Recovering from disaster--the Galveston way

On September 12, 2008 Galveston and the Houston region were hit with one of the most severe and destructive hurricanes in history--Ike. Many comments have been made, including by me, that reflect high admiration for the people, government leaders and responders who had to deal with this event. They showed remarkable strength and resilience.

But now Galvestonians are leading the way with showing us that resilience includes knowing how to recover. And that means celebrating your survival, endurance, strength and resilience. Here's the official video of the Galveston Flash Mob.

Now this kind of thing doesn't happen without some leadership and leadership is the key to resilience. Kitty Allen, a valued client, provided the spark needed to get this going. Here's what she wrote in an email about how this all came about:

I just thought it might be appropriate for Galvestonians, at least, to stop for about 5 minutes and celebrate how FAR we have actually come in 2 short years! Seems to me folks don't celebrate their successes enough and often choose to dwell on the glass half-empty....which is far from inspiring or motivating. Not being a super-slick, professional dancer routine, we wanted to demonstrate that while we might not all be 'in sync,' we ARE working together, going in the same general direction..and with our own individual style!

So, I emailed the Mayor with a quick "Do you think I'm nutz?" communication, explained the concept and included examples of flash mobs around the world...He "got it" immediately and encouraged me to "go for it"...so we did.

Congratulations Kitty, Mr. Mayor, and all you brave Galvestonians. You not only taught us how to endure an event like this with great courage and strength, now you are teaching us how to recover!

Who should manage a spill like the Gulf Spill?

It's really not so surprising that some elected officials seem to think they could have run the spill better than Unified Area Command. Some actors seem to think they could have done better as well. But what is very sad and surprising is that members of Congress seem to agree with them. At last according to this article from nola.com.

Here's what Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro told a congressional hearing:

"Louisiana law specifically states and grants emergency powers to the local authorities during times of declared disasters," Taffaro said in testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee. But, he said, "instead of embracing the local authorities' involvement and resource capacity, local authority was met with resistance, exclusion and power struggles."

The Deputy National Incident Commander Peter Neffenger correctly explained how the system works under OPA 90, ICS and NIMS. This was a spill of national significance under the direction of the National Incident Commander, Adm. Thad Allen. Unified Command, from the first hours of the response included BP under the direction of the Federal On-Scene Coordinator. I'm not sure about all the organization and changes in this response, but I am very aware that in all drills and events I have been involved in included a state agency as the State On-Scene Coordinator and a local response agency as the Local On-Scene Coordinator. They all formed Unified Command. Obviously all local agencies cannot participate in the ultimate decisions--it would be a nightmare, But they would coordinate their interests through the LOSC who does sit in Unified Command as a representative of local interests. If local representation was not included, it was not because of the lack of that in the plan, it was a failure in execution.

Kevin Costner testifying to Congress about response leadership is essentially a hoot. Are these Congress members so publicity hungry that they invite him in order to get the press there? No wonder their approval ratings suggests only friends and family would vote for them. I don't know how Mr. Costner's machines that were leased or acquired by BP at considerable cost actually worked. I'd like to see a study. But it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume they didn't work but BP bowed to public and political pressure in spending this money.

So, response community, do you think that Billy Nungesser should have been given control of the response? Do you think, as one Republican representative suggests, that the government should develop all the advanced technologies and expertise that decades of experience that BP brought to this event? And would this produce better results than the current system that provides a collaboration with private industry under the absolute supervision of the federal government?

I'm sounding like a stuck record, but clearly the lack of understanding of NIMS-ICS among our elected officials and press corp is a major national problem. If it is not addressed and soon, we risk losing a system that works in exchange for one that will further complicate and encumber what is already a very great challenge. In my opinion, NIMS is worth fighting for--but we have an uphill climb.

Are the Media Your Partners in Emergency Communication

A couple of years ago I presented at a major conference on crisis and risk communications and several of the highly respected speakers talked about the need to "partner with the media" in communicating with the public about major events. My under the breath reaction was: good luck with that.

Since I got engaged in this crisis and emergency communication business fulltime over ten years ago one of my strongest beliefs has been that we need to first of all focus on direct communication to those people who are most impacted by an event and those whose opinions about us matter most for our future. One of the reasons for that firm belief was my experience in trying to "partner with the media" and the disastrous results that sometimes, very often occurred. In fact, I would have guess that about half of all efforts were disappointing if not outright infuriating.

Now the highly respected firm of Burson-Marsteller has documented this experience. This, in my mind, is one of the most important studies to come out about media relations in general but crisis communication in particular. I would advise a careful look at this study. I haven't looked at the mechanics of the study so can't comment on the way it was done and how solid it is, but I can tell you that it conforms to my own experiences.

For those who want the headline version, if you send your important messages to the media, at best you can expect 50% consistency with your message and what the media actually does with it. But that is better than what happens with it in the blog world, where the consistency drops down to less than 40%.

The implications are clear and should be part of every PIO and emergency manager's information strategy:
1) Go direct--plan ahead of any event to communicate directly through email, phone, text, website, whatever to the public, impacted citizens, elected officials, investors, customers, fenceline neighbors--anybody who is important to your future.
2) Rumor management -- you now know that when you send it to the media and into the social media world is almost certainly will turn into something different than you intended. That means communication is not about sending it out and letting it takes its course, it is a continuing process of distribution, correction, challenging false reports, and providing continuous updates.

Here's the bottom line: So many think that public information management is about sending out a press release and the job is done. That is hopelessly naive and that approach is guaranteed to cause great disappointment and quite likely loss of trust--and maybe loss of job.

Guest Post: San Bruno, a 1999 Event and how the world has changed

[Editor's note: Another guest post from Bellingham Fire Chief Bill Boyd. This one hits close to home as the event he refers to that happened in 1999 is where I met the good chief as we worked together in responding to the pipeline explosion. This event is also what launched the PIER System and my journey in crisis communication resulting in such things as writing this blog.]

