Canton on Emergency Management

Emergency Alert System: Do we really need it?

By now you've probably heard that yesterday's test of the national Emergency Alert System did not go as well as planned. This, of course, is not a bad thing. The system has never been tested and identifying problems can only help to improve it.

The larger question, though, is do we still need it? The system itself is a Cold War artifact - developed to allow the President to address the nation in the event of nuclear war. We have made some use of parts of the system at the local level for such things as weather warnings and AMBER alerts. But I found our system in San Francisco to be cumbersome and hard to use and made much more use of other tools such as California's Emergency Digital Information Service.

We have an amazing array of new systems and technologies that allow for almost immediate communication. We're making it easier and easier to move information across systems through through innovations such as the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP).

The nature of the threat has changed as well. Instead of a worldwide nuclear war, we now deal with asymmetrical warfare. Evening catastrophic natural disasters don't seem to warrant use of the system. During Hurricane Katrina, EAS was not used by local governments, although the NOAA weather radio system which is used in conjunction with EAS was used to provide weather reports.

I applaud my colleagues at FEMA for having the courage to test the EAS system, knowing that it would most likely have difficulties. I think this puts us in an excellent position to determine whether it is cost effective to fix the system or to pursue other options.

Social media: Two attitudes

"Social media is for parties. We ain't giving no parties." This quote is attributed to a Washington DC Fire Department spokesman in a response over the DC fire twitter feed. It seems that one spokesman (who was later transferred to another job) was tweeting real-time information that the public could actually use. His boss preferred the usual pablum that most public agencies put out.

The problem for me here is not the internal workings of the DC fire department. I have no knowledge of the issues involved or the appropriateness of the tweets, so I do not feel I can comment on a personnel action. What does concern me is that a spokesman for a major department is completely dismissing social media as means of communicating with the public.

There are certainly concerns about providing real time information. Part of it is culturally based: emergency responders don't like to share information with outsiders. Part of it is the technical difficulty - computer aided dispatch systems are usually required to be isolated from the Internet because of security concerns, making it impossible to add a "tweet this" option and requiring a separate step when a dispatcher is dealing with an incident.

However, ultimately we're going to have to deal with these issues. The public demand for information is already out there and a tweet that says, "fire at Broadway and Main. Avoid the area" seems a reasonable expectation.

Let me give you a different quote from Craig Fugate, Director of FEMA, from his testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications:

"Social media is an important part of the Whole Community approach because it helps facilitate the vital two-way communication between emergency management agencies and the public, and it allows us to quickly and specifically share information with state, local, territorial, and tribal governments as well as the public."

So what's your attitude towards social media?

Social media: rumors can kill

Several times a month I'll receive an email from some well-meaning friend that provides a warning about some new crime technique, virus or government/corporate conspiracy. I'm fairly good at spotting that they're spam and usually can find a link on one of the debunker sites that I can send back to my friend. Some of these rumors have been making the rounds for years and are still going strong.

Couple this longevity with the speed of social media and you have a potent combination with the power to spread disinformation almost instaneously. When US soldiers started vacinating cows in Iraq in 2005, rumors that the US was poisoning livestock to starve the Iraqis garnered substantial support for the insurgents. Other rumors spread via social media have led to riots and the death of innocent bystanders. In response, the US Navy has just awarded a $1.6 million contract to develop a system track and defuse rumors.

The project seeks to develop an app that can be used to report rumors via smartphone. This data will then be analyzed and, if necessary, counter-narratives will be developed. The project team hopes the system will lead to a website that can by accessed by anyone to check any rumor anywhere.

Until that day, though, it's a good idea to monitor your web presence and make sure you're being responsive to complaints and rumors. In this day of instanteous communications, you've only got a short time to realize you have a problem and respond.

 

 

Preparedness and the zombie apocalypse

By now you've probably heard that the CDC has been trying to generate interest in preparedness through a rather light-hearted campaign encouraging people to prepare for a zombie apocalypse. The idea of using zombie infestation as a metaphor for pandemic infection has been around for a while - I blogged about it back in August and October  of 2009. I thought the it was a minor trend that would soon run its course. Boy, was I wrong.

