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ChAPTER 5Communicating in the Midst of Chaos

The Challenger space shuttle disaster. Israeli shopping mall bombing. Australian forest fires. Japa-nese subway attack. Madrid and London train bombings. Bali nightclub bombing. World Trade Center attack. Indonesian tsunami. Iranian earthquake.

We watched. We listened. We felt. We participated in each of these terrible events via the real-time media available to us. Images from live television and the Internet bring each of us closer, even into, crises experienced by others. We want to know and understand what we are seeing and feeling.

EDgEWATER TEChNOLOgY CASE STUDY / 26 DECEMBER 2000

At 11:10 a.m. on the morning after Christmas day, an employee of Edgewater Technology, an e-commerce company in suburban Boston, pulled an AK-47, a shotgun and a pistol from a bag beneath his desk and went hunting.

His first victim was the division HR director. He found her at the reception desk talking to the fill-in operator, who also happened to be the company’s office manager. He mowed her down with the automatic weapon, and as the office manager started to flee, he shot her.

He then walked across the lobby, past the division CEO’s assistant, who was hiding under her desk, and into the CEO’s office. She was out of the office that morning. He turned and walked half the length of the nearly block-long building as fellow workers hid under desks, fled through fire doors and locked themselves in supply closets.

He climbed a staircase to the accounting department where six employees had barricaded them-selves in the CFO’s empty office. Five knelt behind his desk and a sixth young woman hid behind a coat-draped chair. The shooter used his shotgun to blast away the locked door, then stepped partway into the room and killed five more co-workers. He didn’t see the woman behind the chair. Finally, he walked back to the main lobby, sat down and waited for police to arrive.

At 1 p.m., the president of the Institute for Crisis Management answered the phone at his desk in Louisville, Kentucky, and the woman on the other end of the line blurted out, “Are you watching CNN? That’s us.” She identified herself as the company’s corporate HR vice president. Her CEO had tasked her to find someone to help the devastated company.

By 2 p.m., after two brief telephone conversations with the CEO, ICM was hired and started simultaneously making arrangements to fly to Boston and get the process of controlling the situation underway.

Communicating in the Midst of Chaos

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The first advice was to hire a critical stress debriefing company and get counselors in place for the victims’ families, the management team and grieving employees. The next was to prepare an initial statement and distribute it. All the cable networks and local TV stations were already wall-to-wall live from the scene, and more reporters and photographers were rolling into Wakefield, Massachusetts, as the afternoon slipped away.

After gathering as much information as possible and starting the media monitoring process, ICM issued the first statement expressing the division CEO’s shock, sympathy to victims and their families and a pledge to cooperate with investigating authorities.

By 6 a.m. the next morning, the lead grief counselor and I arrived in Wakefield at the makeshift crisis command center, hidden from the media.

In the first hours, we developed the following basic strategy and plan:

1. We identified the key audiences:

a. Employees

b. Victims’ families

c. Customers/vendors

d. Shareholders

e. The community

2. We developed messages and talking points for first direct contact with employees, customers and vendors, as well as a brief report to board members and major shareholders.

a. Employees were given the choice of one of two employee meetings on Thursday or Friday morning, a phone number for an employee hotline, and offered help from grief counselors.

b. Customers were contacted and assured that their web hosting services would not be inter-rupted but that all software design work was on hold until the company could get back into its building. Customers were given a hotline telephone number if they had problems.

c. Vendors were notified to delay shipments and deliveries. Both vendors and customers unanimously responded with “don’t worry about us, what can we do to help you?”

3. Seven upper-level managers were selected to contact each of the seven victim families and serve as the company’s liaisons. They were given talking points and sent to call on their as-signed family in person.

4. The managers were sent back a second time with US$5,000 checks for each family with “no strings attached” to help them get started with expenses while the company promised to expe-dite insurance settlements. A law firm that specializes in insurance issues was hired to do that.


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5. Another top criminal law firm was hired to coordinate between investigators and surviving employees, to make sure that everyone who had useful information was made available to detectives, but in the most sensitive way. With the coordination of the law firm, there would be no surprises for the company.

a. A carefully worded standby statement was prepared to explain that the company had hired a criminal law practice to ensure the person responsible for this horrible deed would be brought to justice, not to hide anything or impede the investigation.

6. Volunteer managers were prepared to operate the employee hotline and the customer hotline.

7. Media inquiries were directed to police and prosecutors. The company confirmed that the shooter was an employee, how long he had been with the company and what his job had been. No one was made available for interviews.

a. A neighboring Catholic church announced plans for a community memorial service Thurs-day evening. An offer by the company to help was rejected. The priest said it was for the community.

i. Within hours, the community poured out its heart to the company and its employ-ees. Teddy bears, flowers, cards and candles made up a makeshift memorial in front of the company sign, even before the yellow police tape was removed.

ii. By morning, every marquee in front of convenience stores, fast food restaurants, and insurance companies bore messages of sympathy and support.

8. A leader on the company’s board of directors flew in and, along with the corporate CEO, handled shareholder communications and coordinated those with our communication strat-egy for all other audiences.

note: All of the above communications to vendors, employees, customers and investors require direct contact. Only in the worst possible circumstances should an organization in crisis depend on the pub-lic media to convey important information to those key audiences. Most important, they should hear from you before they read about in the local newspaper, or see it on TV or online. Your plan should identify, in advance, every possible means of direct communication to employees, vendors, customers and investors.

Late Wednesday, the company created a fundraising vehicle for the community to help the victims’ families. The company seeded that trust fund with US$10,000 for each of the seven victims. Thurs-day, the division CEO spoke at a carefully choreographed news briefing announcing the trust fund and how the community could make contributions. She expressed her gratitude to the first responders immediately after the shooting, and to customers and vendors who had been so supportive. She re-peated her sympathy and condolences to the victims’ families (the first victim killed had been a long-


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time friend of the CEO). The briefing was carried live by all the Boston television stations and all the cable news networks, which were advised in advance of the rules and that there would be no Q&A. The briefing began when the company said it would, reporters knew which aisle the CEO would walk down to enter and leave, and media representatives were available after the briefing to hand out copies of her statement. An ICM senior consultant was available to clarify any issues that remained. There were no significant questions.

Wednesday morning, both Boston newspapers carried front-page diagrams of the interior of the com-pany showing where each victim’s body had been found. At the first employee meeting that morning, we discovered reporters had found the home of a young employee and, trying to be helpful, he invited them in, poured them coffee and sketched the interior for them on a napkin. Employees were subse-quently told they didn’t have to talk to reporters and were encouraged to refer reporters to a company spokesperson. There were no more incidents of employees speaking out of turn. The majority of employees took advantage of counselors who were available that morning.

Investigators did not release the building back to the company until late Friday afternoon. A con-tractor had been selected and was standing by to repair the bullet-riddled walls, floors, ceilings and fixtures. But before workers could begin their job, another licensed crew was waiting to deal with the bio-hazard that remained (when blood and body fluids are splattered over a crime scene, health and safety officials require they be cleaned up according to state and local regulations).