Last night I was sitting at my computer compiling research for a project when my TweetDeck Twitter feed started noting a large fire in the San Francisco area. The comments quickly escalated, with a broad range of observers reporting the same thing. Thinking that there was a major airline catastrophe in the works, I picked a couple of common hash tag words and began monitoring. What this revealed was not only a huge emergency event for the San Bruno community, but also my own emotional baggage from a similar event that occurred in my community in 1999.

Within 20-30 minutes of the beginning of the event, I tapped into online live TV news coverage of the rapidly escalating disaster. The news reporters and tweets were speculating that a gas station had blown up and/or a commercial aircraft had crashed into a neighborhood adjacent to San Francisco International Airport. But, the volume, size and heat generated by the clean burning fire indicated to me that this was most likely a high pressure natural gas pipe line fire. I quickly tweeted my observations, which were re-tweeted and confirmed by others much closer to the situation than me.

Over the next two hours I sat riveted to my computer, reading, observing and sharing information and my perspective and opinion. You see, in 1999, my community experienced a similar disaster. A 16 inch underground pipeline carrying unleaded gasoline ruptured in my city, spewing 230,000 gallons of gasoline into an urban creek, where it was unwittingly ignited by two boys. The ensuing flame front traveled a mile and a half in ten seconds, destroying everything in it’s path, along with the sense of community shared by our citizens. The two boys and another young man lost their lives that day, and the City of Bellingham lost it’s innocence and sense of security. Watching the video and reading the real time tweets from San Bruno took me back to 1999. The emergency responder side of me wanted to get on the next airplane and fly down there to help out. The non-emergency side of me became agitated, impatient and angry that something like this happened to another community. “What the hell happened this time?” was all I could think. Soon thereafter, I decided to disengage for self-preservation purposes and went to bed.

This morning the news and various feeds confirmed my fears and suspicions. An underground pipeline carrying high pressure natural gas had catastrophically failed, incinerating the neighborhood. I was awestruck by not only the devastation, but also the lack of widespread damage, given the lack of water available to firefighters and the strong winds. The San Bruno and assisting fire, police and public works departments did a helluva job in containing a conflagration.

Many lessons will be learned and shared from this event. My initial observations from the “cheap seats”;

1. San Bruno and assisting public safety/public works/medical care folks performed at the highest level. I am in humbled by their work, and proud to call them peers.
2. The same goes for the community at large. With the exception of a couple of reports of looting (which is often a rumor in disasters), the altruism of San Bruno citizens warms the heart.
3. The power of Social Media - especially Twitter - in this event was almost overwhelming. As someone who experienced a similar event just over a decade ago, I not only could understand and predict what was going on, I had a visceral response.
4. Highly visible events like this generate a lot of SM “noise”. It takes a practiced eye and patience to delineate fact from fiction - and you still may be wrong.
5. Most folks tweeting from the incident were not directly involved from what I can tell. I am guessing that those immediately affected had much bigger things to worry about.
6. Twitter postings were coming in faster than I could track. I also suspect that the tweet trend application I use could not keep up with the volume of traffic. I am sure this will discussed at length in the coming days/weeks.
7. The pipeline company and other responding organizations quickly used SM to get their message out. Whether it was effective or not remains to be seen.

Looking back to 1999, I wish I would have had all of the tools now available. Google Earth, Bing Maps, aerial maps, satellite images, real time weather reports, Twitter, Facebook, and more. The citizens of San Bruno quickly and effectively mobilized to help their emergency responders and neighbors in large part due to the ability to rapidly communicate and rally help in the heat of the moment. I remain humbled.

The Gulf Spill's Biggest Lesson According to our National Incident Commander

Admiral Allen would qualify for the nation's Incident Commander-in-residence is such a position existed. Having assumed Incident Command responsibility in the disastrous Katrina response and cleaned the situation up there dramatically, then named National Incident Commander for the Deepwater Horizon spill, no one can speak with more authority about major incidences and what we need to learn from them. So what does the Admiral think is the major lesson learned from the Gulf Spill?

This is what was reported from his interview on NPR yesterday: "The biggest lesson he's learned from this and other disasters, Allen said, is that it's important to make sure all of the different branches and levels of government are working together — something that is harder than it might sound."

Obviously, we would have to dive a little deeper to understand what problem he is referring to and what "working together" really means. But here is my speculation: We have a system called the National Incident Management System built on the Incident Command System. It clearly defines the way in which a coordinated response is supposed to run including how coordinated communication among all participating agencies and partners is supposed to be handled. Many elements of this system were implemented during the event and contributed to what will be seen overall, despite the inordinate time it took to kill the well, as an effective response. However, because of lack of understanding or commitment by senior leaders in a number of different key agencies to this system, there were divergent elements introduced that proved to impact effectiveness. I would not presume to put those words in the Admiral's mouth and it is only my understanding and perception.

But if that is true, the major lesson coming out of this tragic and disastrous event is to not abandon NIMS, but protect its use against potential obstacles to its effective use. I am very much hoping that this becomes an important regulatory and even legislative issue in the future as I think it is critically important to our nation's ability to respond effectively to major events. The response community--meaning you, dear reader--needs to get involved in this issue. If we don't understand it and become involved in looking at how to make national response more effective, do we expect the citizen on the street to do it? I hope the Admiral will become increasingly clear in his analysis of what went wrong and propose some specific solutions and ways to ensure compliance. There is much at stake.

What did you think of the media coverage of the Gulf Spill?

It's fascinating to me to look at how people evaluate media coverage. The evaluation often says more about the person evaluating than the media itself. For example, if someone says they think FOX is fair and balanced, that might give you an indication of their politics, same is true of those who might say that about Keith Olberman.

If you talk to anyone involved in the Gulf spill or the communications operation of that event, mention the media and their eyes will roll and there's a good chance that if they are inclined toward foul and vulgar language they won't be able to hold it in. Universally those involved have seen the coverage as horrific. Biased, inaccurate, nasty, intentionally misleading, etc. That's why it is quite surprising to me to see from the Pew Research Center findings that the public overall feels the media did a pretty good job. My reaction is, what is wrong with those people? But, that again is the difference between an inside and outside perspective.

