Author: Jim

When was the last time your agency updated their hazard vulnerability analysis (HVA)? Is it still based upon a twentieth-century model? According to a recent article published in The Atlantic, you might be in for the worst kind of surprise.

The title is foreboding enough:

Cities and Resilience – The Year Climate Started Hurting Politicians

But then you see the first five paragraphs littered with the names of politicians who are struggling, have struggled, and even some who subsequently lost elected office due, in part, to their response to natural disasters and emergencies.

So, what’s the deal behind all of this doom and gloom? Sure, some politicians just don’t prioritize emergency response, but not these guys. I say something else is up. The article proposes that climate change (y’know, global warming) might be the cause. Here’s the rationale, courtesy of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

Q: Are Extreme Events, Like Heat Waves, Droughts or Floods, Expected to Change as the Earth’s Climate Changes?

A: Yes; the type, frequency and intensity of extreme events are expected to change as Earth’s climate changes, and these changes could occur even with relatively small mean climate changes. Changes in some types of extreme events have already been observed, for example, increases in the frequency and intensity of heat waves and heavy precipitation events.

Like the Atlantic article notes, this is kind of technical. What it means is that the chances of an out-of-range weather event happening is increasing. What that means is that your HVA might be hamstrung by, well, twentieth-century thinking. Thinking that says a flood like that should only happen every hundred years, but you’ve had four of them in the last five years, is what this is getting at.

Four 12+ inch snowstorms in less than a year (like we’ve had in Philly) sound unusual? It might just be the new usual. Tornadoes, tropical cyclones, ice storms, snowstorms, wildfires, flooding, heat waves, drought, all of them may be understated as threats in your HVA.

So, what does that mean for us communicators? Well, besides brushing up on your disaster terminology, it might be helpful to review your template fact sheets. Is your boil water advisory ready to go (and easily activated)? Do you even have any FAQs delivered for wildfires, or smog? What are your three key messages surrounding tornado preparedness? (And I use that as an example because I have no idea—get in a ditch?)

As I look back on the last few years, it seems like there have been more weather-related disasters than usual. The cynical side of me says that’s just because the world is smaller, so we hear about more disasters than ever before. But the unprecedented nature of some of these disasters makes me believe something else is going on. From record heat and smoke in Moscow, to snow in the UK, to literally feet of water raining down in southern California, to nor’easter after nor’easter in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, something’s up. And you can only say “unprecedented” so many times before your citizens realize that it’s just the new normal and you’re not doing anything about it.

What do you get when you mix old-style “common man on the street” politicking with today’s hottest social media tool, then add a dash of nearly twenty inches of snow?

Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

Mayor Booker’s Twitter feed has turned into a veritable EOC resource request list and public information bonanza. As Newark residents tweet about problems associated with what’s been dubbed as the Snowpocalypse, Mayor Booker has been personally responding and directing resources throughout Newark to assist those in need. Whether it’s digging out a bus, delivering diapers or sending snowplows to streets that haven’t yet been cleared, Mayor Booker has been on the front lines of snow removal and responding to the storm that has crippled New York City and delivered a ton of bad press to the doorstep of New Jersey Governor Christie.

What does this mean for us? Mayor Booker is just the first in a string of politicians who will use the media’s infatuation with social media to garner good press for their actions. The public will see the value of being able to directly talk to their elected officials, and will use that “hotline” to get things accomplished. I won’t pretend to understand the political side of this equation; but I do see where this is going for public information officers and emergency management and response agencies. Residents are being primed to reach out to the government in case of emergency via social media.

We already knew that folks today believe that calls for help via social media should be seen and responded to, but this is the next step. Actual incorporation of social media monitoring and response based on those social media calls. The expectation exists, and now a proof of concept has been demonstrated. Modern emergency responders who do not respond to social media calls, especially in emergencies, are no longer on the cutting edge—and I would argue will quickly fall behind the rest of the field.

(And this is not because of any impetus in the emergency management world, but will come about solely as a result of political will. Mayor Booker is ably demonstrating the value of emergency social media to your local elected officials.)

Kudos to Mayor Booker for hitting the trifecta: using exciting new technology that the media will eat up, actually doing good in his community, and advancing the state of emergency response. It’s tough enough finding politicians who can do any one of those things.

I had a really cool interaction last night with whoever was behind the Twitter account @AmazonToys at the time. Speaking with them validated my assumption that Amazon.com is a forward-thinking company, one that I will gladly continue to purchase from, and the value of social media—especially when coupled with direct interaction with customers and giving the power to make changes to those on the front lines.

At 5:30 pm last night, @AmazonToys posted the following:

Under $10 deals! LEGO Atlantis Wreck Raider $5.99 #moms #kids #makesmesmile #lastminutegifts #saving http://amzn.to/fVvwqK

Being a troublemaker and a Dad who is involved and invested in his kids, I replied at 5:47 pm:

Sigh, why the #moms tag? RT @AmazonToys:LEGO (toy) $5.99 #moms #kids #lastminutegifts #saving http://amzn.to/fVvwqK

@AmazonToys, just one minute later replied, cutely:

@jgarrow Moms should be informed about great deals :)

I explained myself a bit better:

Not Dads, too? RT @AmazonToys: @jgarrow Moms should be informed about great deals :)

and

@AmazonToys That said, I understand /why/ you tagged it that way, just dislike that it’s okay. Don’t mean to cause a fuss. Still a good deal.

@AmazonToys replied to my reasoning just one minute later:

@jgarrow Agreed, will be sure to add dads, too :)

I retweeted that last message, made sure to give them props and replayed the original LEGO toy link.

Every post since then by @AmazonToys has included both the #moms and #dads hashtags.

In the end, it was a trifle, and fixing it cost absolutely nothing, but look how warm and fuzzy it made me, a current (and potentially future) customer, feel. If I were an influential blogger, I might write it up and @AmazonToys could be seen by hundreds or thousands of Dads with disposable income, who are already annoyed that all child-rearing messages seem to default to Moms, as a hero company.

Or worse, @AmazonToys might not have responded to me, and I could have written a scathing post about how Amazon hates Dads and thinks they’re all absentee fathers, with the intention of sharing it with my (theoretical) legions of angry Dads.

Let’s look at what they did right. They saw my negatively slanted post, and responded right away (maybe not the same way I would have). I raised my issue with them, and not only did they reply right away, the person doing the replying was authorized to change what that message—and all future messages—said. Problem solved! One more happy customer, who retweeted their link three times, ended the conversation with a positive tweet and then wrote up a nice blog post on the interaction.

For companies, that seems pretty cut and dried, and is increasingly becoming the norm. But for you government communicators, when is the last time someone wrote something nice about an interaction they’ve had with your agency? Can you respond within a minute to a negative post online about your agency? Do you even track online posts?

I know that I talk a lot about emergency communications and online monitoring here, which seems different than this situation, but I assure you they are integrally tied together. @AmazonToys quick and satisfying response to me (which they were able to do because they monitor the space) allowed them to avoid a crisis situation, which is always preferable, obviously. So it’s important to first do the monitoring, but it’s just as important to be comfortable doing the monitoring and making changes on the fly. Which is why doing it in a non-emergency situation is the best possible time to do it.

Kudos once again to Amazon and the person behind @AmazonToys. You showed me how important I am as a customer, and how simple crisis communication can be when done proactively.