Thursday, March 01, 2007

General Lee Launches Counter-Offensive at CHORE; We Respond with Defense-in-Depth

Major Gen. Robert G.F. Lee, Hawaii’s adjutant general and director of State Civil Defense, has a commentary in today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin that’s apparently designed to blunt CHORE’s sustained offensive to improve communications to the public during emergencies. (We urge readers to also visit yesterday’s CHORE post, which reported on Tuesday’s “Media and Emergency Response” panel discussion sponsored by the Honolulu Community Media Council.) Lee’s commentary ends with the following shot, and that’s where our response begins:
Frankly, I don’t understand the purpose of the negative, misdirected attention that Carlson has focused on State Civil Defense. We, along with the county civil defense agencies, the governor's tourism liaison, state Department of Transportation, other state, county and federal agencies, as well as private sector organizations that responded to the earthquake, have been open and honest about what we need to improve. And, as always, we welcome the public's comments and suggestions.
It’s unfortunate the General believes what we wrote in our own Star-Bulletin commentary last week and here at CHORE is negative and misdirected. We have taken pains to be civil in this space; our very first post on October 17 affirmed our intention to help improve communications, not lay blame. As to why we have relentlessly drilled away on these issues, one need only go back to the media coverage following the earthquakes for a memory refresher. Letters to the editor and news reports were filled with citizens’ complaints about both the sustained power outage and the communications void in the early hours of the emergency. Not A Failure To Communicate? Back to General Lee’s commentary, starting near the top:
The complaint by Doug Carlson…incorrectly claims that "communications failures" followed the earthquake. The ability of State Civil Defense to inform the public that the earthquake had not generated a tsunami was hampered by the loss of the electric power grid, which shut down most news outlets. This was an information delay, not a failure, and it was thoroughly reported in the news media.
The General seems to say State Civil Defense can’t be faulted if the public was left uninformed in the first hours of the emergency. The failure was in the electric grid, not in the communications, he suggests. A fundamental principle of communications is that if the message does not get through, there has been a failure to communicate. The communicator must take responsibility for ensuring that the message is actually delivered. This is a basic communications concept that seems to be unappreciated by State Civil Defense, which obviously failed to anticipate what might happen if its cell phones didn’t work due to network overload. Also unanticipated was the inability for Civil Defense officials to call the stations that remained on the air because the phone lines were jammed. The failures didn’t begin with the electric grid’s crash; they began when contingency planning didn’t anticipate the loss of the phone networks. The General’s “information delay” was actually an out-and-out communications failure, no matter how narrowly the hair is split.
A second inaccuracy in Carlson's column is that there was no public representation on the Governor's Comprehensive Communications Review Committee. In fact, the committee, which was appointed for the purpose of improving communications with the public in a disaster or crisis, had 85 members from private businesses or organizations, including nearly every print, TV and radio news outlet statewide. Only 25 participants were from government offices -- county, state and federal.
The General himself says the non-governmental members of the committee were appointed to represent “private businesses or organizations….” The point we first made here at CHORE on October 18, the day after the committee was formed, was that average citizens were not being asked for their input: “This committee won't be "comprehensive" until it gives voice to the people who did not have their fears calmed about a possible tsunami, who did not know why the power was out and for how long and who wondered why 10 or more broadcast outlets were silent for hours or even until the next day. Let's add some men and women to this committee who aren't in the media and Civil Defense. That would make it real.” The Comprehensive Communications Review Committee’s membership breaks down as follows: Media (radio, TV and print executives, reporters and editors), 69 members; Wireless Representatives (Cingular wireless, Hawaiian Telcom, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless), 12 members; Government Representatives, 24; Additional Representatives, 3 (a tour operator, a Veteran’s Coalition representative, and one unaffiliated person). 
Despite the massive media representation, not one news report was generated by local media until after the last of four committee meetings. All meetings were held in private – i.e., the public was not given access -- and the committee did not solicit public input prior to the publication of its final report and recommendations. 