The Pew study, announced yesterday, is fascinating. I think it is must reading for any PIO or communication leader responsible for crisis and emergency communication. The event was singular, no question, and they make it clear how unusual the spill was in terms of media coverage. But their analysis is undoubtedly the best way to get a grasp on how the media will cover events like this. And, unlike me, they do it without perceptible bias or frustration.

For those not interested in wading through the lengthy report (very worth it, however) here are the eight key points they make (with my own spin on those points)

1) this story was dominant -- by a long ways. Compared to other major disaster stories, none ever came close to the percent of news hole consumed with the incredible longevity.
2) The "blame game" was exceptionally strong --while the leading story line was the containment and recovery operations (47%) and exceptionally high percentage was focused on finding fault or blame (they call it the blame game, not just me) with BP (27%) and the adminisration (17%)
3) The White House had mixed coverage (I wish Pew had better analyzed the changing WH strategies and how that lined up with the media criticism of the WH, but that will be left for others)
4) BP emerged as antagonist -- that is not surprising, what surprises me is that Pew is using the black hat vs. white hat method of analyzing the news, seeing it as cast in entertainment form which it certainly is
5) The spill was mostly a TV story--with surprising differences in how the cable networks dealt with the story vs. major networks (hint--blame game is CNN and cable business)
6) Social media was not nearly as strong as mainstream media in its focus -- again surprising, but if you look at the nature of social media, it is understandable
7) Media outlets websites with interactive features were very important in telling the story
8) Public interest even exceeded the extremely high level of coverage -- the public simply couldn't get enough of this story

Crisis management and resilience thinking

I came across this post (thanks William) on Homeland Security Watch by Mark Chubb. Chubb is also responding to the article in the New York Times about crisis management, the BP spill, Toyota and Goldman Sachs. I offered my humble opinion about this article and a similar one in Washington Post at crisisblogger.

Unlike my screed about the hypocrisy of the media who play a big part in creating crises and then say, why can't anyone fix these things?, Mr. Chubb's reaction is much more thoughtful. He points out that while Mr. Goodman of the Times seems to think that crisis managers are those people who come and try to clean up after a mess, the real crisis managers are busy far before things go seriously wrong:
Real crisis managers though are closely related to risk managers and emergency managers, both of whom take a comprehensive approach to their fields, which requires them to consider ways of preventing and mitigating harm before things start to become unwound.

He's absolutely right of course. This is why I am enthusiastic as a professional involved in crisis management to the shift in thinking toward the issue of resilience. Crisis response is only one part of the resilience equation. In our way of thinking there are four key elements: preparation, response, communication and recovery.

Preparation is more than coming up with a good crisis plan, although that is important. As Mr. Chubb points out, preparation includes a comprehensive look at all factors that lead to a crisis, including the internal dynamics of an organization, for the purpose of first of all preventing them from happening in the first place.

The lesson to be drawn from the gulf spill for example, is not the PR crisis management is a failure. There is a far more significant lesson. As was said I believe in Apollo 13: what we have here is a failure of imagination. Not just BP, but the entire industry and its regulators clearly did not conceive of an event the size of what has happened in the gulf. It simply was inconceivable. Not it is not. Reality has replaced the necessity for imagination when it comes to preventing and preparing for a major deepwater spill event.

But where is our imagination failing us now? What events could occur in our communities, cities, businesses and organizations that we reject out of hand. Will it require us, like it has the oil industry, to have a disastrous reality teach us because our imagination has failed us.

I know in the drills and exercises that I will be working on in the future, I will not try to make that mistake. It is so easy to rely on the tried and true scenarios. Mr. Chubb has done as big favor by pointing us in directions where we need to look for where the failures are most likely to occur, and that is deep within our own organizations. We should not be afraid to dig deep, ask hard questions, and most of all, let our imaginations fail us again.

At last--Adm Allen Defends ICS

Adm. Allen at the National Press Club on Friday finally definitively defended the Incident Command System, and explained to the American people why it is important. He also completely acknowledged that it was difficult for the American people to understand the notion of cooperative response between a responsible party and the government.

This is the first important step to helping elected officials, government responders, the media and the public understand what is at stake if ICS and NIMS are thrown out the window as a result of the administration's role in the Deepwater Horizon event.

Adm Allen, the National Incident Commander, went so far as to call it "trust," something that existed in the response early on, but was severely damaged or destroyed by the political necessity of blame avoidance. He explained that because of OPA 90, the government and the industry have been cooperating in response management for the past 20 years: "It is very hard for the public to understand that a responsible party that is clearly responsible for the event itself could somehow be cooperative in the response to the spill. But as a matter of fact, since 1990, that's exactly the way we've conducted oil spill response in this country."

He also points out that the challenge of cooperation is public perception: It's been challenging at times to create that unity of effort given sometimes what appears to be the rejection of the notion [by] the general public," Allen said.

He is absolutely right. Unfortunately, the public perception of the value and necessity of cooperation was severely impacted negatively by political messaging involved in this spill, the ignorance of the media of OPA 90, ICS and NIMS, and the underlying mistrust in the public of government and particularly big oil companies.

You might ask what this "throwing under the bus" of BP has to do with a national disaster response per NIMS? If politics is allowed to play such a role in the communication about any event, Responsible Party-involved or not, every response partner has to worry. Everyone looks behind their back. No government agency is immune from being thrown under the bus to focus and avoid blame. Look what happened to MMS in this event. Gone. What elected official in a major city is going to trust that when it comes to the blame game being played that they will not find themselves in the crosshairs of the White House or the highest office holding the keys to the response? And, as Adm. Allen suggests, trust is at the heart of effective collaborative response.

The response community who understands NIMS and the concept of Unified Command and collaborative emergency public information needs to fight against the kind of political overlordship that we have seen in this response. We don't need a new national response system as David Gergen suggested. We have a great one. We need to make certain it works by preventing it from being co-opted.

