VOST emergency drill reaches 268,735 in TATGranada15

A big industrial fire was the scenario where @LuisSerranoR, the dircom of Llorente y Cuenca, set up an emergency drill with the cooperation of @vostSPAIN, including president @Galvez Rivas, spokesperson (myself), @VOSTEuskadi Jokin Zubieta and @VOSTCanarias @JaviBlancoF presidents, as well as other team members and emergency communications specialists.

The drill started during Luis Serrano speech about crisis commons when he announced that a live exercise would be held using Twitter. It started when @GalvezRivas tweeted  that a big fire has just started in a  solvents factory and 15 fire crews plus 5 ambulances were in its way to the place, even though there was no one hurt.

After the first tweet, seven more Twitter fake profiles worked for about 20 minutes to show how emergency services, VOST team and mass media (a radio station under the name @OndaCerosimulac) deal with an emergency in the social network and do their best to inform the citizens and to stop rumor spreading through the web. 

I was in charge of the mass media profile, @OndaceroSimulac, working from my office in Madrid, while my colleagues where attending the event live in Granada (South of Spain). All of us worked coordinated following the Timeline using the hashtag #SimulacroTAT  and uploading information and pictures as we usually do when there is a real disaster here in Spain. 

We also were counting on two profiles spreading rumors (@Trollsimulacro - @josetes112- and @enteradillosimu - @ffdezalcaide). Besides, we also had a person who was asking for his father, @familiarsimul - @Ant_Varon- whom she has not seen and who finally died due to the incident. 

@112simulacro (112 is the official emeergency number in Europe)  and @industriasimul (@JaviBlancoF, from VOST Canarias) led the communications process from the beginning, updating emergency numbers, facts and figures related to the emergency. So did VOST, who also included a picture with the hazardous substances forming a toxic cloud. The mass media radio station retweed the official sources (@112simulacro and @vostsimul) and asked all the rest updated information

@Brigadistasimul (@gemaimorcillo)   and @enteradillosimu (@ffdezalcaide) played two controversial roles. The first being a fireman tweeting inconvenient pictures and confronting the emergency service and the second acting as a person who seeks notoriety trying to be a source of information.  

The troll @Trollsimulacro  (@josetes112) as expected, cursed all the time and everyone. Obviously, no one talked to him.

The drill’s impact

If we have a look to Tweet Binder, the drill had  268,735 Potential impacts, 130,358 Potential reach, 85 Contributors,  1,534 Followers per contributor and 2.45 Tweets per contributor.

The activity peak was as 1.05 pm on June 23rd.

It was my pleasure to participate in the exercise and I feel proud to be a member of VOST, since they play a fundamental role, when a disaster strikes. I also find it very important to practice using a simulated scenario, so we will be ready in case the black swan appears. 

Don’t you agree?

Crisis communications in Santiago's derailment accident

More than a  week has gone since a passengers' train derailed in Santiago de Compostela (North Spain), causing at least 79 death people and more than 100 injured. Despite the fact that Galicia 112 Twitter account was not operating and @Xunta shared  its first message 50 minutes after the derailment, social media proved an effective way to inform about the incident and, what is more, VOST teams as well as local influencers  were capable of countering criticisms, helped spreading the right information and cooperated intensely to stop a bad habit in Twitter: uploading  pictures where injured or dead people are shown  with no respect to the victims’ intimacy. Citizens also used Twitter to ask for help to find their loved ones, sharing pictures with birthmarks, tattoos or some other physical description to facilitate the task and asking for a RT.

@VOSTSpain beware their followers not to rumors into consideration

Let’s try to analyze how authorities used social media here, what they did well and what improvements could have been possible.

First of all, it is a pity that the official account @112Galicia is still not working. The account is set in Twitter. It has 104 followers but, for the time being, it has not been used, despite the fact that there are very good and qualified journalists working in Galicia 112 capable of managing it. The local authorities may know why they lost this chance to inform citizens directly using an official and credible source.

@Xunta, almost an hour to inform

@Xunta, the official account of the local Government, did try their best to cope with the situation. Before going on, I’d like to point out that they are not specialist  in crisis communications. The information delivered was accurate and useful, but it was a bit too slow. The train derailment happened at 20.41 on Wednesday 24^th. @Xunta wrote its first tweet at 22.24. 50 minutes late and only to say that they would offer official information soon.

It took then 20 more minutes to say blood was needed (22.44). In the meantime, people were sending messages about this issue and it was really a bit difficult to be certain whether it was best to go to hospital to donate blood or to stay home and leave the roads free for emergency services because messages saying one thing and the opposite were simultaneous.

The donating blood issue was to me, a fail, saved, partially, thanks to the National Police account @policia , who put a bit or order here.

          

      

Using hashtags to follow the conversation

@Xunta, the official account with more than 27.000 followers didn’t create a hashtag to follow neither they use any to facilitate following the conversation. If you wanted to know what they were saying in Twitter the best way was to add a column in Hootsuite or TweetDeck. The problem to me was simple: lack of expertise, besides the obvious fact that they were overwhelmed by the tragedy.

Despite the delay and the confusion, @Xunta provided useful information helped by VOST teams, like @VOSTGalicia, @VOSTSpain, many influencers using their personal profiles and @112cmadrid, the official account of 112 in Madrid. The later seemed to turned into the official 112 voice in the absence of @112Galicia and, probably, due to the insufficiente response's capacity of @Xunta.

Up to 3 different phone numbers to search information

The information phone numbers issue was as well a failure. I founded at least 3 different

(I’ve been told that there were up to 5).

Nonetheless, I  don’t like to finish this article without pointing out that @Xunta did their best and that, despite all possible improvements, they managed the situation quite well considering, as I already said, that it is not their duty to handle crisis communication.

I also want to remark that I am very proud of how voluntary services as well as ordinary citizens reacted to this tragedy, offering all the help they could, in the derailment's scenario, and using social media.

José Sieyro, President of Caldas Civil Protection having a rest
on the railway after working all night

Forest Fire in la Gomera. Why don’t create a Vost Spain to monitor social media in disasters?

I really can’t understand why authorities are unable to decide who should be the official source when a disaster-a forest fire in our case-strikes. The lack of decision makes it difficult to counter criticism as well as to trust the different sources of information, in a sense that neither the public, nor the media know for certain whether the information delivered is accurate and trustful.  

Since the fire is, according to law, in emergency level 2, it is being managed by the regional authorities in the Canary Island. Nonetheless, it is the press manager of the cabildo insular who is monitoring information in social media through her official account (@KarenBencomoP) without any coordination with the  official 112 twitter account (@112Canarias) who is also informing.

As @jldecastellvi says in his post , @KarenBencomoP  seems to be a new account created because of the fire. Having more than one spokesperson shouldn't be a problem, so long as the information delivered is coordinated and there is a single message. Otherwise, we may have a lot of noise, which can lead to rumour spreading.

I’ve been told that a group of emergency professional, among which are @jldecastellvi, @LuisSerranoR, Javier Blanco (@tango_alfa2), @GalvezRivas and Mónica Ojeda (@artebirgo) are thinking of creating a VOST Spain to monitor information in cases like this.

It sounds to me it a really sensible and great idea. What do you think?