Zombie infestation is stronger than ever. The CDC campaign exceeded the expectations of its planners (who deserve kudos, by the way, for having the courage to try something so outlandish in such a conservative industry). The CDC now has a range of zombie products (I'm on the waiting list for my T-shirt) and the trend is being picked up across the country. My colleagues in Ohio named October "Zombie Preparedness Month" and held a major hazardous materials drill yesterday (Halloween, of course!) with a zombie theme.

Are we being just a bit silly here? There's always a risk that campaigns like this can backfire and reduce our credibility. After all, FEMA is still taking heat for a 1994 publication that included a chapter on dealing with alien landings. But let's face it - our traditional methods of encouraging preparedness don't work all that well. Anything that gets people's attention and gets the message of preparedness across is, in my book, a good thing. Besides,  there are a lot of people really having fun with this and that's also a good thing.

Can't wait for the CDC to restock so I can get my T-shirt!

Remembering the Oakland Hills Fire

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Oakland Hills Fire that destroyed over 3000 private dwellings and claimed the lives of 25 people. This particular disaster has always had a special meaning for me as I was part of the FEMA team sent to provide relief to the survivors. The smoke was so thick in the sky above my home in western San Francisco that we thought that the fire had to have been in our neighborhood. My children followed the disaster on television and for the first time started to understand what I did when I left them for those long "business" trips. I still remember the fire whenever I pass through the Caldecott tunnel.

As usually happens after these things, there was a lot of rhetoric and grand plans for mitigation so that something like this would never happen again. I wish it was so. While there have been improvements (the fire hydrants have been standardized, for example) and the California Standardized Emergency Management System was developed to address coordination problems, the area is still at high risk. The homes have been rebuilt bigger and cover more area, eliminating what little defensible space was there. But at least the wood shingles have been replaced by fire-resistant materials. Roads are still narrow and illegal parking is tolerated, making it difficult or impossible for fire apparatus to respond to major fire.

So have we really come all that far in 20 years? Sadly, more could have been done. I think the emergency services have done their best to address the tactical issues and certainly SEMS changed for the better how we do respond in the state. But these efforts have been frustrated by the desire of residents to rebuild bigger and better and their focus on personal satisfaction without consideration of the larger issue of regional safety. Or do we blame the governments who didn't push more for mitigation?

But when the fires start and people are dying, does it really matter whose fault it was?

Negotiating with terrorists and moral courage

The recent decision by the State of Israel to release over a thousand prisoners in exchange for a kidnapped soldier raises some interesting issues that may well have implications for future policy.

The decision raises questions about the generally-accepted policy about negotiating with terrorists. The official line from most governments has always been that there would be no such negotiations because it encouraged future acts. The problem is that historically governments have negotiated with terrorists and many groups that were considered terrorists during a political struggle were later reinvented as freedom fighters. We've seen this in places like India, Kenya, Ireland, and even in Israel itself. At some point you have to address root causes. Terrorism is a tactic, a means to an end. Simply killing terrorists does nothing to eliminate the cause of the struggle.

There is a moral dimension here as well and it relates to the age-old question, "What is the value of a single life?" In this case you're trading one life, and that of a soldier who by definition could be expected to sacrifice his life for the state, in exchange for a thousand, many of whom will no doubt rejoin the struggle against Israel and potentially take more Israeli lives. Is one life worth the risk of multiple deaths in the future? Would your answer be different if it was your son being held or if there were more than one hostage? Would the life of one hostage justify going to war?

These are profound questions with no real answer. I think the answers really depend on where you stand. A major tenet of the Jewish faith is that to save one person is to save the world. While the decision to make the exchange took considerable moral courage on the part of the Israeli government, it was consistent with deeply held Jewish beliefs. It's obvious that the citizens of Israel feel the same: some 80% support the government's decision in a recent poll.

And this raises yet a third question. What does a decision like this say about a nation and the character of its people? To willing accept a high risk to save a single citizen speaks volumes.

It's a lesson we would do well to consider.

 

Social media as a preparedness tool

Online gaming is a phenomena that is a bit hard to understand at times. People will spend hours doing repetitive tasks to garner an "achievement" that offers nothing more than bragging rights with other gamers. But there's no denying the attraction. With the advent of social media and smart phones, smartphone gaming has exploded into a $8 billion a year business. Angry Birds has been downloaded something like 140 million times making it the best selling app of to date.