An Incident Commander's Incident Commander--Admiral Allen

As the tide of battle, public opinion and politics begins to turn in the Gulf Spill (see story in NOLA.com this morning about the great job done), it is time to give recognition to a true national hero, Admiral Thad Allen.

If you ask any Incident Commander around the nation to describe what an ideal Incident Commander looks like, I would guess most would pretty much describe the Admiral. For good reason. He not only served as National Incident Commander in this event but also came in to Hurricane Katrina after the cataclysmic failure of local and state government response, took charge and achieved remarkable results. It is no doubt in part due to his leadership there that the Coast Guard stood out among all government agencies with its reputation (and funding) significantly enhanced after Katrina.

In the Gulf Spill, he got involved as National Incident Commander as things were starting to go seriously sideways. BP was failing on multiple tries to stem the flow. Media reports were scathing of the response. The administration, doing its best to avoid the "Obama's Katrina" meta-narrative was doing their best to heap outrage on the Responsible Party, key administration leaders were speaking for the response indiscrimately, and the Admiral clearly understood the vital role that BP needed to play to stop the spill.

I wasn't there to observe the operational side, but I had a pretty good ringside seat on the communications. While I have been highly critical here and in other observations about the abandonment of the NIMS JIC model and of the failures of BP, I have been amazed at Adm. Allen's performance as a spokesperson for the administration and response.

He provided the regular briefings with clearly a very deep knowledge of the complicated technology and engineering challenges the response team faced. He made it clear through both policies and repeated statements that Unified Command was committed to full transparency with only the limits of safety and security interfering. His common question to a reporter after providing a response was "was that responsive?" making it clear he was intent on not ducking anything, not equivocating, not spinning, but providing the unvarnished facts as he saw and understood them.

He was not shy about getting reporters on the right track when he saw them veering onto a rabbit trail or agenda. He challenged them but only by coming back to the facts. He was also not shy about contradicting major administration officials; specifically when Sec. Salazar suggested that BP would be thrown out of the response and Sec. Napolitano adamantly denied that BP was a "partner." The Admiral calmly communicated that BP's technology, expertise and commitment were essential. He was even willing to be so honest, in a political and media atmosphere that wishes only to heap scorn on BP, of commenting that their operational response was very good if not excellent, while also criticizing their reserve and ineffectiveness in meeting the American public's need for effective communication.

President Obama's decision to clear the public stage of all the Secretaries and department heads who wanted to speak about this and rely on the Admiral as the single voice of the response is one of the best decisions he made during this event. The Admiral more than lived up to the president's high expectations for him. I still regret that the Unified Command message was lost and that BP was also thrown off the stage, but our nation could not have had a better, more commanding, more reassuring and completely honest and transparent spokesperson for this event. It appears that President Obama has avoided the "Katrina" label and this event will neither define his presidency nor harm his political future. For that, I think he has no one to thank more than Admiral Allen.

The Web is Dead. Apps Rule.

Everything is moving onto the web. The web is where it is at. How long have you heard that? Including from me talking about crisis and emergency communications. Now, we hear the web is dead.

In this intriguing article from Wired magazine, Chris Anderson (author of the Long Tail) and Michael Wolf, the rise and decline of the web is documented. The graphic is particularly telling. Let's make it clear, we are not talking about the decline of the Internet as a more or less universal way of transmitting data. That continues to grow. But as the authors point out, the web is not the internet. The web is one of many, many ways to share information on the internet. As critics of this post have pointed out, the web may not be declining so much as other uses of the internet are expanding so rapidly that the web's share of traffic is declining.

What does this mean for emergency managers and PIOs? It means we all need to be thinking more of delivering information to mobile devices and facilitating interaction on mobile devices. Apps rule as the rapidly emerging preferred front end to data sharing on the internet. During Hurricane Ike we discovered that a very significant percentage of the population of Houston-Galveston were relying on their smartphones--charging batteries with car chargers--to get information about the storm and assistance. The Red Cross study which I've commented on here and other bloggers on emergencymgmt.com as well has made it clear that social media is already and will be a critical means of communicating with an increasing segment of the population. And social media is largely about mobility and access through mobile devices--particularly now as the popularity of the iPad will accelerate the introduction of a million knock-offs. Portable internet devices from smartphones to pad computers to embedded devices in almost everything you use will be ubiquitous.

As has always been true in emergency communication, we can't think that the mountain will come to us. We must find our audience where they are and make sure they are getting the information they need where and how they want it.

David Gergen's Call for National Solutions to Emergency Response

David Gergen is my favorite pundit. I always sit up and take notice when I see him on CNN. I think it is because he admirably served both Democratic and Republican presidents plus the fact that his views are usually wise, insightful and somehow above the din of noise just below him.

Now the Harvard professor and CNN political pundit is calling for an overhaul of the nation's laws regarding emergency response. But his solutions, I hate to say this, are based on a very inadequate understanding of the emergency response procedures already in place--most specifically the National Incident Management System (NIMS).

Gergen says:

- the American people believe the Gulf response was inadequate--agree, but not because we don't have good methods for dealing with this

- he says responders are frustrated -- agree, very frustrated, but primarily because overseers who did not know NIMS/ICS/JIC prevented them from using it

- he says we need a command structure modeled after the military -- exactly right, except we have one called Incident Command System that became NIMS in 2004

- he says: Laws and regulations patched together over the years have given large, often vague and confusing responsibilities to too many players, starting with the feds but also state and local officials and, in some cases, corporations like BP. The result is a chain of command clogged with uncertainty and delays. -- here is where he is very wrong. We have a clear, effective system (NIMS/ICS). The Unified Command structure has been effectively implemented in numerous responses. Oil Pollution Act of 1990 specifically includes the Responsible Party (such as BP) in Unified Command because 1) they have expertise and technology that the feds don't have and 2) they are paying for everything so they should have a say--yet the lead Fed agency always has the most say.

