Would you know how to face an emergency?

Only this week, the EdCivEmerg team found out an interesting video  where we can see how very young Northern Ireland children have being trained to acquire Basic Life Support techniques, in order to know what to do in case of an emergency at home, in a shop or in the street. It has been estimated that if Basic Life Support had been given to these victims, 1800 lives could had been saved. 

Here in Spain, we also have some programmes, but we don’t have this content at school. This means that Basic Life Support is unknown by most citizens. I have a 14 year old son who, now and then, when it is too hot or the place is too crowdy, he faints. Till now, either his father or me have been around to help him. But from now on, since he is starting going out by himself, with some friends of his age, who will help him if the situation worsen? What if no one does something as simple as taking him out into the shade, put his head down and his legs up? What if no one alerts the emergency services, in case it is needed?

Basic Life Support

As you may know, up to 75 % of citizens suffer cardiac arrests at home, 3 out of 4. 25.000 people every year here in Spain.  Up to a thirty per cent of the population seems to know how to make a cardiopulmonary resucitation.  In other words, only 3 out 10 people can apply mouth to mouth resuscitation and cardiac massage. Just a few citizens are capable of applying Basic Life Support. It is been estimated that every minute a person who suffers a cardiac arrest and they are not treated their posibilities of survival decreases to a 10 %. After 8 to 10 minutes, they will not be able to survive. 

Probabilities of survival a cardiac arrest, in terms of time
consumed until resucitation maneuvers start.

Parliamentary bill

I wish we could avoid it. But wishes go nowhere. That’s why a group of professionals have joined our efforts in www.EdCiv.Emerg to ask our authorities to include Civil Protection and Emergencies content at school. Our aim is simple. We want so save lives: my son, your son, your neighbour, any human being around you who may need your help. To this aim, our local Government will present a parliamentary initiative next week to include these contents in a new subject at school. We are talking about very basic principles that can be applied by any one in case of an emergency. Starting from the very beginning.: Protect (yourself and the victim) Alert (the emergency services by calling 112 in Europe- 911 in the USA) and Save. 

In the USA a proposal to require hands-on CPR practice in high school resuscitation programs has passed the Senate. 

I hope Spanish proposal goes on the same way.

How a social media campaign can help save lives

As many of you may already know, a group of emergency services professionals have started a campaign to include civil protection education in schools here in Spain, with the ultimate goal of saving lives. The opportunity arose when our new Education Minister José Ignacio Wert , @Jiwert, announced that it was his intention to introduce some changes in a school subject called Civil Education. To this end, we have created the hastag #EdCivEmerg, where you can follow all the information related to this topic. 

It all started last week when Luis Serrano @LuisSerranoR posted a tweet  to the Education Minister asking him whether he would consider adding civil protection and first aid contents to this subject. The Minister replied that he liked the idea.  Following this, the idea was endorsed by Government Adviser, Cristina Cifuentes (@ccifuentes), the Presidency Adviser Regina Plañol (@reginaplanol), as well as some NGOs, such as the Spanish Red Cross, (@CruzRojaEsp), the Spanish Association Against Fire (ASELF), (@ASELFcomunica), the  Spanish Society of Cardiology @secardiologia, and many other organizations and citizens connected to Civil Protection.

PSAPs support

Last Tuesday, 7th February, the campaign received a great boost when all the directors of Civil Protection, and the Director of PSAP, decided to publicly endorse our proposal. I’d like to give my special thanks to @javierromaguera,  Director of 112 service in the Spanish city of Ceuta (situated in North Africa), who has backed  this initiative from the very beginning, and has introduced it to their fellow colleagues.

Social Media Back-up

As you can see, following the hastag #EdCivEmerg, hundreds of citizens are signing up to the manifesto, named ‘Civic Education and Emergencies’.

We could not have been able to obtain support from such a great number of people without the social media, including traditional media through their twitter accounts. 

European 112 day

February 11 is European 112 day. A great chance to spread the word. Help us reach  Emergency Services, once and for all, through a single phone number,  and help us save lives by training children on First Aid and Civil Defense at school.