On Tuesday morning, one week after the shooting, employees were allowed back into Edgewater Tech-nology’s building. Counselors were present, the media was kept at a discreet distance and only a handful of surviving employees did not return that first day. Within a few weeks, all had returned to work.

A memorial service was planned for the following Thursday afternoon, after the last of the seven funerals had been concluded. It was limited to employees, families, customers and vendors. To deal with media demands for access, ICM offered a live pool feed with a single camera in the rear bal-cony. Outside the media was confined to a parking lot separated from where employees and families would park to approach the church. There was ample video access but no chance for reporters to yell questions at the survivors. Even then, a reporter tried to sneak in, saying he was a friend of the police officer who was guarding the church entrance. That officer was relieved of his assignment, and the reporter was escorted out.

There had been considerable debate about whether to allow coverage of the memorial, but the recom-mendation of controlled pool coverage prevailed. The White House and the Massachusetts’ Gover-nor’s office called and asked to participate in the employee memorial service, and after a little con-sideration, both were thanked for their gestures and invited to send a letter of sympathy to be read. The presence of the President of the United States would have turned the event into a media circus; uninviting him was not a tough decision.

A dissident stockholder used the shooting in an attempt to embarrass management and force the board of directors to divide US$50 million in cash-on-hand among stockholders. He had purchased almost 5 percent of the company’s stock with the goal of raiding the fund earmarked for future com-pany expansion. He called both Boston newspaper business editors and claimed the shooting was a


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result of bad management as was the company’s refusal to share that US$50 million with investors.

It was a major battle to convince the CEO not to do an extended interview to defend his company’s business plan, but it paid off. The story disappeared after one day, and a few months later the dissi-dent stockholder gave up and sold his shares.

A few weeks after the shooting, the company was able to hire seven replacement workers and eventu-ally added another 25 employees, enjoying continued success in spite of its tragedy and the failures of other e-commerce companies.

A year after the worst case of workplace violence in Massachusetts’ history, the shooter was convicted of seven counts of murder and sent to prison for life.

It was learned that a week before Christmas the Internal Revenue Service had attached the shooter’s wages because he owed about US$5,000 in back taxes. The HR manager had informed him she would have to begin garnishing his wages after Christmas.

After the tragedy, not a single lawsuit was filed against the company. That’s almost unheard of. The day after the shooting, there were reports lawyers were knocking on the doors of victims’ families, urging them to file lawsuits against the company that “let” this tragedy happen.

On the first anniversary of the shooting, the company was besieged by media requests for access and interviews to commemorate the tragedy. The CEO did one interview.

Within a year, the division CEO who guided the company through those troubled times was promot-ed to be the corporate CEO.

This company was only about three years old at the time of the shooting, and its leadership had never considered for a minute that anything “bad” would happen to them. When something bad did happen, management sought help from outside legal and communication counsel, and then took the advice and recommendations that were appropriate. The company recovered quickly from a low of US$18 million in income to US$68 million in 2008, driving toward annual income of US$100 million.

Doing the right thing is almost always the right business decision as well, and in the case of Edgewa-ter Technology, doing the right thing paid off for the victims’ families, employees, customers, share-holders and the management team.

There’s nothing worse than a crisis that hits you and your organization without warning. Regardless of its nature, it will spawn chaos, make people frantic and generate inaccurate information in the first hours. Lacking verified information, the media will begin to speculate regarding causes and effects, contributing to the inaccuracy. You will have to try to organize that chaos the best way you can by providing the best information available and taking account of your organization’s message platform. It won’t be easy, but thinking clearly and rationally, and talking slowly, during the first few hours of a crisis goes a long way toward helping you gain and maintain some control of the situation. Think-ing clearly and talking slowly will also win you the respect of top management, emergency personnel, regulators and the news media.


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In today’s news environment, the media, including social media will be aware of your sudden crisis before your plan can be implemented. The TV trucks will be telecasting live coverage while you’re trying desperately to determine what happened. We’ve all read of cases where the cameras were roll-ing at the scene of an accident, getting pictures before the medical teams arrived. Remember the still pictures of Princess Diana’s auto crash in Paris. Remember too the quotes of several paparazzi who admitted the Princess was alive when they began photographing.

And if that’s not bad enough, there are the millions of everyday folks walking around with camera phones snapping spectacular pictures of disasters as they happen and sharing them with network and Internet viewers almost immediately. Examples include the 2009 US Airways splash-down in the Hudson River, the collision of a tourist helicopter and private plane over the same New York City airspace a few months later, and the 2007 deadly shootings on the Virginia Tech campus.

Your job is to minimize the pressure and disruption on those who must control the crisis by getting the confirmed facts distributed throughout your organization and to the outside world. We “read” the world via the media.

Ultimately, your success in managing the crisis will be determined by how well you manage the media coverage of the crisis—how the story was told. This doesn’t mean press censorship or restriction. It’s about providing the various media with what they need to get their job done, but on your terms. You need the media to rapidly reach audiences important to your organization. For the media to tell the story to their audiences, the media need you. So, to gain some control of the crisis story, prepare to use and be used by the media.

You need time and verified information to get control of the crisis story. The media have the same need. Media can get technology to a story very quickly but still need time to organize it. Regardless of some impressions we hold of the media, most reporters, editors and news directors don’t want to be wrong. For example, people lost their jobs, and NBC News, in general, and Jane Pauley, in particular, were embarrassed when errors were broadcast about the side-mounted fuel tanks on GM trucks.

Use the media to reach audiences you have difficulty reaching quickly and efficiently yourself. Be used by the media to tell the story of the event. You don’t have to use or be used, however, if giving infor-mation to the media serves no useful purpose.


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IF YOU’RE IN A CRISIS RIghT NOW

If you’re reading this because a sudden crisis has erupted and you’re not sure what to say or do, the question is how much time do you have before you’re going to have to communicate? If you can concentrate without interruption, read this chapter carefully, because you’ll need and can use a lot of what it contains. However, if you’re already in the midst of chaos and it’s getting worse by the minute, here’s what to do:

1. Gain control of the telephones and secure your business premises. Respond quickly and ac-curately to inquiries generated by the news reports of the crisis:

a. Take the appropriate steps on the Sudden Crisis Activation Goals (Appendix A, Addendum A).

b. Fill out the appropriate Sudden Crisis Worksheet with firsthand information from the crisis scene (refer to the worksheet at the end of this chapter).

c. Adapt the Initial Disclosure Statement on the back of the Sudden Crisis Worksheet to fit the specific information on the crisis that is confirmed.

d. Review the Initial Disclosure Statement with the person in charge of the crisis at the time to gain management approval for releasing that information.

e. Make copies of the approved Initial Disclosure Statement and begin providing the informa-tion to anyone who inquires on the phone or in person at your facility, including the news media.

f. Begin distributing the information through your normal internal communication channels to all employees and other important audiences of your organization, so they will have the facts as soon as possible.