- he says: But if a crisis mushrooms—as the oil spill did—the federal government must take decisive command. Never again should the country’s fate rest with a corporation. He's right--it never should and never did. That was the point of OPA 90--created from lessons learned from ExxonValdez which was a company response. From the first moments of the spill Unified Command was formed, Coast Guard was the Federal On-Scene Coordinator and then a National Incident Commander was named all in accordance with OPA 90. Gergen has bought into the media and political mis-info that said BP was in charge. BP was under Unified Command directives from the very beginning. It's just the administration, attempting initially to avoid the media blame game, convinced everyone that this was BP's spill and the fed's job was to put "their boot on BP's neck", until May 27 when the president said, "actually, we were in charge all along." Right, they were.

- Gergen says: Once we have good plans in place, we must invest far more in leadership training for first-responders. Good news-- the government has spent hundreds of millions, if not billions in training on NIMS (Mr Gergen, please Google NIMS and find out about FEMA's extensive on-line training and the NIMS Five Year Training plan.) The sad thing is, DHS never informed the media, the public, CNN pundits, nor apparently the Secretary and her boss about this.

I join the esteemed Mr. Gergen in calling for a national solution to the problems exhibited by the gulf spill. But the problem is not that we don't have an effective plan in place and training to support it. The problem is that the system and plan we have is not adequately protected against political meddling, and it is not well known by the public, the media and elected officials. It is a problem I deal with in every major urban area in preparing plans for coordinating emergency communications. The biggest issue by far is the very real concern that the mayor, or county judge, or governor will circumvent the Unified Command process and the Joint Information Center which operates under authority of the Unified Command. My answer has always been--sure your mayor can pre-empt Unified Command and its authority under the law, but you run the risk of not getting federal reimbursement under a presidential declaration. That certainly helps to secure compliance with NIMS. But what happens when the highest office of the land, that has no equivalent downside, circumvents NIMS, takes control from Unified Command of the communication function or any function they choose, and turns the response into a politically-driven operation? There is apparently no law that prevents this. This, Mr. Gergen, is where the focus needs to be. We have a great system, a great tool. We need to make certain that it will not again fall victim to political agendas.

The Future of Incident Specific and Joint Information Center websites

The Deepwater Horizon event has presented the world with the largest, most fully functioning and information-rich incident and JIC website ever. (Full disclosure--my company PIER provides the site). But, what will the future of such websites be? As envisioned by the National Incident Management System and ICS, there would be one voice for the response, one PIO, one JIC, one authoritative source for the response reflecting the combined information and messaging of all response participants including the Responsible Party (under OPA 90).

I have written before here about the role of the Department of Homeland Security and the White House in managing the information flow on the Deepwater Horizon event and the potential implications for NIMS/ICS/ICS. If I and others thought our concerns were overwrought all we had to do was look at the Enbridge oil spill in the Kalamazoo river in Michigan to have our worst fears realized. In this event EPA launched an incident specific site reflecting its activities and Enbridge launched a site detailing its actions. You will note that each calls the event a different name--one of the no nos in ICS/NIMS. You will also note that EPA explains that Unified Command has been established but specifically does not mention that Enbridge is a participant in Unified Command. I don't know, but I suspect they are. But public perception is clearly being molded to believe that EPA, along with state and local agencies, are the ones solely responding to and managing this event. Can't quite see how that squares with OPA 90 and ICS.

The single, authoritative voice for the response is gone, non-existent. The media no doubt are going to each individual agency and player and getting different information and messages about the response.

As this threat to NIMS and its effectiveness in communicating with the public isn't problem enough, there is another emerging threat. Google launched an incredibly impressive "mash-up" of information related to the Deepwater Horizon event. I have to hand it to them (and thanks Phil for showing this to me!) the company that promised to "organize the world's information" has done a masterful job of organizing relevant information about the spill. It should be studied by all of us who need to plan what the response websites of the future will look like.

So why is it a concern? In my ideal world of crisis and emergency response communication the incident website will be the primary, authoritative, fastest and most efficient provider of relevant information about the event to all stakeholders, all audiences. The decision of Unified Command or its superiors in the Deepwater incident to eliminate BP from the official communication and to focus on the administration's role and activities rather than pure response information forced many to turn to BP for the best response information. BP.com received considerably more traffic than the incident website. That is not something BP wanted or intended, but it was a consequence of Command decisions about information. In the Enbridge case, there is no one authoritative voice--each participant telling the story apparently without coordination or an attempt to create that single voice. Now, if other players such as Google decide to take on the task of assembling and presenting information in such a compelling way it will be even more difficult for the Unified Command to establish that unified voice.

What does it matter? In a national emergency clear, authoritative, simple, non-contradictory information will be vital for the public. Without that unnecessary panic, fear, over-reactions may all result. Some may simply choose not to respond due to confusion. The book "The Unthinkable" by Amanda Ripley, plus the work of Dr. Vince Covello, make it very clear that simple, authoritative messages are essential for appropriate public reaction and participation in real emergencies. With Deepwater Horizon and the emergence of this kind of unofficial "mash-up" the ability to provide that kind of authoritative voice may be seriously compromised.

Red Cross Survey Shows Absolute Necessity of Social Media in a Disaster

Yes, there are still holdouts in the emergency communications business. Still PIOs who think their job is to put out a press release or two and send to the media to communicate about a disaster response. Still some who doubt the importance of an incident website, interactive engagement with stakeholders and the public. And some who still say, "Twitter what?" "Facebook, hunh?"

Research just conducted by the American Red Cross should put any debate about this issue to rest. The essential message is that as more and more Americans turn to the Internet as a source of information, they use the Internet to gain the vital information they need. And this is especially true in serious emergencies or disasters. The sample of 1058 survey participants was drawn from people who volunteered for online surveys, so it cannot be said to represent the entire population. However, it clearly shows the high use of social media (75%) and the high expectation of direct engagement with the response organization through email, text, social media applications, etc.