All the members of #EdCivEmerg team , @Alfredo_112,  @pelluzo,  @CarlosMatabuena, . @danielortiz1984,  @fernanlopezmesa, . @FonsecaFj, . @igonzalezh,  @tango_alfa2, @jvarela, @Jorgeizdo, 

@ChemaCepeda,  @jldecastellvi, . @LuisSerranoR,  @marcoseguillor, @jesterhanny,  @PaolaGonzalezH,  @mrsrosaperez and myself @marialuisamoreo, an many more,  are doing our best to have our children prepared in the case of an emergency, as they are in the U.S.A, Japan, or Northern Europe, to quote a few examples. Our goal is to save lives, and that, in our opinion, should be taught at school, on a regular basis, so that citizens are able to cope in an emergency situation. 

Don’t you agree?

If you would like to sign up to our campaign, you can do so on our website www.edciviemerg.com. Here you can also read the many interviews we carried since last week. 

Do social networks make citizens equal when a disaster strikes? What do you think?

It is a fact that nowadays, trough social media, we can have last minute information of almost any natural or man-made disaster, providing there is someone broadcasting and also taking into consideration whether the disaster has been predicted and announced (Hurricanes normally are) or not (terrorist attack). Even in the second case, we would always count on some bystanders eager to share the explosion. It is also a fact that the use of social media in disasters is increasing, as we have recently seen in the Turkey earthquake, and that lives are being saved thanks to the geolocated gadgets included in smartphones. 

If we think about where information comes form, we find that in countries technologically developed, where most of the population owns a cell phone, we will probably be informed at once of whatever happens. On the other side, in countries without these facilities citizens will have more difficulties in accessing the Internet and, therefore, we could say that we will see less information trough the new media.

This seems obvious, but it is not that simple.

From the old media to social media

Social media are one more tool to get information, but not the only one. It is true that they have completely changed not only the way information is delivered but also they have given everyone with a cell phone the possibility to broadcast information, as @gbaron explains so well in this video about crisis communication. The point is, have they really changed completely the scenario, as gbaron says?

I could agree a hundred per cent with him, but  I still think there are some other aspects we should consider in crisis communications.

Agenda-setting

I’m talking here of the old media agenda-setting, which is the criteria used by mass media to decide what news will be broadcast, based on parameters such as  human interests, proximity, number of casualties, how outrageous the crisis is, whether the person involved in a crisis is a celebrity and so on.

The Turkey's earthquake                                    

The question is, is it true that any explosion will be immediately broadcast anywhere in the world regardless of where the place it occurs and its consequences? I might say the answers is no. Why? First of all, because, as I say at the beginning of this post, technological development is a must. If a thousand people die from an explosion in a place where no one has a cell phone, no one would be able to use Twitter to let us know. We would get that information delivered trough traditional mass media, providing they were on site.

Traditional media versus new media

If we agree to this point, I’ll pose a new question. Is there a TV, radio station or newspaper office in that place? If the answer is yes, it is surely because the place is important enough to be in our prayers. What I mean is that we probably have some kind of interest there, either  technological, economic ( petrol, gas), political, humanitarian or of any other kind. If that is the case, there will probably be a technological development strong enough to access the internet, if not by everyone at least for the media, non-governmental organizations and many citizens.

 Therefore, if the media are there, we could get information delivered in the old way: an event occurs, there is a response and information is delivered through the media to the crowd. The most outstanding difference is the number of channels. We would have some more with social media so, if we have a snake eating its tail, why I am writing this post?

Flooding in India

                                                

For one reason. If we admit that there is not a TV or Radio station everywhere, then we would not be able to get the information, and this means that, though it may sound unbelievable, there are still some places in the world which do not exists, form an agenda-setting point of view, since we have no news from them at all. Proof is that there are no examples at all of information  related to those places being delivered.

 If we think of some Third World countries, we might reach the conclusion that we have never ever heard news from them. To make it more obvious, how many countries are in the world whose names- not to mention where they are- we don’t even know? Is it possible that nothing ever happens in those places?

