information about the cleanup and trying to match resources to needs. A Facebook page exchanging information on the riot has over 19,000 likes. There's […]
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 […]
In a recent discussion, one of my colleagues stated that he had canceled all of his personal social media accounts after recent hacking attacks on Fox news. He felt it just wasn't safe. What concerned me, though, was the following comment he made: "Before we put any advice out there on Social Media or on […]
As someone who blogs regularly on crisis communications issues, I'm very grateful for the TSA. They provide a never-ending stream of case studies on how not to communicate with the public. Case in point – a young lady recently managed to inadvertently get a 3-inch knife past two separate TSA checkpoints.Given the number of screenings […]
"Please be advised of a potential BART disruption at the Civic Center Station between 4:30 – 7:30p.m. this evening." This was the text message I received on my Droid about 4:32 yesterday from the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management. You'll note that it doesn't tell me why there is a potential disruption and what […]
By now you have probably heard about the Nigerian man who succeeded in boarding a Virgin America flight from New York to Los Angeles using an expired boarding pass in another person's name. According to news reports, the man was briefly detained by the FBI on landing and released. He was arrested several days later trying […]