This information is fully supported by our experience in helping manage communications during the Gulf Spill. 50,000 people added themselves to the mailing list to receive updates, and additional several thousand added themselves to individual state websites managed by BP. About 8000 signed up for text alerts, 40,000 as Facebook fans, 8500 as Twitter friends in addition to the over 2.5 million who viewed spill videos on YouTube and 250,000 who viewed the almost 1000 spill photos posted by Unified Command on Flickr.

Emergency communications is simply not the same game it was just a few short years ago. Today it is about engagement rather than pushing information. It is more about correcting all the wrong or twisted information that gets shared by others, than it is even about being the first source. It is about conversation, not proclaiming. The sooner PIOs and communication managers understand that, the faster response managers and Incident Commanders will understand that.

More sign of the demise of the JIC--the Enbridge Spill

It is now very clear that the NIMS/ICS/Joint Information Center concept implemented by the government and the oil industry since 1990 is not being used in the Deepwater Horizon response. Particularly from a public information standpoint, the primary value of using that system, mandated by federal law and regulations, was to enable there to be a single voice for the response and that single voice represented in largely equal measure the perspectives of the Responsible Party as well as the lead federal, state and local government agencies.

There is a major oil spill going on in Michigan, involving pipeline operator Enbridge. The press release from the EPA and their response website demonstrate very very clearly that the JIC is dead, even though the response may be handled using other NIMS/ICS protocols.

Why do I say the JIC is dead and how does this vary from the way responses were handled pre-gulf spill? You would never have seen an agency like the EPA loudly proclaiming in a press release that it is in charge--leading some to believe that the response had actually been federalized. EPA wants to leave no doubt that the federal government is running this response--quietly mentioning that oh, yeah, the RP is here too. That is very very different from way this has been drilled and done before. Before, the message was (typically led by RP) that here we stand, company, fed, state, local--we are all in this together. Unified Command and all that.

Secondly, the website. The EPA is running its own website, as is Enbridge. Single voice? Not a chance. In fact, it is likely that we will see info on EPA's response website that throws Enbridge under the bus. Why do I expect that? Deepwater might have something to do with that. What has always happened before is there was a single website with the rules being that the JIC and only the JIC is the authoritative voice. This is what makes the JIC and essential element of NIMS because NIMS/ICS demands that Command be responsible for and have authority over all elements of the response--including communications. When you have each agency involved on its own, its own messaging, its own strategy, its own information flow, there can be no Unified Command authority or control over the information. Another DWH legacy.

But one of the most telling items is the name. Under NIMS/ICS, an incident is supposed to have a single name and it usually the location or something specific to incident. It may seem a minor point but getting one name and sticking to it does several things--avoids confusion and avoids placing blame in the naming process--particularly important because in so many of these events who really is responsible isn't known until the investigation and legal process is complete. Unified Command named the Deepwater Horizon event the Deepwater Horizon event. However, a higher power renamed it: the BP Spill. Now look at this event in Michigan. The EPA calls it the Enbridge Oil Spill. Enbridge calls it "the leak on line 6B."

Yes, the gulf spill (I call it that because, well, since it doesn't seem to have a consistent name anymore I guess anyone can call it what they want), yes the gulf spill has changed our world.

Media Coverage of Spill Moving Into New Phase

It's been fascinating and often disheartening to watch media coverage throughout the Gulf Spill (again full disclosure for those who may be new to Crisis Comm blog--both US Coast Guard and BP are long time clients). The harshness, negativity, blackhat stories and conspiracy theories have been rampant, along with some outstanding and very enlightening coverage of what is going on. But there have been definite phases of coverage that reveal how long duration events such like this play out in the news media and how the news media itself works.

Today the story is changing dramatically. Where in the past, particularly in early to mid-June when coverage was at its peak, most major blogs and news outlets were competing on how bad they could make it and how evil those behind the spill or failures in the response were. That story line is suddenly shifting. A few relevant examples:

Spill Vanishing. It seems things started turning with this story from NYT, one of the mainstream who did the most to exaggerate the damage (remember the inaccurate report of the huge underwater plume?)

BP Spill Damage Exaggerated. Time Magazine even goes so far as to suggest Rush Limbaugh might have been right.

Yes, but who is to blame for the exaggeration, and who gains from it? The Telegraphic in UK takes this one on. Conspiracy theories are never far behind, even when the story changes from "it's horrible" to "someone screwed up by saying it was horrible."

BP looking better. The Wall Street Journal noticed that things were looking better for BP in all of this and made an article of it.

Maybe it's not their fault. Amid all this is mounting speculation that the blame for this may fall on others.

Maybe it won't matter as much as we thought. Then there is this one from AP suggesting that previous spills may have greater impact on society and legislation.

Don't get me wrong. BP's reputation will be impacted by this for my lifetime anyway, and chances are most of those who may be reading this. The important thing for emergency managers interested in how these things play out in the media and public opinion is to understand what is going on here and why.

A few comments that may help better understand this change as well as coverage thr0ughout this event.

1) Every day the war starts anew. By the war I mean the battle that every publisher and editor faces--how do I get eyes on my screen or paper today? More than that, how do I steal eyes from my millions of competitors? So every day something new has to be created. The story in the Gulf isn't changing much. Bummer for the media. So something has to be new, something has to change and that means that new angles, stories and trends have to be created if not simply uncovered.

2) Good guys don't win wars. By that I mean, good news stories have a hard time in the tough competition for eyes, ears and minds. That's why the blame game exists. Put a black hat on someone and eyes will turn. Hey--I found the guy to blame for all this--and suddenly people will pay attention. Time even put a list of the top twelve candidates to blame. So, now there is good news about the spill--it is vanishing and the damage may not be as great as we thought. So who should be blame for their being good news? It's like they can't help themselves.