Technological development

To sum up, we could say equality is a problem of technological development. If the country has been able to develop resilience channels and their citizens are wealthy enough to own a cell phone they will have the same chances as everyone else to share information using multiple channels, and, by sharing, they would be able to obtain some help, if needed. If it is not the case, citizens could only count on traditional media, if there is any, to let the world know what’s going on there.

How rumours spread through social media? How do PIOs counter criticism?

By this time, all PIOs know that dealing with rumours in social media, as it was before social media started, is as important as an early warning alarm system in case, for instance, a new Hurricane strikes. But where do rumours come from? How are they spread through social media?

This post came to my mind after watching the new disaster film, Contagius. For those of you who has not gone to see it yet, the plot is about a new disease being spread from Hon-Kong to several cities in the U.S.A, as well as London and other countries in the rest of the world. A blogger shows up and spreads non-contrasted information though social media creating panic, disorder and putting in danger citizens and properties. 

But how rumours are spread through social media? What is more important, why do rumours spread and where do they come from? Coming back to the film, we have a clear answer. Rumours replace corroborated information. What is more, according to ANDA (National Association of Advertiser) in Peru, journalists are responsible for 10 % of rumours.

Before our not-that-new social media-scenario, we may have a journalist being informed of a new disaster. When s/he arrived to the place s/he needed somebody to tell them what was going on. If there wasn’t an official source, they would use a non official one, in order to inform their public as soon as possible. Yes. This is a matter of speed. And the need to fill the gap quickly is related to the quality of the information delivered. 

Nowadays, the problem has multiplied since anyone can broadcast their own version through social media. Rumours come from, according to @luisserrano, ambiguity upgraded by the important of the topic, multiplied by the number of RT in the internet.

Countering rumour

 How can PIOs avoid rumours in social media? Being the first sounds almost impossible, though it is the first step, but there is still the obligation to be the best, right, most credible, accurate and updated source of information. If social media has given us some problems to be solved, it has also given us the chance of a wonderful tool plenty of advantages. We only need to have a look at  this  job on digital volunteers in catastrophes to get an idea of how social media is useful when managing disaster. To check how useful they were during Irene Hurricane watch Major Cory Booker’s interview here .

Social Media Training

I provide media training in the National School of Civil Protection in Madrid within the International Coordination Course. It’s a job that provides me with a lot of fun, since we work on a drill and no one would be hurt whatever happens. As a role player, I monitor an exercise in which I am a journalist for an important international media newspaper and ask my students about their mission. The context is first aid/first responders coming from several countries – through the International Civil Protection Mechanism of the European Union- being deployed in a third country (outside the EU) struck by a disaster.  

ICC exercise at the National School of Civil Protection in Madrid

What sometimes happens is that they give me answers which shouldn’t be their concern at all, as well as wrong information.

Let’s have an example. Imagine my student is a non-governmental organization member deployed in the Bahamas  after a Hurricane strikes. Let’s say I’m a naughty journalist asking him. “I heard something about human rights violations going on. Are you here to prevent them? “ And he says: “Yes, of course that’s part of our mission”. I could immediately tweet something like: “ International team coming from the #EuropeanUnion deployed in #Bahamas during #Hurricane to prevent human rights violation.” If he says “No”, the problem will remain.

What I told them when giving the feedback is “imagine this wasn’t a drill, imagine what you just told me is  being broadcast to millions of people though social media. That is usually enough for them to understand where rumours come from and to rely only on trusted sources.

To end up, it is useful to remember the importance of keeping the media and public on your side on a daily basis, before any crisis occurs.

Why are the media so keen on catastrophes?

At first sight we could think that the media are so keen on catastrophes because people need information as well as they need food, shelter or water, especially in cases where lives are in danger and information can protect not only people but their properties as well as the environment- that’s what civil protection is all about.  But why is information on catastrophes so important for the media, to the point citizens are turn into into media consumers almost without a rest? As soon as one disaster is over they are offered news on other hurricanes, earthquakes or floods.

