Disaster Due Diligence July 9, 2010
Are you ready?
Now, it’s easy and affordable to be able to answer “yes.’’ Now, you can have immediate access to assistance and answers when you need them for less than a $1 a day.
The Preaction Emergency Response Alliance™ is a first-of-its-kind preparedness and disaster response network dedicated to helping your business before, during and after a disaster. Take a look. Join other Members and protect your business and employees. Can you afford not to act? Are you ready? Find out at www.preaction.com.
The Preaction Alliance: Accessible. Affordable. Actionable.
Disaster preparedness
HEADLINE: Hospital could face fine over terrorism drill gone awry
SUMMARY: A Las Vegas Hospital is under heavy criticism and could be fined for a misguided terrorism training exercise. In the scenario, unaware and panicked nurses, doctors and other employees were herded into a break room by an armed intruder, leaving critically ill patients unattended. The hospital’s COO told state investigators that the three employees who cooked up the exercise failed to tell administrators or anyone in the intensive care unit. Two of the employees involved in planning the drill were suspended and the security director was terminated.
STORY LINK: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/jul/03/drill-left-staff-fearing-lives/
ANALYSIS: You see someone being taken hostage. Should you:
A) Assume it is a real event.
B) Assume it is an exercise.
C) Assume you are seeing a movie being made.
D) Assume you are next.
If you don’t know what is happening, you will react as in A) and D) above. Unless it was a real hostage situation, no good can come from that. Exercises need to be planned, vetted, coordinated, and communicated. In this case Firestorm’s Predict. Plan. Perform. ™ process was not followed. Injury or death could have easily occurred.
Test exercises have great value. They can be a learning experience for all involved. Weaknesses and breakdowns are identified in advance. Obviously, this example demonstrates the failure of communication. If you surprise people, whether employees or the public, problems will occur. Exercises need to be documented and planned.
When is your next exercise? How and what will you communicate about it?
Economic crisis
HEADLINE: Bankruptcy filings on the rise
SUMMARY: Americans are heading to bankruptcy court in increasing numbers, with filings surging by 14 percent through the first half of 2010. "Years of rising consumer debt and low savings rates, combined with the housing and unemployment crisis, are causing bankruptcy levels not seen since the 2005," said Samuel Gerdano, executive director of the American Bankruptcy Institute. In 2005, Congress amended the Bankruptcy Code, making it harder to file and sparking a rush to beat the deadline. Gerdano said he expects there will be more than 1.6 million new bankruptcy filings by the end of 2010.
STORY LINK: http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/02/news/economy/bankruptcy_filings/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin
ANALYSIS: Bankruptcy is not a decision anyone takes lightly – certainly not anyone attempting to maintain good credit and the flexibility to borrow, start a business, buy a home, etc. But it is an indication of not only the challenge brought on by high unemployment, but the psychology that has taken a hold due to the length and depth of this downturn, that many have to turn to filing for bankruptcy to get out of crushing debt. And while many people took on too much debt, no one ever expected to be unemployed for months and months, as is the case currently.
Lending standards have been raised, there can be little doubt. This is one more damper stopping a recovery, but it is necessary for the economy to establish itself at what Mohamed El-Erian of PIMCO refers to as the “New Normal.” This crisis is a credit crisis, and until those markets are stable, especially in areas like real estate, we will continue to find that levels of problems with debt, and the incidence of bankruptcies, will stay abnormally high or rise further.
Natural disaster
HEADLINE: Scorching temperatures return to wilting East
SUMMARY: The eastern U.S. sizzled for four consecutive days this week, as thermometers surged past 100 degrees in urban "heat islands," roads buckled, rails warped and utilities strained to keep the nation’s outdated electrical grid from faltering. Scattered power outages affected customers up and down the coast as usage approached record levels. At least two deaths had been blamed on the heat through mid-week.
STORY LINK: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gVVwiXpuHcEgI-rkOfJ6393B2pPgD9GQA6182
ANALYSIS: Extreme heat is a known vulnerability, impacting people and businesses. Understanding the impacts on your business, employees, and customers is critical. The impacts can be significant, especially where the temperatures are normally more moderate.
Power grids can fail. These blackouts/brownouts exacerbate the problems and impacts. Outside workers will face heat related illnesses. Production will decline. Traffic will be delayed. Customers may not come out. Demand may fall. Employees may have to leave work to address problems with family members. How do you run your business without power? Have you identified all the heat-related impacts on your business?
Do you have a plan to monitor the exposures? Do you have predetermined triggers to activate your plans? Do you have a plan?
We operate our businesses assuming everything will be normal; however, everything is rarely normal. The reason management has a job is to solve these disruptions. Your plans can keep a disruption from becoming a disaster. If your continuity plans do not address heat, your business is at increased risk. Now is the time to prepare, not when the power grid goes down. Are you ready?