3) If you don't like the weather now, hang around for a minute. Sort of like the weather in Denver, media coverage is always changing. (See point one). That means you have to have some patience. It's been understood about celebrity coverage for some time that the media loves to build someone up into some kind of godlike being, and then loves even more to tear them down to human size, or lower. The same is true of events, companies, government agencies, etc. Why? See point two.

4) The herd mentality. In most major stories, there emerges what might be called a meta-narrative. In Katrina it was simple--the feds let us down, particularly President Bush. That story was repeated ad nauseum despite the basic underlying truth that until Katrina, FEMA was never seen or understood as a response organization. The meta-narrative of this spill has been BP is a big evil foreign company that caused the spill and is failing to fix it. Well, half the shareholders are American. Investigation will show the causes. Failure to fix it was true due to the incredible technical challenges. Failure or slowness in paying claims has been essentially untrue and completely exaggerated. But that was the story line and probably 90% of America believes it because it was repeated so often. Now, we may see the story line changing and the herd is following. It seems contradictory that media need a new story and angle every day and then to see such "me too" coverage. But no one seems to want to try and challenge the meta-narrative. So the new angles tend to be minor issues supporting that big overwhelming story, with few if any, challenging the underlying truth of the big story.

I can't wait to see the news tomorrow. "Claims the spill was exaggerated are exaggerated--and we know who to blame!"

Government and the Internet--the plot thickens

Today the news is that a website, Wikileaks, has published 90,000 classified documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. This website is dedicated to publishing classified and "leaked" documents. The administration is claiming that this act of making public information that was never intended for public viewing could put American lives and security at stake.

On July 19, the New York Times published an important article by Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University, titled "The Web Means the End of Forgetting." The primary point is that what goes on the Internet stays on the Internet with much potential harm to those who don't think about what they put there. He makes the intriguing point that while we now live in a global village, sharing almost everything with the 6 billion or more other people on this planet, we have not adopted the village's values of "forgive and forget." The consequences to lives now and in the future will be great.

Last Thursday, July 22, the GAO published a document of testimony titled: "Information Management: Challenges in Federal Agencies' Use of Web 2.0 Technologies." It reviewed the issues arising from government agencies using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and such uses impact issues such as the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Freedom of Information Act.

On that same day, an article appeared in Federal Computer Week highlighting the Department of Defense's new social media hub where the hundreds of thousands of fans on Facebook pages for the various military departments can get info about social media use by these departments.

Clearly, there is great ferment here. What we are seeing is a convergence of a very important social value of exceptional openness and transparency combining with the technological means of providing that openness. The British found that transparency included the failure to keep Prince Harry's presence in Afghanistan a secret. The US is finding that keeping military secrets is increasingly challenging. Individuals are finding that off-handed or poorly thought out comments or postings may impact their lives and careers forever.

For government and private PIOs and communication leaders, there are no simple answers to this. The public seems to demand complete, unrestricted transparency, and they and the media will cry "cover-up" and "guilty as charged" as soon as they see the slightest hint of reservation about release of information. But there are obviously dangers and concerns with the release, and what do these new channels and forums mean relating to making certain that records are available in compliance with the law?

The law, technology, social values and agency policy all have to come together in a way that is defensible. We are moving in that direction it seems, but it is a bit like watching sausage being made. It's not very pretty. Until we come to some social and policy consensus, there will be much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth. Jeffrey Rosen's reminder of the role of forgiveness in an earlier and simpler time of village life is important to remember.

Public Engagement--another lesson from the Gulf Spill

Having done a number of presentations so far on the communications for the Gulf Spill it is clear one of the most surprising and important lessons learned has to do with the way the Unified Command has engaged directly with the public. One of the most profound ways the Internet has changed public information and crisis management is by creating the possibility of and the demand for one-to-one engagement. While the majority of public relations professionals including PIO-types still live in the old media-centric world, more and more are realizing that communications, and particularly crisis communication, is about interactivity, about direct conversation, about engagement with individuals and groups with where they want to be.

The communication leaders of the Gulf Spill response early on clearly understood the value of direct engagement. As one of the communication leaders said during one of the recent presentations, not only does the engagement aid in building understanding of what is actually going on, but also provides real-time view into trending topics, emerging issues, rumors, misinformation and public priorities. These help guide not only the communications, but even some of the response decisions themselves.

The Gulf Spill, like almost every other aspect of this event, has experienced unprecedented direct engagement. The website (full disclosure--a PIER site provided by my company)for Unified Command has received over 53,000 inquiries through the inquiry form and almost all of those have been directly and individually responded to. Forms built into the system have collected claims requests, suggestions, responses to public meetings, and other information important to Unified Command. The fact that the entire system is web-based means that the communicators working on these responses don't need to be in the command center or Joint Information Center but indeed are located all around the country and beyond.

The key to effective crisis response is preparation, and preparation is aided considerably by taking a closer look at the kind of questions and comments people submit via the incident website. In the case of the Gulf Spill, inquiries are sorted into 35 different categories. Many of these are related to specific technical topics such as toxicity of oil or dispersants, progress with containment activities, impact of hurricanes on the response activities, etc. Others are specific to the media including media interview requests or opportunities for embeds. The largest numbers of inquiries are from people who wish to help. These include asking about volunteering, about providing a Vessel of Opportunity, about suggestions or ideas for containing the flow, or for selling products or services. In the case of this event, BP and Unified Command set up a process for evaluating all ideas and suggestions, running them by a highly competent technical review committee to make certain that no valid ideas were ignored. Suggestions have come in to the response command via multiple means--in addition to the thousands through the PIER inquiry form, a special PIER form was set up for this purpose and thousands of calls were received by the call center.

The second largest category of inquiries were negative ones. Again, these have been registered in unprecedented numbers and many of them would not be appropriate to share in most polite company. This is no doubt due to several factors including the nature of the event itself, the longevity of it, and the highly critical media coverage.

The website itself was only one vehicle for managing this public engagement. The spill communicators set up a number of social media channels for both helping communicate the continual flow of information, to monitor the discussion, and to engage with "friends" and "followers" directly. Additional tens of thousands of comments were posted on the response's Facebook page and Twitter page, as well as the Flickr and YouTube accounts used by the Unified Command.