I’ll try to explain in this post how the media built their stories under two premises. One is that speed is what really matters -it was like this before social media appeared- and no doubt that nowadays it is so much more than before. Any journalist will agree that we work under great pressure and that you must be first, besides being credible and accurate.  And the other is related to the fact that the media built their reality on the common myths every society share. In other words, they reproduce not only the society in which they are but also the structures and beliefs related to them.

Tornado

Crisis communication and storytelling

In my opinion, social communication has one main goal: to reproduce society and their structures. To do so media produce their articles according to an established ritual, in which it is not that relevant what is said but how it is said. Audiences co-participate in this communication ritual by sharing the established codes. To achieve his goal, the speaker must be capable of staging information with ease, respecting the forms, rhythms, and structures. It is the ritual itself that attracts the citizens, making them feel participants within an integrated project.

Nevertheless, this gratification is not the only the reason why audiences are attracted by the media, but the fact that society can cope with every new catastrophe. In other words, even though society suffers one tragedy after another, institutions can “save them ” and restore the normal status quo, by defeating  again and again “the monster” (hurricane, earthquake…) and put order into the chaos. It is in this context, where crisis communication should be understood as a cohesion element. 

It will be easier to understand with an example. Let’s try to remember any well-known children’s tale. I’m thinking on Hansel and Gretel now. It can also work with Homer’s Iliad or the Odissey, as well as with a modern reference:  Irène Némirovsky’s Suite française. If we remember the beginning of any of these stories we have problems that need solving (a war in Homer and Némirovsky case and hungry children in the case of Hansel y Gretel). 

Achilles fighting Hector of Troy

Why do we keep reading? Because we are trapped by the characters and their problems. We want to know what will happen to them, as we want to be informed of what’s going on when a hurricane strikes. We keep reading for the same reasons we keep watching TV or live videos on YouTube. Because we “need” to be reassured that everything will be all right and that things will go back to normal, whatever normality means for a society. Hansel and Gretel will go back home, once the stepmother is out of their lives, the Nazis will lose second World Word, Hector of Troy will be buried according to tradition and the Greeks will return home safe (in the case of Odysseus).

“ What do you want to understand?”- said Maurice to his wife Jeanne in Suite francaise. They tried to leave Paris before the Nazis arrived, but they couldn’t and are back in the city. “There is nothing to understand.  The world is ruled by laws that have not been made for us or against us. When a storm breaks, you do not blame anyone, you know that lightning is the result of two opposite electricities , that the clouds do not know you. You can not reproach them. In addition, it would be ridiculous, clouds would not understand."

To end up, media are so interested in catastrophes because we, as human being, are so inclined. Why some catastrophes interest the media more than others is a different subject, and that will the topic of a different post.

Do PIOS cry wolf? Does the Media do so by themselves?

After reading  G Baron post  I’ve been thinking for a while on the topic whether or not Media in general and PIOs in particular over-hyped crisis information- or not- using social media,  and which are the consequences in case they do.

Before starting, let’s remember we are talking about crisis, situations in which many lives can be in danger, as well as goods, reputations and business, not to forget the environment.

If we accept that crying wolf is dangerous,  the opposite attitude is also very dangerous. In other words, when the alert is not given in time (I’ll talk about the reason later on) the consequences can be serious.

As an example of under-hyped communication we only have to remember Katrina Hurricane, where at least 1,836 people died in the actual hurricane and the subsequent floods and total property damage was estimated at $ 81 billion. Several agencies including the United States Coast Guard (USCG), 

National Hurricane Center (NHC), and National Wheather Service  (NWS) provided accurate forecasts with sufficient lead time  and were commended for their actions. Therefore, it was a political decision not to give the alert.

New Orleans after Katrina Hurricane

Why didn’t the Government alert the affected areas if they have all the information? The reasons are probably related to reputations to be saved. Though, in the end, they were lost, since the hurricane protection failures in New Orleans prompted a lawsuit against the  US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the designers and builders of the levee system as mandated by the Flood Control Act of 1965 and  an investigation of the responses from federal, state and local governments, ended up in the  resignation of Federal Emergency Management  (FEMA) director Michael D. Brown  and of  New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) Superintendent  Eddie Compass.