The folks at the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management are seeking to harness this energy with a new app called SF Heroes that makes a game out of emergency preparedness. According to an article in the San Francisco Examiner, the game, just released for the iPhone, rewards players for achieving preparedness milestones and let's them crow about it to their friends via Twitter and Facebook. The app also gives players
access to real-life emergency maps and let's them create emergency contacts and resource lists that are accessible even in the absence of net connectivity.

This is absolutely brilliant. Not only does the app encourage individuals to prepare but it  creates a milling effect within the player's social media network that could encourage others to prepare. I don't know if releasing the app on the same day the new iPhone was released was deliberate but it's a bit of shrewd marketing.

Kudos to my colleagues at SFDEM - you really hit one out of the park with this one!

The Android version is due out in the spring and I can't wait to try it!

Communicating risk: lessons from the L'Aquila trial

As I mentioned in a recent blog, six seismologists and a government official are on trail for manslaughter in Italy for failing to provide warning about an earthquake that killed several hundred people in the village of L'Aquila.

An article in today's New York Times offers an interesting commentary on how crisis communications can go wrong. According to the article, public concern was high because of a swarm of small earthquakes a local man's predictions a big earthquake based on his observations of radon gas release. Because of this high level of concern, the government called a meeting to discuss the earthquake risk.  At this meeting the scientists did their job and provided accurate information: 1) it was possible but unlikely that the swarm of earthquakes they were concerned about might be precursors to a major quake and 2) given the history of seismic activity in L'Aquila, there is always a risk of an earthquake. However, when the government official provided this information at a press conference, he changed the message to, "There will be no earthquake."

The lesson here is deference to expertise. If you step outside your area of expertise, you risk miscommunicating the message. The media and the public can tell when you're talking about something about which you know very little and your credibility suffers.  Instead, let your expert give the technical briefing and then follow-up as necessary with what you are doing about the situation. If you expert can also handle the issue (e.g. a public health director briefs on a problem and says what the public health department is doing about it), keep your mouth shut - it's about providing information from a trusted source, not your ego.

Earthquake warnings: whose responsibility is it?

There's an interesting court case going on in Italy. Seven seismologists are charged with manslaughter for failing to provide adequate warning about an earthquake that killed 308 people in 2009. At issue here is not the inability to predict the earthquake but rather a failure to warn the residents that minor tremors leading up to the earthquake could have been the precursor to a major earthquake.

The case is fascinating for the questions it raises about the duty to warn. We tend to view this a government responsibility and the decision to warn is based on the best available evidence provided by our experts. The Italian authorities are claiming in this case that the seismologists' evidence was so contradictory that it lead to the deaths of innocent citizens. In essence, there seems to be some deflection of blame going on here.

Holding scientists liable for their advice and predictions would obviously have a chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas so vital to academic institutions. We have always accepted that the academic community would police its own through rigid peer review. However, the system is not foolproof and the academic community has been known to be collectively wrong on many occasions. But using the courts to hold scientists accountable seems like a very bad idea.

One other thought that needs to be said. What about personal responsibility? Italy suffers from earthquakes on a regular basis. It shouldn't take a scientist to tell you that you're at risk. But people really aren't listening when we talk about preparedness. A recent study by the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University found that more than half the families surveyed had no plan in place for hurricanes or earthquakes.

It doesn't do any good to hold someone liable for failing to warn if no one is listening to the warning.

Crisis Communications: Don't shift the blame!

Thanks to the good folks over at the Consumerist for providing an excellent example of how not to respond to a crisis.

During the recent flooding in Johnson City, NY, the folks at PETCO were taken unawares by the rising flood waters and lost 100 animals. The staff did manage to save an equal number, however. In responding to public outrage over the loss, a PETCO VP blamed a miscommunication on the part of the city, claiming to have never received the evacuation order. Bad move. Knowing your risk is part of good business and floods shouldn't be a surprise.

The blog posting was quickly replaced by one from the CEO stating that the company had misjudged the risk and took full responsibility for it's failure.

So what can we learn from this?

1. Don't try to shift the blame. People are not stupid and they will see such actions for what they are - an attempt to evade responsibility.Take responsibility up front and tell people how you will prevent a recurrence.
2. Don't lead with your most senior person in crisis - use someone in direct authority over the crisis. If your initial message goes south, your CEO or key official can step in and give you a second chance.
3. Be proactive. When the National Weather Service and the local authorities are warning about flooding, a bit of investigation is in order to determine your risk. It's a lot easier to evacuate as a precaution than to explain why you didn't.