2. Pull out this chapter and keep it with you. At the first lull, when you can close yourself off for 15 minutes, read the rest of this chapter so you will be prepared for other aspects of this sudden crisis that you are likely to encounter in the first few hours.

Good luck!


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CRISIS COMMUNICATION IS STRATEgIC / Even in the frenzy of a crisis, you should seek to achieve specific objectives relevant to the overall goals of your organization in what you say and do.

Your message platform can be built long before the hint of any crisis. Some people use the term “message points,” though the phrase “message platform” is preferable because it conjures the image of a solid area on which you can stand. The platform is built with simple declarative sentences that reveal the central mission, overarching goals and/or purposes of your organization. The basic mes-sage platform of a blood bank, for example, is to provide a safe and dependable supply of blood and blood products. Within that statement are two planks of a message platform: safe and dependable. Whatever the circumstances, executives of the blood bank can use “safety” or “dependability” as the foundation for answering questions about the organization. Challenged on the fees hospitals and clinics are charged for blood freely donated, executives can talk about the cost of the latest technol-ogy and the salaries of the finest technicians paid to ensure the safety of the blood supply. Challenged on the continuing call for donors, executives can talk about the need for dependability in the face of increasing demand for blood and blood products for emergencies and for the sophisticated, life-saving operations routinely performed. Every organization ought to have three to four basic planks to their platform.

To these basic planks can be added those required by the particular crisis. For crises that involve in-vestigators or enforcement officers, the plank “working with authorities” can be added. For crises that harm people, animals or the environment, the plank “we’re sorry,” “we sympathize” or “we empathize” for those injured is suitable.

Another method for planning what you need to know and to share can be summarized as the five Cs:

4Confirmation

4Compassion

4Containment

4Cooperation

4Correction

Confirmation simply means reporting what you know and can share when you know it. Compassion means demonstrating feelings for the victims, their families and their communities. Containment means reporting actions the organization has taken or is taking to contain the crisis. Cooperation means pledging your involvement to work with those agencies investigating the incident. Correction reports action taken or anticipated to be taken to ensure that the incident doesn’t happen again.

This is not an attempt to reduce communicating in a crisis to a formula, but it does demonstrate that much of what may be said during a crisis can be anticipated and prepared for before the crisis occurs. The message planks can be prepared for your greatest vulnerabilities and rehearsed by those most likely to be spokespeople for your organization. In a very real sense, no one will be unprepared for


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an ambush interview if they know and can use the organization’s message platform. The information sought by the media, or anyone for that matter, can be given on your terms, or more accurately, using your terms.

Having a platform and people prepared to speak on it has gained importance in the age of the “ama-teur journalist”; that is, the person with a smart phone or flip-cam who records an event then distrib-utes the pictures via a growing number of social media platforms on the Internet. The demand for immediate response to a question no longer is the purview of big media. To paraphrase a comment made by Horton the elephant, “An ambush is an ambush no matter how small.”

A message platform assists in communicating with all publics, not just the media. Your employees, their families, neighbors, stockholders, government agencies and other stakeholders will all depend on your organization to provide accurate, timely information. Having a platform in place to help frame what will be said over the various vehicles used to reach those publics can improve communication efficiency and effectiveness.

TELL YOUR STORY FIRST / Ideally, you want to be the one who utters the first words about the cri-sis. Realistically, that will seldom happen. The reporters and their microwave trucks (see for example the Edgewater case study at the beginning of this chapter) or random passersby with cell phones will beat you to it. Employees will be guessing about what happened and sharing their guesses over the Internet. As more people become aware of the event, rumors will start. People will want to know what happened and why; they want to make sense of the event. Recall the events of 9/11. Confusion reigned after the first plane hit the World Trade Center’s north tower. The first reports tried to analyze of the situation—how could this happen, a commercial airliner crashing into one of the world’s tall-est buildings? The event quickly made sense when the second plane hit and it became clear that the events were no accident. Then random bits of information began to fall into place as the story un-folded before our eyes.

In making sense of a situation, the first thought that organizes the random bits of information is the most powerful, that is, it has the greatest effect on how subsequent bits of information will be inter-preted. Think about jigsaw puzzles and what pieces you try to isolate first: Usually, it’s the edge pieces with one flat side; many pieces can be isolated and connected from that one decision. Similarly, the first words describing a crisis tend to organize the limited information available and direct how sub-sequent information will contribute to the story. The aircraft off course over the eastern United States made the news only after the second plane hit the World Trade Center and fears of terrorism were confirmed. At that point, any plane behaving strangely was news. Unfortunately, one was behaving strangely and entered the story with a tragic ending.

Activate your crisis plan, including your message platform, in order to begin shaping the story as quickly as possible. If you delay activation, the media, indeed all your audiences, will begin speculat-ing to make sense of the situation. In the process, they’ll begin to place blame, particularly if neglect


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can be demonstrated. The sooner you can begin shaping the story, the more quickly you’ll be able to guide the direction of any media or other stories about the crisis. These aren’t guarantees but en-hanced probabilities.

Having a message platform and a willingness to use and be used by the media are the foundations of communicating in the chaos. Once a crisis escapes from your organization, gaining control of a sud-den, smoldering, perceptual or bizarre crisis requires similar actions.

gET PhONES AND OThER COMMUNICATIONS TEChNOLOgY AND FACILITIES UNDER CONTROL / From the time the first news bulletins are broadcast, every phone in your organization will be busy with requests for information. With a limited number of phone lines, the external demand for infor-mation will make it difficult for you to use the phones to make essential outbound calls.

A BACKUP TELEPhONE PLAN

One of the first things to fail when a sudden crisis strikes is the telephone system.

No matter how many incoming lines it has, or how modern your telephone system is, it will almost certainly crash when word gets out in the community that something terrible is happening or has hap-pened. The friends and family of every employee will try to call to make sure their loved one is okay.

As soon as the number of people dialing in exceeds the number of incoming lines, the system will crash. On the surface, that is not a bad thing. When people can’t call in, that also means pesky report-ers can’t get through, and you have a little more time to gather the facts and organize your public statement.

Unfortunately, when no one can call in, you cannot call out. It is very hard to manage a crisis without telephone communication. Mobile phones are usually unreliable in a crisis, too: Since everyone and their children have cell phones now, the cell systems crash as fast as the landlines.

But don’t panic, unless the crisis is happening now and you haven’t taken these simple steps to avoid the “no phone zone.”

The easiest solution is to install at least one and preferably up to a half-dozen old-fashioned, single-line business telephone lines. They should be unlisted numbers and connected to single touchtone handsets. You don’t have to have a crush of calls to disable your phone system. Most organizations have phones that require electricity to work. If you lose power in the community or just to your building, you also lose your primary telephone system, whether it is three lines or 100. The standard, single-line business touchtone phone does not need electricity to work.

If you are a small business or organization, at least one standalone phone will be better than none. If you are a larger, or even “big” organization, six to 10 single-line phones will be adequate if you acti-vate your crisis plan and “war room.”


