Preparing for Disaster
By Doug Fisher
It was an early morning in January, and police scanners
began crackling in the tone that tells newsrooms it’s
going to be a long day. It would turn out to be several
long weeks.
A freight train had crashed
into another on a siding in Graniteville, S.C., near the
Georgia border. A chlorine
tank car had ruptured. People were dying. And newsrooms
were scrambling to tell the story.
Two months later, a newspaper
reporter reflected on those chaotic early hours as he considered
a question from a
roomful of journalism students: If there was one thing
you could have done differently, what would it be?
His wished, he said, there
had been more preparation.
Three years ago, this column
spent two months looking at how to prepare a different
kind of disaster plan – not
one for keeping the paper publishing, but one that gives
you a chance to excel in your coverage. But recent research
at the University of South Carolina and the University
of Alabama shows that newsrooms still are largely unprepared.
In South Carolina, few newsrooms
had relevant materials ready in case of a biological or
health emergency, nor
had many thought about how to maintain coverage if forced
from their newsrooms or if the cell phones went out. In
the Alabama study, less than 20 percent of the Southern
Newspaper Publishers Association members who answered a
questionnaire had formal plans for responding to such emergencies.
Most disaster plans are about how to keep printing, not
how to actually cover a disaster in those early critical
hours.
So after Graniteville, with
nine dead, hundreds hospitalized, and thousands evacuated,
some for several weeks, let’s
look again at how to plan so that you’re ready when
the big one hits, a time you become critical to the public
and the public may be judging your performance most critically:
•
You are creating a cookbook. Your disaster coverage plan
should be detailed enough that anyone, from the publisher
to the ad clerk, could run your newsroom for long enough
to get reporters moving and senior editors in place. It’s
not just whom to call inside and outside the newsroom,
but simple things such as scanner codes and how to operate
the TVs to record live news conferences, etc. Who will
be in charge? Disasters always seem to strike when you
have your least experienced, skeleton staff.
•
Inventory your community. The airport is obvious. So is
that big chemical factory or refinery. After Graniteville,
rail lines are more noticeable. And there’s always
the weather. But what about pipelines? A nuclear plant?
Prison? Wildfire or forest fire? Have a port nearby? Military
base? Water plant that could be affected by a chemical
spill? High-rises (think fire)? Hospitals (think biological
agents)? Major power outage? Earthquake? Many more major
things can go wrong than it might appear at first. (For
instance, if you are in a city with high-rises, do you
have names and numbers for the management companies? Do
you know the major tenants in those buildings?)
•
It’s easy to say: “We’ll just call the
cops or the fire department.” But which one? There
are myriad federal law enforcement agencies, from the FBI
to the specialized forces at nuclear plants. Local law
enforcement and fire protection are usually Balkanized.
(South Carolina, for instance, has different agencies for
patrolling roads, enforcing trucking laws and doing major
investigations, and one county has two county-level police
forces.) Universities and railroads have their own police,
as do many airports. With lots of rural volunteer fire
departments, it’s a challenge. And you’d be
surprised at the number of small utilities in your area.
Sorting it out is one of the best things you can do in
advance.
•
Are health departments, environmental agencies, natural
resources departments, forestry commissions and emergency
preparedness likely to be involved? Know how to get someone
at the airport tower? At the Red Cross and Salvation Army
if there is an evacuation? And do you have phone numbers
for inside each hospital and likely evacuation center?
•
Make clear the first thing to do is verify what has happened.
(It seems obvious, but too many staffs have been sent on
wild-goose chases because of a phone tip not immediately
checked.)
•
Just the same, stress that if there is doubt, get moving.
Once the police lines are up, it’s a lot more difficult.
•
Put someone in charge – of the plan itself. You don’t
do this once and let it gather dust. The plan is a living
document to be kept fresh. It should be part of someone’s
job description. You’ll know you’ve done a
good job when reporters and editors reach for the plan
even when there isn’t a disaster because it’s
filled with such useful information.
Finally, go ahead; keep
it on computer – as long
as you have a backup paper copy and a second that travels
home with a key editor. If the power goes out, or you have
to evacuate, the computer version won’t be much good.
If you want the original
columns with more detailed suggestions based on plans put
together for wire-service offices, they’re at http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/csj/CSJ03Apr02.htm and www.jour.sc.edu/news/csj/CSJ04May02.htm.