You have been put on notice by the power companies. Because of the extreme temperatures, major utilities such as Con Edison urged customers to conserve energy to avoid outages. As we have seen in the past, if one city goes down, there could be a domino effect.
Health threats
HEADLINE: Analysts say WHO communication errors spurred 'false pandemic' charges
SUMMARY: Two former World Health Organization consultants called accusations that the H1N1 threat was exaggerated in order to enrich pharmaceutical companies absurd, but said the organization made itself vulnerable by making several communication errors. The consultants said mistakes made by the WHO included reporting on the mildness of the pandemic, the debatable meaning of the term “influenza pandemic’’ and the inevitable structural conflicts of interest of WHO advisers.
STORY LINK: http://vaccinenewsdaily.com/news/213623-analysts-say-who-communication-error
ANALYSIS: The aftermath of the public health warnings regarding H1N1 provides meaningful insights into human nature, effective risk communication, and the phenomenon of risk denial. While they make for excellent cinema and robust Internet traffic, conspiracy theories rarely prove accurate. The underlying knowledge base and resources for public health -- and specifically for countering communicable diseases such as influenza -- exist within a highly specialized and relatively small community. It is inevitable, therefore, that some of the expertise will come from the pharmaceutical industry. That an employee of a multinational firm would recommend actions that would enrich the employer, are unlikely to benefit the individual employee, and are consistent with current science is, to say the least, highly implausible. Using this same line of logic, fire departments recommend changing smoke detector batteries to enrich battery manufacturers.
Perhaps the major deficiency in the WHO approach was a disconnection between the scientific definition of a pandemic and the public’s perception of the message. The valid concern and historical context for an influenza pandemic has been the 1918-19 “Spanish Flu” outbreak, which killed as many as 100 million in a worldwide population less than a third of today’s. The declaration of a pandemic is triggered by the geographic spread of the disease, not its severity. Given warnings of a worst-case scenario and the relative mildness of the actual outbreak in 2009, skepticism is a natural outcome. The sad reality is had H1N1 turned more virulent, the outcry would be that WHO and national authorities acted insufficiently to counter the deadly outbreak.
There is a natural tendency to ignore threats that are not proximate. Preparations for tornadoes are not common in the Northeast, although tornadoes are not unheard of in that part of the country. Understanding what risks exist, appreciating your exposure, and crafting credible messages that not only reduce risk but are understandable and acceptable to your audience is the communication challenge. It is likely that you convey seemingly appropriate messages. Are you sure those messages are fully comprehended? Post-disaster is the worst time to evaluate the effectiveness of your communications.
HEADLINE: Americans Suffering from Recall Fatigue Ignore the Warnings
SUMMARY: Government regulators, private companies consumer experts are concerned that recall notices on foods and consumer products have become so frequent that the public is beginning to ignore the warnings, putting health at risk. In June alone, there were 26 recalls announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and over 40 from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. One recent study funded by the USDA found that 12 percent of Americans who knew they had recalled food at home ate it anyway. "The national recall system that's in place now just doesn't work," said Craig Wilson, assistant vice president for quality assurance and food safety at Costco, who cited a Rutgers study from 2009 that found only about 60 percent of people ever look for recalled food in their homes.
STORY LINK: http://www.emaxhealth.com/1506/americans-suffering-recall-fatigue-ignore-warnings
ANALYSIS: This article speaks further to effective communication, or possibly the lack thereof. From the perspective of the agencies charged with ensuring food and product safety, the mission is being diligently performed: witness the multiple recalls and advisories. The question becomes whether anyone actually reads these. Do you know where to find a recall? When warnings become too frequent, “fear fatigue” sets in and the message becomes background noise. Right now, do you know what the Homeland Security threat level is for your hometown? Next time you fly, note how many people actually pay attention to the safety briefing.
To be effective, a message must be accurate, credible, and timely – and it has to get to the intended recipient. Any loss of fidelity in these realms will render the message moot. This applies not only to food or product recalls, but also to safety warnings and internal policies and procedures. It is one thing to have current policies. Ask a randomly selected employee or associate to explain the defined processes. If the response is not accurate, the document is simply “shelf-ware” and your organization is courting disaster. Warnings must be real, accepted by the listener, and actions practiced, otherwise you are simply “going through the motions.” The ultimate outcome can be disastrous.
Preparedness groups
Join Firestorm’s LinkedIn groups and help build a Culture of Preparedness for your family and organization:
DISASTER READY PEOPLE: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1914314&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr
WORKPLACE VIOLENCE: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1898572&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr
COMMUNICABLE ILLNESS: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1899278&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr
SWINE FLU: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1921222&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr
|
•
del.icio.us
digg
facebook