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You can dedicate one of the lines to a fax machine and another to an old-fashioned laptop modem in case your electricity is out and you can’t use your normal wireless router. The remaining lines will be essential in communicating with off-site team members, vendors, authorities and eventually with the media.

To make the small investment even more practical and justifiable, have one of those lines installed in the CEO’s office, another in the HR director’s office, one in the communication department’s of-fice, and another in the safety or risk manager’s office. Then have those same lines duplicated in your conference room or war room, or wherever you meet as a crisis management team. Team members can unplug the phones in their offices and bring them along to the war room, and you’re in business. If you still have some discretionary dollars, buy an extra set of handsets and have them stored in the war room, ready to plug in and use.

Many telecommunications and Internet companies have developed “voice continuity systems” using the Internet as an alternative to a landline or cell phone. Dell has one such system: Dell Voice Com-munication Continuity Solution. Dell can provide continuous voice service even when cables have been cut or the lines are down, or you have to change locations because of damage to your facilities. This will work in some situations, but not if your servers are not working.

WhERE DO YOU SEND ThEM?

Another hot spot will be the lobby or the front gate as family members of employees, neighbors, ven-dors, activists and other concerned people rush to your facilities seeking information—along with the news media. Oftentimes, when word of your crisis begins to spread in the community, there will be a rush of people to your site.

Built into your crisis plan should be the primary location your crisis team will normally meet. It should include an alternate site if your own facility is not accessible or usable.

Your plan should also include a holding area for family, friends and off-duty employees, and a sepa-rate holding area for the media. There should be a primary holding area for these two groups in the immediate vicinity of your facilities, but not so close that the media will have access to grieving or worried family members and employees. You need to identify a backup location for both groups if you are not going to be able to operate in your primary facility.

All too often, these concerned people with heightened emotions will give the first interviews to the media or send reports via their blogs, Facebook or MySpace pages or personal e-mail accounts. Of course, you may be lucky and have a brief interval before the news bulletins begin. Lucky or not, you should get your phone lines and front lines under control as quickly as possible.


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EARLY ACTIONS TO TAKE WhEN ThE CRISIS hITS 1. Find out—ideally before any crisis—how several lines in your phone system can quickly be taken out

of the rollover sequence to be used only for outbound calls. If that can’t be done, arrange for some private lines into the building that can be used in an emergency. Cell phones are an important alternative to regular phones for getting information into and out of the organization. But just like landline systems, cell phone systems fail when too many people try to use them. Being able to communicate with people inside and outside the organization will be vital in the early hours of the crisis.

2. If you don’t have trained security staff on duty, get someone to the front gates or to your lobby to meet anyone seeking information about the crisis. Make sure that only employees or authorized emer-gency response personnel can penetrate the facility. The last thing you need is frantic people or investigating press wandering through your facility while you and management try to get control of the situation. The who and the how can be built into your crisis plan.

3. Prepare a straightforward statement to begin telling your story. Include only the information that can be confirmed at the time. As information becomes available, update your statement. Make your first statement within 60 minutes. The sooner you give a statement the better, but say nothing until you can offer verifiable information. Your first utterance or release might be a one-paragraph statement similar to the following:

Regarding the reports of (event), this is what we can confirm right now. At approximately (time), we learned that (event) happened at (location). We have called for assistance from (emergency units and/or regulatory agencies). Man-agement has been notified and is gathering at a crisis center. At this moment we have no additional details of the event. We will update you at (place) as soon as we have additional verified information.

Your opening statement should be provided to all phone stations or loaded into your automatic answering system. It should also be posted at the front gates or lobby and photocopied and given to your staff so they can distribute it to anyone who wants information.

FIND OUT WhAT’S KNOWN/UNKNOWN / You may be able to confirm the nature of the crisis by looking out of your window or making observations as you evacuate your office. Perhaps one phone call to someone you trust in the area will add to your information. You need all the details you can gather to assess the severity of the crisis and to determine what should and should not be disclosed. Refer to the Sudden Crisis Worksheet at the end of this chapter and begin to fill in the appropriate details in the fact gathering section.


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Go to the crisis site or send someone, if you can, for firsthand observation. Your presence at the site will give you credibility with your management and with the news media. Gathering on-site informa-tion also gives you a better perspective from which to tell the story and to counter rumors. If visiting is not possible, send a trusted colleague to the site—one who can give you accurate and thorough information based on direct observation. Keep that colleague on-site to keep you informed as the crisis develops. For multisite organizations, your crisis plan can designate on-site observers with the authority and responsibility to provide firsthand information about the crisis to the crisis communica-tion team.

Getting your information secondhand may be your only choice. Your initial information may come from watching live on-site reports by CNN or from reporters on the scene via postings on the Internet. Our first knowledge of the fatal fire in Lima, Peru that started because of errant fireworks came from watching the terrifying video on CNN. Meetings with personnel once you are at the site will fill the missing information gaps, correct errors and add perspective to the event. While secondhand informa-tion doesn’t give you the best foundation from which to make decisions, some information beats none. At the very least, you can make the initial statement of confirmation with a promise of more details as they become available. When in doubt about the accuracy of information, do not use it.

What kind of information should you gather initially? Most of your audiences, including the media, will want the Five Ws and One H: who, what, why, when, where and how. Notice that the fact-gather-ing section in the worksheet guides you to gather that kind of information during the early minutes and hours of the sudden crisis.

As details become available, review and revise your notes as necessary. Review your understanding of the situation with people you’ve been talking to at the scene to gain confidence in the accuracy of your material. We watched this process throughout the first few days following 9/11. As details were confirmed, the story changed, becoming more focused and accurate.

Anticipate questions beyond the basic who, what, when, where, why, how. Your employees and their families, customers, investors, suppliers and vendors will want to know what you’re doing to correct the situation and to prevent future occurrences, as well as what you are doing for the people affected, their families, neighbors and the community.

People will also want to know what your organization knew about the situation before the crisis erupted. If you didn’t know, why didn’t you? If you did know, why didn’t you do anything about it? Count on it. As the basic details become clear, people, including the media, will want to know why the crisis was not prevented.

Beware of skeletons in the closet at your organization—similar situations confronted by your orga-nization, the causes, the damages and how the earlier event was managed. As mentioned elsewhere, databases give interested parties, including the media, access to information about your organization. If you misspeak because you didn’t know, your credibility may be forever damaged.

Several years ago at Ashland Oil in the U.S., a storage tank collapsed, spilling thousands of gallons of fuel into the Monongahela River near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Employees referred to the storage


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unit as the “new tank” so that is how the spokesperson reported it to the media—as a “new tank.” In fact, the tank was 35 years old. It had been dismantled at another site, moved to its present site in Pennsylvania and reassembled, where it became the “new tank” at the Pittsburg tank farm. Future utterances by the spokesperson were suspect because it appeared as if he (a) didn’t know the facts and (b) was trying to hide the age of the storage tank. Damaged credibility undercuts all future efforts, no matter how well planned and executed they may be.

Add to your list of questions to answer in the early phase of a sudden crisis:

4What is being done to end the crisis?