It’s not surprising, given the wireless industry’s representation, that one of those recommendations is to use text messaging on cell phones to communicate emergency information. What does the public think about the viability of that information channel? We don’t know, but we suspect many citizens may be skeptical about the cell phone network’s ability to survive a category 4 hurricane. Assessing the Public Mood The next paragraph in General Lee’s commentary refers back to his previous comments:
This fact also counters another of the story's allegations, namely that the public had no input in the decision making about how to improve disaster communications. In the several Disaster Assistance Recovery Centers set up on the Big Island, Maui and Oahu following the earthquake, hundreds of members of the general public met and talked with officials from State Civil Defense, who were rarely asked about the delays in communicating with the public immediately after the earthquake. The same is true of the numerous public gatherings, ranging from legislative briefings to neighborhood board meetings, attended by State Civil Defense leaders, myself included.
It’s not hard to imagine that someone whose home or business was damaged or destroyed by the earthquakes would be more concerned with obtaining reconstruction aid than inquiring about communications problems. Additionally, most accounts said communications on the Big Island were far better than on Oahu. Despite whatever briefings the General and his staff have given to legislative committees and neighborhood boards, they are no substitute for meetings called specifically to brief the public on communications-related issues and what State Civil Defense is doing to improve disaster response. Officials have steadfastly refused to schedule meetings that could be held at the convenience of the public, not State Civil Defense. As we noted here at CHORE on January 29, State Civil Defense’s position seems to be that neighbor island citizens should have traveled to Oahu to attend legislative briefings if they wanted to air their concerns about communications. Until State Civil Defense schedules communications-specific briefings on all the major islands to address how it’s improving disaster response, we’ll continue to question the agency’s responsiveness to the public it’s in business to serve. More of the Same Continuing with General Lee’s commentary:
Carlson's last charge is most erroneous and offensive. He claims that "State Civil Defense officials have not briefed the public on what they are doing to improve their communications capabilities." We have responded to media inquiries, briefed lawmakers and members of the general public, and answered phone calls and e-mails on this subject. Additionally, the Governor's Comprehensive Communications Review Committee report was released to the public on Jan. 5. Its 15 key recommendations prompted widespread coverage by the news media.
We’ve already covered what we believe is an inadequate “public information” effort by State Civil Defense. Briefing lawmakers and the news media and the few members of the general public who attend legislative hearings does not constitute a rigorous, public-oriented effort. As we’ve noted at CHORE, a private company that suffers similar communications failures affecting its customers wastes no time in launching such a campaign. Hawaiian Electric briefed the public on its massive October 15th power outage eight days later, and one has to believe it would have done so even without the Public Utilities Commission looking over its shoulder. State Civil Defense is accountable ultimately to the public, and that’s where its communications efforts should have been directed. Public Safety Is the Issue General Lee’s commentary concludes two paragraphs later, and we encourage you to read it all the way through. Let’s be clear about our alleged “erroneous and offensive” comments, as he sees them: There is nothing personal in our ongoing effort to focus attention on how State Civil Defense has acted and apparently thinks. Public safety is at the core of our disputatious dialogue with the agency. When General Lee praises KSSK’s efforts on October 15th as “fabulous” – the word he used in his legislative briefing on January 8 – that tells us something about how he and his colleagues think. Encouraging listeners to call the station with their earthquake anecdotes and thereby prevent first responders from calling with their own critical information, as KSSK did early in the crisis, was not “fabulous” emergency broadcasting. Playing the pre-recorded “John Tesh Radio Show” at 7 p.m. while half of Oahu was still suffering through a blackout was not “fabulous” programming. Yet that’s what State Civil Defense told two legislative committees meeting in early January. This alone is cause for concern by anyone who must rely on KSSK and other emergency broadcast stations during the next hurricane, flood, tsunami or earthquake. We all have the absolute right to question the performance of government officials and private broadcasters when our own life experience tells us their performance was substandard. General Lee obviously thinks we’re out of line. We disagree and will continue to write about these issues until the reasons for our concern have been fully addressed. We invite you to continue reading and jump down to yesterday’s post, immediately below, for a report on Tuesday’s Media Council meeting on these matters. We’ll provide the additional promised coverage in a future post of the hearing impaired community’s concerns.

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