It is increasingly clear that this event will impact crisis communication for a long time to come. The mistakes that have been made, the unremittingly negative press coverage, the political involvement, the demand for live video, the outcries over real and feared access limitations--all these have great importance for crisis communicators and PIOs. But the model that has been set for direct public engagement may be one of the quietest, least obvious and most important lessons of all. Are you prepared to directly engage those who expect it of you? And how will you do it?

Live Video--The Future of Crisis Communication Is Now

The importance of live video feeds to the Gulf Spill response cannot be missed. It was the subject of news media coverage for days, approx 1.5 million individuals have watched the spill live video feeds on the Internet since they were first provided, and the cost in bandwidth to BP is astronomical. But the real lesson for anyone contemplating the future of emergency and crisis communications is that live video will be a key component of almost every major response going forward.

If you are a PIO or communication leader for an organization involved you may think you have a choice in the matter. No you don't. If the incident is subject to live video it will be provided--either by you or by someone else.

At this point BP is providing as many as 12 live video feeds and more may be added in the future. For the more technical in the crowd, the data is now being measured in petabytes (we're way past terrabytes). The cost of such enormous data feeds must be considered in the planning budgets of emergency response organizations in the future. In the case of an Responsible Party event, in other words oil and shipping industry events, the RP will pay and it will be required of them to provide it.

The role of live video feeds in major events should not surprise us. It is the natural convergence of technological capability wedded to our instant information/entertainment/transparency-driven culture. All news media (including new media) compete on the basis of immediacy. If it isn't happening right now, it really doesn't matter. That's why "Breaking News" is such a big deal on broadcast and why all the major newspapers have instant news alerts and websites that feature "breaking news." It's all about right now. What happened half an hour ago is, well, old news.

In the meantime, video production gets more and more democratized. The last few years have seen a giant revolution in the entertainment as well as news business because of the ready availability of high definition professional level gear at consumer prices. Now we've taken another giant leap in this democratization. Imagine producing a tv quality or even movie quality film--on your phone! I mean shooting, recording, mixing, editing--and distributing. Don't believe me--check this out. A film created entirely on the new iphone 4.

The future isn't coming at us, folks, it's right here. Alvin Toffler, where are you when we need you most?

Is this the best Social Media guide?

PIOs and crisis communicators have been watching the Gulf Spill with great interest. As some of our friends in the Coast Guard and working in the Unified Command JIC have said, this event may be the first "social media" response. Certainly, social media is being aggressively and effectively used.

One of the leading Coast Guard public affairs managers involved in the spill recently collaborated with me on a spill communications briefing and told the attendees how social media was not only used to help communicate important information, but how monitoring it helped form communication responses and strategies and how it is also being used by the response management to help understand emerging public issues and concerns.

Still, many leading communication managers and PIOs that I talk to are still trying to get their arms around what social media really is, how to implement it in their organizations, how to create policies that both allow use by employees and provide some protection against the many risks.

If you are struggling to understand how to really adopt social media in your organization, here is a great guide put out by Eloqua. Admittedly, this is marketing oriented, but the distance between marketing and public affairs and crisis management is narrowing all the time--social media being one of those reasons for it narrowing. So I think you will find it incredibly useful in understanding what will work and not work in your organization, as well as getting a handle on some of the emerging channels such as Foursquare and Gowalla.

(P.S. -- thanks William for another great find)

Why Journalistic ignorance of NIMS/ICS is hurting the nation

Here's one of the most egregious examples of journalistic ignorance of the National Incident Management System, the Incident Command System, the Joint Information Center and the Oil Pollution Act of 1990: The Washington Post says the spill has created an uneasy marriage between BP and the government.

For twenty years government agencies at the federal, state and local levels have practiced this marriage with every major oil company and oil shipping company. They've been at the altar for 20 years, well, actually way past the altar. Why? Because they like each other so much? No, because the law required it. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 following ExxonValdez required the government and private company identified as the "Responsible Party" to collaborate in stopping the spill and cleaning it up. The RP pays, the government under authority of the lead federal agency, approves all plans, all actions, and all information. That's the way it has been--until 2010. That's when the biggest event of all called for everything invested in this system to pay off.

But we have been bitterly disappointed. Not by BP, not by the Coast Guard or the other agencies involved. But by the highest office in the land which has chosen for its own political future to put aside the 20 years of productive, cooperative and highly effective investment in a collaborative means of responding to big events. This action, as I have stated here before, is putting the future of NIMS and the JIC very much at risk--I believe putting at risk the ability of our nation to respond effectively to events in the future including major terrorist events. To what end? To avoid this administration being painted with the Katrina brush. It is a high price to pay in my mind. One we may all have to pay for in the long term.

But the political messaging that has overwhelmed the Joint Information Center releases is only made possible because of ignorance of NIMS/ICS and the JIC. This headline from the Washington Post demonstrates it, as does the seriously light weight cover story in the New York Times today.

If the reporter writing for the Washington Post was more informed about Unified Command, he would not be surprised about the forced marriage of BP and the federal government. He would be far more surprised, shocked even, that in this event a relationship that has been worked out through years of smaller events and large drills would be so badly damaged--to the detriment of the response and the victims--by a heavy handed political overlay.

It's long a truism in management that effective teamwork requires mutual trust, respect and open communication. That existed in the early days of the response. The marriage was there, tested and tried by time and effort. But that marriage was destroyed by dictate. The response is not better for it, the gulf is not better for it, BP is certainly not better for it, and I would suggest that the administration is not more respected for it.

The Washington Post, had it been more informed, would not have written about an uneasy marriage. But how a perfectly good marriage, so desperately needed in this response has had divorce forced upon it. The question ahead, and I would hope some better informed reporter would focus on it, is what does this forced divorce mean for the future of collaborative response? That may be one of the most distressing legacies of this very sad chapter in our history.