4What is being done for those impacted by the situation: victims, victims’ families, employees, employees’ families, the surrounding area, the community at large?

4What did you know before the crisis erupted? If nothing, why not? If you did know some-thing, why was the crisis not prevented?

Anticipating what you should know and what others will want to know prepares you to begin manag-ing the communication about the crisis.

WEIgh ThE DISCLOSURE OPTIONS / There’s no single way to disclose information about a sudden crisis. Disclosure depends on the severity of the crisis, where it occurred, and the number key of audi-ences and news organizations covering it.

Most of the time, the media and even some members of the public (i.e., employees) will know about your sudden crisis before you do, or certainly before you can get started activating your sudden crisis management and communication plans.

Your goal is to get accurate information out as quickly and efficiently as possible while minimizing the chances of inaccurate reporting by the news media. This goal would suggest a media briefing, but that is not always practical. An alternative is a written statement, attributed to a key person within the organization.

When you weigh the various options, it may be most appropriate to give copies of the Initial Disclosure Statement to any reporters outside your facilities or at the crisis site, or to fax/e-mail it to local news or-ganizations. The same statement can be distributed to your employees via intranet or a designated crisis phone line. On the other hand, if it’s a level 3 or 4 crisis with a mob of video crews descending on your plant or offices, your best bet in maintaining control of the story is to have a briefing conducted by one


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of your executives. The initial briefing can be followed by written updates and/or subsequent briefings as clarifying details become available (see Appendix A for tips on briefing the media).

Keep in mind that this initial briefing or release will be the first of many disclosures. Its purpose should be to confirm what has happened so the media can make their first reports and decide how much additional coverage to give the story. This initial disclosure will also be the first news of the crisis your employees, other locations and other stakeholders hear from you.

Consider that part of your disclosure plan should determine your primary and secondary audiences. What you reveal and when should be geared to these important audiences, even as you use the media to reach them. The media may not be your most important audience or the best way to reach those important audiences.

ThE MEDIA ISN’T ALWAYS YOUR PRIMARY TARgET AUDIENCE

Too often, key audiences are neglected in the rush to respond to omnipresent reporters. If one of the strategic objectives of any crisis is to preserve the organization, then employees, vendors and volun-teers may be the most important audiences. With workplace murders, for example, the primary audi-ences include employees, their families and the victims’ families. The media may not be needed to reach these audiences depending on the established methods of communication used by your organi-zation to communicate with them.

Secondary audiences may include customers, vendors, the neighboring community and investors; the media may not be needed to reach them. The media may not be needed to reach them either. A disclosure plan may be needed to distribute confirmed facts to the media via written releases for the first 48 hours. There are situations in which no spokesperson could have faced the cameras during the first few hours. Law enforcement or emergency medical spokespeople are responsible for revealing the horrible details while you are busy reaching your primary audiences with details and instructions by phone and with face-to-face conversations.

In a glass-making plant, two workers picked up a 4-foot by 6-foot plate glass piece intended for a desk. When they heard a crack, they dropped the glass, each running away. The glass split when it hit the cement floor and a shard flew several feet striking one worker in the neck. He bled to death on the plant floor waiting for the arrival of the ambulance and medical technicians. The company was concerned about “bad publicity” in the media. ICM turned their concern to the dead workers’ family and the other employees. The family had lost a son and a contributor to the family’s income. The em-ployees lost a co-worker and a friend. From a human perspective, the loss of a son devastates a fam-ily. The humane response provides comfort to the family. From an objective perspective, getting the employees back to work becomes important; surviving requires they produce the products that will bring in revenue. But work also provides a way for employees to return normalcy to their lives. More often than not, your communication efforts ought to be directed to family and employees and allow for the media to listen in. Social media users will be listening and sharing what they see and hear. Be prepared with a message platform and vehicles to distribute messages to a variety of audiences, should they be an important part of your crisis planning.


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In summary, plan what you will disclose, which audiences you will reach, what available method is most efficient and at what intervals you will disseminate the information.

ThE FOLLOWINg INFORMATION ShOULD not BE RELEASED:

1. Names of dead or injured, until it is certain that families have been notified.

That notification will come from the coroner/medical examiner, police or medical authorities, never from your organization.

2. Details of either your permanent security systems or the system put in place for the immediate situation. It may be desirable, however, to re-lease a broad outline of the company’s security program and policy, to show that you are security-conscious and prudent. If this information is released during an actual crisis, the release should be coordinated with the investigating authority.

3. Speculation as to individuals or groups responsible or the cause.

4. The amount of money or value of property taken in a robbery.

gET SENIOR MANAgEMENT SUPPORT / There’s no foolproof method for persuading senior management that your organization should be involved with the media under normal circumstanc-es—much less when the organization will be the focus of news coverage exposing a crisis. There are, however, some dos and don’ts for your discussion.

1. Don’t add to the tension. Focus on the facts, presenting them calmly. The last thing your ex-ecutives want to know is that a mob of reporters and film crews has descended on the facility.

2. Based on your firsthand knowledge of the situation, give your assessment of the news potential. Describe how you think the story will develop in the media’s coverage. Report the number of media calls already received and acknowledge the prominent reporters who have made con-tact. If reports have been broadcast, describe the substance and tone of the coverage.

3. This is not the time to push. Build confidence among your executives by walking them through your initial disclosure statement and disclosure plan. Share your rationale for the statement, the disclosure plan and your strategy for future statements. This will show that you can handle the media.


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4. The senior executives should already understand that the purpose of the initial disclosure is to establish your organization as the primary source of information—but it pays to remind them again.

5. Remind the executives that the news media will get information from your organization, with your cooperation—or they will get it elsewhere. Often, the information will come from inter-views with bystanders, activists, disgruntled employees or government officials. All those groups have their own agendas. The media will tell a story. Your cooperation increases the chances that the story will be accurate and will include your organization’s perspective; it doesn’t guarantee this, but it does improve the chances of it.

If your executives still have doubts, remind them with painful examples. In the U.S., for example, you’d remind them of:

4NASA’s mishandling of the Challenger episode.

4United Way’s mishandling of their internal scandal.

4The Red Cross’s mishandling of the donations to the 9/11 victims’ families.

4Guide Lamp’s mishandling of the White River fish kill in Indianapolis.

4Enron’s mishandling of its financial crises.

4Virginia Tech University officials mishandling the fatal shootings on campus.

In other countries, you’d remind them of:

4Brazil’s Petrobras’ (oil company) assurances that its off-shore oil rig was stabilized; it sank within hours of the announcement.

4The Greek military’s attempt to justify one of its fighter pilots accidentally shooting down a Turkish jet during NATO maneuvers.

4Argentina’s inability to describe its financial crisis to the world financial community and to its own citizens.

4Myanmar’s military government restriction, even denial of deaths and injuries, during an earthquake.

4Trinidad’s call for the reinstitution of the death penalty to act as a deterrent to personal vio-lence, which has led to a slight increase in murders since its enactment in 1999.

4Britain’s early assurances that the “mad cow” disease was under control, posing no threat to those receiving meat shipped from that country.