A different topic is why media are so keen on catastrophes, and that will be commented on a new post.

Katrina versus Irene. What would have you done?

September 11, how would it had been with social media?

For 102 minutes on September 11, 2001, the world watched in horror as terrorists flew hijacked passenger planes into New York City's Word Trade Centre twin towers, destroying the iconic buildings and killing more than 2,700 people. For 102 minutes that day what we watchers were offered through the media was basically George Bush as an official spokesperson informing the world of the terrorist attack. Ten years ago, we did not have Twitter, nor Facebook, Skype, Ustream or Youtube among all the Social Media possibilities. That would have made a great difference in the way things were broadcast.

Would things have been different if they would had been recounted in a different way? In other words, would it have been possible to save more lives or to have had less injured people? Would reality have been different if told in a different way? Though this is, obviously, a science fiction exercise, I believe that probably social media would have not only offered different points of view, but also would have become civil protection agents, as we have recently seen in some other catastrophes recently.

102 minutes- the time the North Tower in Word Trade Centre took to collapse- is a long time. Surely, we would have not only had the official version against Al Qaeda and the Muslim terrorist attack coming from the media, with all the practical information given by President George Bush,  but also we could had had the opportunity to listen live to many people's needs and feelings in those terrible moments. What for? To help them. As in Japan, or Troy, New York, where Major Harry Tutunjian (@TroyMayor) and other elected Troy officials have been using social media in  emergency situations. 

September 11 victims: workers, civilian an emergency services

 Among the 2,973 victims who died in the World Trade Center there were 343 firefighters and 60 police officers from New York City and the Port Authority, and 8 private emergency medical technicians and paramedics. Another 184 people were killed in the attack on the Pentagon and 24 people were missing. There were no survivors from any of the flights and the overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 70 countries.

Nevertheless, we know that some passengers were able to make phone calls using the cabin airphone service and mobile phones and provided details that there were several hijackers aboard each plane.

What could citizens in the towers have done if they had had social media at their disposal?

          

Smartphones. The key to social media

If we consider that nowadays more than one third of American adults own a smartphone, it could had been possible for them to know, through Facebook, Twitter and other social media, what was going on, and, for some of them, to take action to, maybe, save their lives or at least to communicate with their loved ones and say goodbye, as some of them did from the aeroplanes via mobile phones. They could had been geolocated. Therefore, it could had been possible for the emergency services to reach their position and, maybe, to take some measure to protect them.

It is important to remember that over 90% of the workers and visitors who died in the towers were above the points of impact. In the North Tower 1,355 people at or above the point of impact were trapped and died of smoke inhalation, fell or jumped from the tower to escape the smoke and flames, or were killed in the building's eventual collapse. There was no much hope for them anyway. Also a further 107 people below the point of impact did not survive. In the South Tower, one stairwell remained intact allowing 18 people to escape from above the point of impact. 630 people died in the South Tower which was fewer than half the number killed in the North Tower. Casualties in the South Tower were significantly reduced by the decision of some occupants to start evacuating when the North Tower was struck.

I'm especially thinking in those people when I wonder how it could have been with social media. It is among this group of people with whom it could have been possible to communicate and listen to their needs.   

We should as well remember that the total number of people in the area was about 190.00 people, if we consider the 50.000 workers of the Towers plus 140.000 tourists.

Police and emergency services overwhelmed

It is now known that communication systems and protocols that differentiated each department were hampered by the lack of interoperability, damaged or failed network infrastructure during the attack, and overwhelmed by simultaneous communication between superiors and subordinates.

It is also well documented that landlines failed and telephones went dead, so people were unable to know where their relatives where and civil protection services did not work properly.

A quick look at any of the last big catastrophes, such as Japan's eartquake, would give us a lot of ideas of how September 11, 2001 could had been if social media had been there.