It is three o'clock on a Thursday afternoon, in the middle of your busiest season. You are once again trying to catch up on some paperwork when a call comes in that there has been a serious incident during one of your programs. The staff, as part of their emergency response plan, have gotten to the stage where they call in to the office. In addition to the incident, they let you know that the local media has followed the ambulance to their location and are asking questions. They want to know what to do now.
What do you tell them?
If your response to this question is to instinctively reach for the folder on your desk entitled something like "Administrative Emergency Action Plan," you can stop reading. You have obviously thought through what will happen when you get the call you never want to get. If, however, you lean back and start considering what you would do in this situation, you are already being forced to react, and for a number of different reasons it will probably get much worse before it gets better. One reason relates to something called task saturation. One of the challenges that rescue personnel face when trying to respond crisis is managing and coping with the number of tasks that must be done immediately. If they are unable to manage those tasks efficiently and effectively, they will begin to pile up. Imagine for a moment that you are juggling with the crisis. It throws you a task, you catch it with one hand, and throw back a response with the other. If you are unable to delegate or resolve a task before the next one is thrown, you will run out of hands and be unable to continue juggling. This is called task saturation. By having a plan near your desk, you have begun to anticipate steps you will need to take to manage tasks and avoid task saturation. In effect, you are adding hands. As an administrator you have the same primary responsibility that the rescuers have during a crisis: to do no further harm. Through your actions the crisis will either be resolved in a way that begins the healing process, or will begin to escalate into an even larger crisis.
First, finish the plan.
The first mistake I typically see when I conduct risk management reviews for outdoor programs is that they have a well-documented and rehearsed emergency action plan for their field staff, and then stop at the point that the staff calls the office. When I ask about this, the most common answer is, "We have the experience to cope with it when the time comes." Unfortunately, when the time comes, many program directors cannot "cope with it" primarily because they themselves are in shock or in the grieving process. Having a plan at your desk buys you time to collect yourself or get outside help. The second most common answer I get concerns the lack of time. Because their program has been basically incident free up until now, they do not see it as a priority. The fact is, though, in the event of a catastrophic loss, your priorities will rapidly and radically change, but then it will be to late.
What needs to be in the plan?
The following issues are NOT in a sequential order.
An Emergency Call Guide
- In the event of an incident, you will need to make a number of phone calls to key staff members, emergency personnel, governmental agencies, the media, victims' families, your attorney, etc. Develop a system to expedite that process. In addition, some programs have gone to calling the parents of children on nearby courses, to assure parents that if they hear something on the news it is not their child.
- Insure that the local emergency personnel know where you are and what type of programs you engage in. Additionally, you may want to share your field emergency action plan with them and ask if they have any comments. It is what they do for a living, and they may make some really valuable contributions. This includes police, fire, EMS, and the local hospitals. Last, you need to find out where the local Critical Incident Stress debriefing team is located and if they will come to your facility in the event of a catastrophic loss. One source for that is the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation. (They can be reached at www.icisf.org.)
Create a media response plan.
In June of 1997 two participants in the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) outdoor education program died on a mountaineering course. In the three years that followed, the university was lambasted by the media and the community and was served with a number of different lawsuits. Two years later, also in Alaska, a NOLS student died on top of a glacier. In the months that followed, NOLS received praise on their handling of the incident, and the mother of the victim donated money for future rescue equipment. Why were the two experiences received in such a radically different manner? In the book, Lessons Learned by Deb Ajango about the Ptarmigan peak incident in June of 1997, the journalist Ty Hardt wrote a chapter on the "Role of the Media in Accident Response." In that chapter he compared the two incidents and concluded the following:
"What can other outdoor programs learn from the way UAA and NOLS handled their media response plans? Admittedly, there were differences between the two accidents, and it would not be fair to make unconditional comparison. Nonetheless, NOLS's ability to provide information quickly and as openly as possible set the stage for a positive relationship with the media. In the university's case, however, the lack of information created an atmosphere of suspicion and animosity."
Although media response is only one part of your overall administrative response plan, you may want to remember that the first time a prospective juror may even hear that your program exists is when they are watching the 6 o'clock news. Get to know your local reporters and talk with them, prior to an incident, about the "what ifs". They will be honored to be included in the process.
Meet with your insurance agent
Determine how much authority they have over your organization in the event of a crisis. Ask them for their recommendations and best practices. Finally, review your Administrative Emergency Action Plan with them, and ask if they agree with its implementation.
Meet with your attorney
Find out what their experience is working in the outdoor industry. Ask if they have ever dealt with crisis response before. Determine ahead of time if they are the "raise the drawbridge and close the blinds" kind of an attorney or the "let's make sure the survivors are taken care of" kind of an attorney. This, of course, is a gross generalization, but it highlights the current debate in our industry on how to publicly respond to critical incidents. The fact is, as the director of your program you are the only one that can answer that question. That question, however, should be answered prior to the incident, not during.
Train your staff
Having a plan no one knows about is useless. People need to know who to call and who can talk with the media, etc. In addition, it really helps to do mock interviews where you are videotaped answering questions. By seeing yourself on camera, you can evaluate your own performance prior to the real thing. Last, insure that your staff is properly documenting incidents. They probably won't want to - most people don't choose this type of career to do a lot of paperwork. However, because most court cases take at least a year to go to trial, ask your staff this question: "What did you have for lunch on this day last year?" They will look at you sort of glassy-eyed, and you can simply state that if it isn't written down, it didn't happen.
Ask for help
There are programs out there that have been in operation 10 or 20 years who have never had a serious incident. Because of this, dealing with catastrophic incidents is not something they have a lot of experience with. If you are in the process of putting together your Emergency Action Plans, ask someone for help. Besides professional risk managers, there are also industry associations like ACCT, or the Association for Experiential Education, and the American Camping Association that can provide resources to help you draft these kind of documents. There is no need to recreate the wheel; take some time to learn from other organizations' experiences.
Conclusion
Whether you choose to be prepared or not for a catastrophic incident, know this one thing: the choices you make, as the director, within 24 -72 hours of a catastrophic incident will affect the rest of your life and the future of your program. How prepared you decide to be to make those choices is up to you.
Preston B. Cline is the founder/owner of Adventure Incorporated, an organization providing risk management consultation to wilderness, adventure, and experiential education programs worldwide. Preston can be reached at 978-526-7217 or through his website at www.adventureincorporated.com.
