Crisis communications: the new economy way!
Call it a tryst with destiny! Firstly the floods lashed the city (and this looks like it is going to become an annual event); then disturbances took place in the city following some untoward incident by sections of a political party. Now it’s the serial bomb blasts. Mumbai has had a difficult time recently and its citizens are becoming used to having to cope with crises. In this article, I focus on the emerging avenues adopted by the public in gaining and disseminating crisis information. The faceless terror struck the city railways during the peak hours and killed many innocent lives across multiple stations in Mumbai on Tuesday 11th July. Some have highlighted the coincidence that the blasts occurred on 11 /07 at 07 rail stations spread across 11 minutes time. Others felt the timing too is equally telling - prior to the latest G8 summit. Much had been written about the resilience nature of the Mumbaikars (The people of Mumbai). As like any other city, Mumbai needs to move on and restore normalcy. Let us take a cue from it in our emergency planning and ponder the innovative ways used by the public to handle the incident, and let us see what lessons we can learn for our own crisis communications methods. ‘Network busy’ —that was all people trying to call their loved ones in Mumbai heard on July 11 after the blasts. As soon as images of the blast sites began flashing on TV screens, people from across the world picked up their phones and tried to reach their friends and relatives in Mumbai but failed to connect. Cell phones services failed miserably and it seemed impossible to get connected no matter which service was being used. However, cellular service providers deny that networks failed and say services were fine overall and the congestion was limited to a few places. But thousands of people will vouch that no operator was ready for a situation like that on July 11. On Tuesday, the network load was 10 to 12 times more than normal days. Redialing loaded the system even more and increased the congestion for nearly three hours after the blast. How did Mumbaikars respond to the mobile communications problem? The traditional wired landlines came to the rescue of many, with the system functioning without interruption. However, others turned to newer technologies: Bloggers led the crisis communications! Ever since, the blog has recorded close to 500 comments from people seeking information. Since Tuesday, this blog has helped connect hundreds of people - many whom are abroad and could not get in touch with their family and friends in the city. It also provides the public with the list of injured, list of the hospitals and the contact details along with other information. Speed of communications is crucial in emergency response operations. The blog sites were up to speed in that context. In order to seek a larger audience, those sites were linked to the Worldwide Help Group (formerly South East Asian Earthquake and Tsunami) also abbreviated as SEA EAT Blog. Wiki Many Wiki’s were created for information broadcast including the one in Wikipedia –the free encyclopedia. The information quality and content were generally excellent. The same bloggers group which I had described in the previous section also created a wiki as a broadcast medium using a collaborative approach. In conclusion, the above points show how the new order in web communications was effectively put to use and clearly highlights the emergence of citizen journalism in disaster management. As long as the intent of this public participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information, such methods can provide a very helpful crisis communications method, which can be of assistance to both ordinary citizens and businesses. About the author:
•Date: 14th July 2006 • Region: Asia • Type: Article •Topic: Crisis communications |