4China’s delay in reporting cases of “avian flu.”


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Regardless of your country, you’ll be able to create a similar list for yourself. This is the sort of list you should prepare in advance and have ready to use at any time.

Mismanagement of the release of information has had lasting negative effects—lost revenues, lower credibility—on each of these organizations, including the dismissal of executives.

If you’re prepared and a bit lucky, senior management may give you authority to put your disclo-sure plan into operation. You may be instructed to coordinate your initial statement and disclosure plan with the legal department, or other experts at corporate headquarters such as human resources, security, and risk and issues managers. If you’ve already contacted some of these other experts, that’s a point in your favor with senior executives. If you haven’t, perhaps these specialists can help you by viewing your statement and plan through their respective lenses of expertise.

When a sudden crisis erupts, you don’t have much time to take people through the entire authoriza-tion process. Unless your management team gets good information from people they can trust, they won’t make good decisions. The senior executive needs to know that:

1. You both have the same objective—the crisis will be covered accurately and in the most fa-vorable light under the circumstances. That first disclosure and subsequent updates, when more details have been confirmed, will be essential to resolving the crisis and returning the organization to a productive routine. To accomplish the objective, you must maintain a good working relation-ship with the media from the first minutes of the crisis until it is past.

2. You are the person who knows what’s happened and how to manage the media covering the story. The lawyers, security and human resource people don’t have that advantage.

3. Now is not the time to be evasive or unavailable to the media. When the news media form an impression that you will not deal with them openly and honestly, they will seek information for their stories from other sources. The media work on rigid time and space schedules that will be met and filled with or without the help of your organization.

4. Unnecessary interruptions caused by rumors, innuendoes and inaccurate stories reported by the media will be minimized if the organization seizes the initiative and releases confirmed information.

5. You know the media and their habits, needs and patterns better than anyone else on the scene. To get some semblance of story control, you need the authority to take the initiative in order to disclose information without constantly running releases through the chain of command.

Before finally releasing your first statement, get the most up-to-date information available from someone at the scene. Run your initial statement by them, asking them to check for accuracy. With the authority of senior management and the support of trusted associates at the scene, you can now release your initial statement.

Your goal should be to make your first disclosure within 60 minutes of the beginning of the sudden


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crisis. Then follow up at regular intervals, making subsequent statements and releasing background information from the same location so the media have the sense that there is a center of control for the crisis.

While you’re briefing the media, someone from your staff should fax or e-mail the statement to all of your other facilities, distribute copies to people handling the phones and to security personnel manag-ing the traffic into your facility, and post it on your web site.

BRIEFINg ThE NEWS MEDIA / If your disclosure plan calls for a briefing, remember that the media’s primary focus early on will be on the facts that are known and the prospects for additional news. Keep the briefing just that—brief. Later sessions will offer opportunities for elaboration supported by interviews with participants—emergency personnel and survivors. Do not offer to answer questions. In the first few hours of a crisis, there are far more questions than answers. In the first encounter with the media after the shooting at Virginia Tech, the university president identified himself and volun-teered that he, his vice president of PR and the chief of campus police would stay until all the report-ers’ questions had been answered. Reporters hammered the three men because they offered to answer questions, but they had no answers to those questions.

Facing the glare of TV camera lights and the muttering of reporters may be unnerving to you or the designated spokesperson. Don’t go instantly to the microphones (see Appendix A, Addendum E for suggestions regarding a media center). Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the surround-ings—the lights, sounds and people. A member of your staff should brief you (or the spokesperson) on who is in the room, what information the media have already gathered and from what sources, and the questions they’ve been asking. Your statement need not be altered, but at least you won’t look sur-prised by what’s asked you after you’ve read your prepared text. The Cathay Pacific case study found in Appendix B describes its effective use of press briefings.

The initial impression you wish to convey is that you are in control. Don’t rush. Get your notes in order, face the audience, take a deep breath and begin. In the first few hours after a crisis erupts, all encounters with the media should be prefaced with this statement: “I’m not going to be taking any questions at this time, but I will tell you what I can.”

Start by introducing yourself, giving your position within the organization and thanking the media for responding to the situation so quickly. Then set the limits of the briefing (see Appendix A, Adden-dum F for suggestions regarding media policies and guidelines):

4You will provide a statement that includes only confirmed information.

4You will respond only with verified information.

4Future disclosure of information will be at… (name of the location and the time of the next release).

4Additional tips for briefing the media can be found in Appendix A, Addendum G.


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Next, give the statement: “This is what we can confirm right now…” Read it slowly, emphasizing the important words—those that tell the story. Usually they are the nouns, verbs and objects in each sentence. Pause briefly between paragraphs to indicate changes of thought. Look at the audience members as much as possible.

Some of the reporters may be difficult to see in the glare of the camera lights, but it is important to respond to the questioners on your terms, not theirs. A good suggestion from the White House press office is to get someone standing off to the side to spot the questioners in the audience for you if the glare is too much. That way, you don’t have to worry about which questioner is next, and you can concentrate on your answers.

If it is necessary to repeat reporter questions in a news conference, we suggest you have someone spot-ting the reporters and repeating their questions so the whole group can hear. We strongly recommend the spokesperson not repeat reporter questions. Many questions will be negative in tone and substance. As spokesperson, you don’t want those negative words and thoughts coming out of your mouth.

While other writers on crisis may give you slightly different advice, everyone agrees: Don’t speculate! Unless you are absolutely certain of the answer, don’t guess. Speculating about events makes for pleas-ant social conversation, but can spell disaster in crisis situations. Throughout all of the briefings follow-ing 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, we’ve heard officials gently refuse to answer a question because they “can’t confirm that.” Unfortunately, reporters will ask speculative questions: “What will you do if…?” “So-and-so says this…what do you think it means?” If you don’t know, the answer is still “I don’t know.” A better answer is “I don’t know, but when I find out, I’ll share that with you if I can.”

Many of the questions will be time-oriented. “When will they know…?” “When will you have a chance to…?” “How soon will victims…?” “When do you expect it to be over?” Details on time are an important part of any news story and help the media in scheduling its coverage, but inquiries about time are among the most difficult to answer accurately. Give an accurate answer, when you can. If you can’t, say so. But don’t speculate!

Keep the question period short and under your control. When you’re ready to break it off, say, “I’ll take two more questions.” Take only two more questions. Don’t get trapped into answering questions while leaving or allowing follow-up questions. You made the ground rules. Stick to them. If you don’t, you undermine your credibility with the press.

As already mentioned, end the briefing by indicating the tentative time and location of the next update. Say that the press will be alerted if anything develops between now and the next scheduled session.


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COMMUNICATINg IN A CRISIS REQUIRES TEAMWORK / No one person or office can carry the load of communicating throughout the duration of a sudden crisis. As the crisis progresses, various people play crucial roles in reaching important stakeholders. Many other crisis writers will suggest you select a single spokesperson, usually the CEO, to be your primary contact with the media for the duration of the event. Here are a few reasons why we don’t concur with that recommendation.

