Communication and Panic Behaviour in Emergency SituationsCategory: Communication
Article posted by: Alex Alexandrino
Some municipalities have acquired emergency notification tools in order to notify rapidly the population in disaster situations. In many cases worst case scenarios have been imagined, and multi-channel notification systems assist a local emergency manager in informing the citizen in case of eventual evacuations.
Municipalities often forget, or decide to ignore that these systems should also be used to keep population informed in other situations than earthquakes, nuclear accidents or floods. When we advise our customers, one of the comments given regularly by local authorities is:
“We did not use your alert management system [AlarmTILT], because we did not want to spread panic among the members of the public.”
According to Jeannette Sutton, a disaster sociologist working with the Natural Hazards Center of the University of Colorado, emprirical research has shown that members of the public do not panic, or very rarely, in the context of disaster. They will need as much information as possible to assess their situation, and to be able to take protective measures for themselves and their families. This also explains why, invariably, after a major incident (power outage, water pollution problem, flood) there are so many complaints issued by the public about how poor communication from authorities worked, particularly at local level.
On Friday 23rd January 2009, heavy rains fell over Luxembourg. Around 3pm the situation was dangerous for a municipality using our services, with a risk of floods from nearby river threatening hundreds of homes. The mayor had called his crisis management team, and was receiving first hand information from emergency services (our 112 coordinator) and from the local meteorological centre. They had prepared an evacuation message to the affected people to be broadcast via our solution. A hotline was set up to give hour-by-hour rain and river level information. Outside, first response teams and fire brigades were blocking roads at risk and diverting the traffic. By 5 pm the weather centre declared the rain was about to stop over Luxembourg. River limnimeters showed water levels were regressing. Relieved, the mayor did not issue any message to the public. He did not want to create panic among them.
This is a good example of lost opportunity to communicate intelligently with the population. While a small number of people knew, that there was basically no flood risk, the local population, but also citizens working in an office miles away from home were kept in the dark about the evolution of the events. Outside, roads were still blocked, end of day traffic jams were still on.
In our debriefing meeting, we made following comments: the right thing to do would have been to send emails, SMS or voice calls to the population subscribed to the notification solution informing them, that the worst had been seen, and that there was no flood risk anymore. Also, immediately when set up, the hotline number should have been transmitted (actually, the hotline number was delivered by local TV channels at 8pm, 3 hours after the events, when danger was over!). People at home would have felt safer, although at their doors, emergency services were securing the streets. Members of the public living there, but at work elsewhere, would have been reassured as they would have received the message giving them updated info on the situation. Furthermore, they would have known, that main roads to their municipality were blocked, and could have looked for alternative routes.
Using emergency notification intelligently means a commitment by the local crisis manager to evaluate at all times the pros and cons to deliver an important information to local citizens. In doubt, he/she should always prefer to deliver the message. If it happens the information was incomplete or wrong, he can always rectify later. If not delivered, it is much more difficult to handle properly at later stage. If a big storm is about to hit a community, it is always better to inform the public early enough. If in the end the storm does not come, people won’t mind, if a follow up message is sent as soon as possible to say so. Not sending the information “fearing panic behaviour in the area” will create distrust into the communication system in place, especially if the public is aware that an advanced emergency notification system is in place. Informing intelligently does not create panic, as Jeannette Sutton puts it correctly, it reduces fear and uncertainty.
A dedicated page to citizen alert can be found on our website
http:www.alarmtilt.com/citizen
Posted By: Alex Alexandrino
Web: http://www.alarmtilt.com
Contact: e-mail
| Another articles posted by Alex Alexandrino: |
|
|
|
|
|
