Communication in Crisis

HCS/320

January 18, 2016

Communication in Crisis

Today we have begun receiving official notices of contamination of the public water supply in the surrounding area. As the director of the local emergency management department, I have deemed it necessary to hold a conference to address this contamination. The contamination is a life-threatening biological agent. According to "United States Department of Labor" (2016), “Biological agents include bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other microorganisms and their associated toxins. They have the ability to adversely affect human health in a variety of ways, ranging from relatively mild, allergic reactions to serious medical conditions, even death. These organisms are widespread in the natural environment; they are found in water, soil, plants, and animals. Because many microbes reproduce rapidly and require minimal resources for survival, they are a potential danger in a wide variety of settings.” Do to the capability of rapid replication this is major public health concern, in that it could spread rapidly among the population and have a widespread of illness in a short period of time. It is vital that this situation be handled quickly and with everybody’s safety being the top priority. There has been reports of multiple hospitalizations due to this biological agent. It is important to contact the surrounding hospitals and start preparing them for crisis management implementation. The symptoms that we have found associated with this biologic agent is headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, and vomiting. It is imperative that this crisis be contained with minimal loss of life. We must prepare a public announcement that will not produce widespread panic, but lets people know that we are addressing the matter and that they need to be hypervigilant to the symptoms caused by this biologic agent. The first thing to do is to bring in specialists from the local Health Department, The Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Health and Human Services. Collaborating between these departments is essential to come up with a plan for addressing the public. It is necessary to come up with a system to put out emergency or rapid information. This can include press conferences for the news and newspapers and also social media updates that can keep the public up to date minute by minute. It is essential that public fear must be kept to a minimum. Stress the importance of vigilance but keep panic low. Media can be a doubled edged sword. It can be an excellent method of getting information to the public, but that does not come without hazard. The hazard of using the media is that they need to have a “good” story, and sometimes to make that “good” story, it must be embellished to add excitement to the story. Media personnel do not always think of what is best for the public, but for what is best for them to get recognition and for their employer to have the most “juicy” news. The news can be very helpful though, in they are already ready to broadcast especially when there is a big incident. They normally have reporters on standby at important locations to get the latest information. The media can rapidly spread information regarding locations to receive safe water and where to go for safe haven and to alert which hospitals can take more patients. With a public health issue the closest hospitals tend to fill up rapidly and become overwhelmed. This can cause more panic and potential harmful effects. When the public is aware that there are other hospitals and treatment locations it can keep the panic down and more people can be evaluated. Social media is a good avenue for creating awareness, to help with aid programs. There can be donation drop offs established and financial donation accounts set up, along with national crisis management teams can be alerted and maintain through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more. These social media campaigns must be closely looked at by the people who are donating, as they may not be started by reputable groups and the person who established the campaign may not be credible. Some challenges that may be faced during this event is embellishment of the facts by the media. The media must make the story interesting, but while doing this, it can increase the mass panic. When addressing the media it is imperative to remain in control and report only what is necessary. There will be a research team established. Their mission is to find the source of the contamination and neutralize it as quickly as possible. Their progress will periodically be announced publically. These announcements can help to slow contamination by keeping people aware of the spread and to keep a safe zone. All announcements will go through public relations to maintain control of all media access. After an incident like this it is important to evaluate the situations and begin to make an emergency preparedness plan and to implement more strenuous guidelines for the maintenance of the public water system. The emergency preparedness plan would take all that we have learned from this crisis, the media exposure and what worked with the release of information and what didn’t. Also it would contain quarantine guidelines, and hospital usage. There will be new guidelines put into place on public water management. There will be more frequent water tests, there will be further research on implementing a better purification system. More security needs to be established at all access points to the public water so that there can be no access to public water by any unauthorized personnel. There will be more crisis management training and drilling to reduce panic. More public training is necessary also, to help them to be aware of ways to report incidents and to stay up to date with any and all events that has to do with the safety of the public water. There will be multiple training and scenarios built off of the experiences that we have had with the media. From watching and evaluating press releases we will better know what to discuss if future situations occur. We will learn from our mistakes that may have promoted panic and from our triumphs that eased the public. There will be an initial script put into place for the initial media contact so that not too much is said at the wrong time. After initial contact with the media then there will be guidelines set up for what is to be said in further press releases. We were prepared for mass panic, but where able to keep everything under control, because the chain of command was followed. There were no people trying to take control of the situation and talk to the media when they weren’t supposed to. This crisis has proved that we have all come together as a community to support each other and strive for the best outcome as possible. The personnel at the emergency management department have learned many invaluable lessons that has helped us build as a team and has helped us to implement more standards to keep the public safe. The other resources that were brought in to help have been vital tour success. Being able to work closely with outside teams with such ease was a major help, and it has also been great for them to take with them and add to their national response programs. Conclusion The contamination of the public water supply not only hit the community hard and put a lot of stress on the public health system. When the public health departments were called upon they handled the contaminated water, they came in a worked together cohesively to solve the problem. The problem was solved rapidly with minimal loss and no long term effects on the community. Over time the community will make a completely recovery. We have learned which ways to handle the media so as to not create mass panic but to keep the public aware of everything they need to know. We have also learned that there needs to be an increased security presence around all public water access points and more frequent tests run on the public water.

References
United States Department of Labor. (2016). Retrieved from https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/biologicalagents/
Cheesebro, T., O’Connor, L., & Rios, F. (2010). Communicating in the workplace. Upper Saddle

River, NJ: Prentice Hall

du Pre', A. (2005). Communicating About Health (2nd ed.). New York, New York:

McGraw-Hill.