First, senior managers should manage the organization through the crisis. Guiding the organization through the chaos to a return to productive activity should be senior management’s primary goal. Sec-ond, if the CEO serves as the primary media spokesperson and misspeaks, who can correct the error without significant embarrassment to the individual and the organization? Third, the cause of the cri-sis may be the CEO, in which case having selected that person as the principal spokesperson becomes a problem. In Australia, AMP CEO George Trumbull was himself the problem when analysts and shareholders called for his removal. American University found itself with just such a problem when its president was engaging in inappropriate behavior with women. Jac Nasser, former CEO of Ford Motor Co., became one of the company’s problems as it stumbled through the Firestone tire crisis.

In some cultures, there may be good reasons why a CEO should be the designated spokesperson. You should balance these with the issues raised here in determining your own organization’s strategy.

Senior management does play important communication roles during the crisis, as the graphic below illustrates. It is appropriate for senior executives to speak to:

4Employees and their families, particularly if the crisis involves casualties.

4Key government officials, such as legislators, executives and key regulatory officials.

4Key stakeholders, including major investors, customers and vendors.

4Opinion leaders: other business CEOs and religious, civic and academic leaders.

In performing their role, senior management will reaffirm your communication policy (which should be concluded while creating the organization’s crisis plan) for the duration of the crisis. The CEO is the appropriate person to express the sorrow and sympathy of the organization to victims and the families of victims. This can be done as part of the overview of the crisis situation. That overview need not be the first statement made by your organization; however, not long into the crisis, the CEO ought to make an appearance with remarks addressed to the key audiences. Senior executives appropriately may make personal calls, either by phone or face-to-face, to important, influential people impacted by the crisis. For example, when a manufacturer of blower motors for central heating units found a defect, the president personally called each of the 14 distribution company customers to explain the nature of the crisis and the corrective action. No distributors/wholesalers left the manufacturer.

One final important role played by senior management is that of tiebreaker for the crisis team. Should the team become divided over a strategic or tactical decision, the CEO can break the stalemate.


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FIgURE 5.1: CRISIS RESPONSE TEAMWORK

The foundation of the pyramid is the communication staff, because the successful performance of the communication role by senior managers depends on the quality of information gathered and dissemi-nated by communication staff. Media relations and community relations staff coordinate the gather-ing and dissemination of information and interviews with key organizational personnel, at the same time monitoring the media’s coverage of the crisis. The Port of Auckland case study in Appendix B describes how the communication staff provides the foundation for an organization’s communication.

Spokespeople who provide ongoing coverage of the organization can be operational and staff experts, often senior executives in charge of units within the organization. A chief-of-staff or head of nursing of a hospital may be a credible spokesperson for a health crisis. The CFO may be a credible spokes-person for a crisis of declining stock price or of accounting irregularities (assuming the CFO isn’t the cause). They know the processes and the personnel of the organization, so they can speak authorita-tively and answer questions accurately. Furthermore, by sharing the spokesperson role among these experts, no one becomes worn out should the crisis last for several days or longer. In New York City, after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, as soon as Mayor Giuliani gave the initial overview and established

4Employees and families

4Key government officials

4Stakeholders

4Opinion leaders

4Communication policy

4Crisis team tiebreaker

4On-site overview remarks

4One-on-one with movers and shakers

4News media

4Outside experts

4Principal briefing spokesperson

4 Interface with crisis participants

4Liaison with outside experts

4Top management

4Crisis participants

4 Journalists

4Agency public information officers

4 Interview gatekeeper

4Media coverage intelligence

4Majority of phone interviews

4General spokesperson

TOPMgMT

OPERATIONAL AND STAFF ExPERTS

MEDIA AND COMMUNITY RELATIONS

STAFF

AUDIENCES RESPONSIBILITIES


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the message platform (“be calm,” “your city’s finest are working hard,” “New Yorkers will get through this”), operational experts such as senior police, fire and emergency management officials delivered the details of the ongoing rescue efforts.

ThE NEW STANDARD FOR COMMUNICATINg IN A CRISIS / The tragedy of 9/11 changed our lives in many ways. The management of organizational crises certainly has been altered by the plane crash-es, building collapses and anthrax scares. Many operational plans have been changed to increase the security of travel and of the places in which we work and play. However, the fundamental principles guiding communicating during a crisis haven’t really changed: Be available, be open and be honest.

Because former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani displayed those qualities so well on 9/11 and dur-ing the weeks that followed, his behavior has raised the bar for everyone. Harris Diamond, CEO of Weber Shandwick Worldwide at the time, classified the Mayor’s behavior as the Giuliani Standard. Six qualities describe this standard:

1. Be visible.

2. Speak shortly after the event.

3. Speak to your constituents.

4. Provide useful information.

5. Express sympathy.

6. Provide a positive perspective.

These six qualities provide sound guidelines for organizations and their spokespeople when a sudden crisis hits.

WhEN ThE CRISIS LASTS LONgER ThAN 48 hOURS / If the situation will last longer than two days before being stabilized or resolved, you should make a few changes in your plan for communicat-ing during the crisis.

1. Link up with the public information officers/public affairs officers of the emergency re-sponse agencies who have responded to your organization’s crisis. Whether they are with the police or fire departments, disaster or emergency services, or other government bodies, these officers have witnessed similar crises in other organizations. They can give you invaluable insights into managing the media during the crisis. They also can give you hints on relating to politicians and bureaucrats who will become involved with your organization because of the crisis.


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You should also be sure your public statements are coordinated with those issued by other organi-zations or agencies. Timing of releases and their content should not conflict, or the story told by the media will change. If briefings are held, it’s a good idea to get someone from each of the other agencies to be present at your briefing, and you or one of your executives should attend any brief-ings held by these other agencies.

If there have been casualties, connect with the designated spokesperson for the hospital or hospi-tals to which the injured have been taken. Ask the spokesperson to contact you immediately if the condition of one of the casualties should change, for better or worse.

2. Line up additional people. With worldwide 24-hour news coverage, you may get requests for an update or an interview at any hour of the day or night. You need additional professional commu-nicators to help staff your office 24 hours a day. With quick instruction, these additional people can cover the late night shifts so you and your regular staff can get some rest. They can at least cover the blogosphere, Facebook, MySpace and other Internet sites to watch for and report on how social media are reacting to your crisis (see Chapter 6: Crisis Communication Technologies, page 101).

You also need people to be your eyes and ears at the crisis site. That need may shift from the orig-inal scene of the crisis to local hospitals, depending on the episode, its consequences and where the media are maintaining their vigil. Have someone keep you posted of any new developments in the crisis as well as alert you to any stories under investigation. The extra person can serve as your on-site media contact if you have to reach the press quickly or if you have any new information to disseminate.

The ideal additional person should be from within your organization so that it is already famil-iar to them. Another possible helper may be from the communication staff of your national or regional professional association. These people know your industry and often have experience in internal communication as well as in or with the media. Or, you can enlist local IABC members who have the skills you need and a willingness to help. What they may lack in knowledge of your organization’s industry, they can make up for with experience in communication.

Getting help is what’s important because you cannot sustain the stress of a crisis for more than a few days. ValuJet’s CEO Lewis Jordan tried to be the major media spokesperson and manage the crisis when one of his airliners crashed into the Everglades. The crash occurred on Saturday. The following Wednesday he informed the media that they would hear from others in the future. The information would still be good, and the airline would still respond, but he could no longer play both roles. He was tired.


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CONCLUSION / Communicating during a crisis is not just responding to questions posed by the me-dia, employees, activists or investors. Effectively communicating during a crisis begins long before the event occurs. The organization should develop a message platform based on its central mission and on which crisis statements can be grounded. You need the support of senior management to gather infor-mation and to create and disseminate statements to important audiences during the crisis. Dissemi-nating statements to important stakeholders often requires you use the media to reach those targets. To use, you must be willing to be used: to help the media do their business of telling an interesting story to readers, listeners or viewers.


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SUDDEN CRISIS WORKShEET / IF YOU ARE NOTIFIED OF A MAJOR ACCIDENT OR NATURAL DISASTER

INVOLVINg ONE OF YOUR FACILITIES

A. Fill Out Pages 3–7 of This Worksheet. Assure your sources that your job is to make sure you have all the facts that are known. Indicate that none of this information will be disclosed until it has been reviewed by a senior executive and/or the public relations/communication manager.

B. Contact the Appropriate Senior Executive. Brief him/her on the information from the Fact Gathering Section or confirm that he/she has already been briefed.

Senior executive

Name: ____________________________________________________________________________

Office: ____________________________________________________________________________

Fax: ______________________________________________________________________________

Mobile: ___________________________________________________________________________

Home: ____________________________________________________________________________

Pager: _____________________________________________________________________________

PIN No.: __________________________________________________________________________

Deputy senior executive

Name: ____________________________________________________________________________

Office: ____________________________________________________________________________

Fax: ______________________________________________________________________________

Mobile: ___________________________________________________________________________

Home: ____________________________________________________________________________

Pager: _____________________________________________________________________________

PIN No.: __________________________________________________________________________

C. Contact the Public Relations or Communication Manager. Brief him/her on the information from the Fact Gathering Section on pages 3–7 or confirm that he/she has been briefed.

1


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PR/communication manager

Name: ____________________________________________________________________________

Office: ____________________________________________________________________________

Fax: ______________________________________________________________________________

Mobile: ___________________________________________________________________________

Home: ____________________________________________________________________________

Pager: _____________________________________________________________________________

PIN No.: __________________________________________________________________________

Deputy PR/communication manager

Name: ____________________________________________________________________________

Office: ____________________________________________________________________________

Fax: ______________________________________________________________________________

Mobile: ___________________________________________________________________________

Home: ____________________________________________________________________________

Pager: _____________________________________________________________________________

PIN No.: __________________________________________________________________________

D. Work with the public relations/communication manager to fill out the “Response to Inqui-ries.” Then duplicate and distribute page 8 of this worksheet to anyone who will be responsible for responding to inquiries from employees, customers, neighbors or other outside callers.

E. Determine your initial responsibilities from the senior executive or public relations/communica-tions manager if directed to do so:

1. ________________________________________________________________________________

2. ________________________________________________________________________________

3. ________________________________________________________________________________

4. ________________________________________________________________________________

5. ________________________________________________________________________________

6. ________________________________________________________________________________2


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FACT gAThERINg

Describe what happened: _________________________ Approximate time: ___________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Business Disruption

Extent of the damage to our facilities: _____________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Specific facilities and locations that are hardest hit: ___________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Is there potential for further damage? (Yes/No) Are additional facilities at risk? (Yes/No)

Has service been interrupted? (Yes/No) Describe. ___________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

What is the impact on customer services? _________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

3


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Length of time before 50 percent service restored: ___________________________________________

75 percent service: ___________________________________________________________________

Fully restored: _______________________________________________________________________

Repair Work

Number of recovery people already at the scene: ________ Work being done: ______________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Recovery specialists called in to help: _____________________________________________________

From where? ________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Expected to arrive: ________________ Where will they be utilized initially? ______________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Community Impact

Has the incident had an impact outside of our facilities? (Yes/No) If so, describe it. _________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Is an evacuation underway? (Yes/No/Not Yet) Who and how many people? _______________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Casualties

How many employees and non-employees have been killed? ___________________________________

Injured? _______________________ Are unaccounted for?___________________________________

4


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What is the severity of the injuries? _______________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Have employees’ families been notified? (Yes/No) Have contractor/non-employee families been noti-fied? (Yes/No)

What is being done to assist the families? __________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

What have the rest of the employees been told to do? _________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Current Status

Who is our senior executive in charge? ______________________ Phone No.: ____________________

Who has been notified within our organization? _____________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

What local/state agencies are involved? ____________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Specific government officials and their phone numbers: _______________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

5


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Actions taken thus far? ________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

News Media

Have we received phone calls from the media? (not yet/some/heavy) How many reporters/TV crews are at the scene? __________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

From which news organizations? ________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

What information has been given out? By whom? ___________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Background InformationSuspected cause, if this was an accident: ___________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Who was at fault? ____________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

6


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Have there been similar problems like this in the past? (Yes/No) Describe. ________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Are unexpected problems hampering the recovery work? (Yes/No) Describe. _______________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

What type of help is needed most? ______________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Information provided by: ______________________________________________________________

Notes: ____________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

Phone(s): __________________________________________________________________________

Fax: ______________________________________________________________________________

Mobile: ___________________________________________________________________________

Pager: _____________________________________________________________________________

PIN No.: __________________________________________________________________________

7


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RESPONSE TO INQUIRIES(YOU ARE AUThORIzED TO gIVE OUT ThE FOLLOWINg INFORMATION)

This is what we can confirm at the present time:

At approximately ________________ we experienced a ______________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

At this point we cannot accurately tell you the extent of the damage or injuries other than to say that

it has involved ______________________________________________________________________

and people. Their names and conditions will not be disclosed until next of kin have been

notified. We have requested emergency assistance from _____________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

and have notified our management. (If appropriate) They have asked that members of the media stay

in touch with _______________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

so they can be briefed as soon as additional verified information is available.

If you are asked additional questions, make the following statement:

That is all I can confirm at the present time. I am sure you understand we all are very busy trying to deal with this situation, and we’ll need your patience for a few hours. As soon as we have more information that has been confirmed, it will be disclosed to the public via the news media. Anything involving our employees will be disclosed to their families and loved ones first. That will be handled by our senior management, who have been alerted and are en route now to assist us at the scene. Please bear with us in the meantime.

Thanks very much.

Drafted by: ____________________ Approved by: __________________________________________

Phone: _____________________________ Date: _____________________ Time: ________________

TIME BRIEF DESCRIPTION

SPECIFIC FACILITIES—IF KNOWN

NUMBER OF

POLICE, FIRE, ETC.

DESIGNATED SPOKESPERSON/LOCATION/PHONE

8

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