In his Crisis Guru Commentaries, Jim Lukaszewski provides real answers to real questions about your most critical communications problems and issues.

This issue was triggered by the question below.

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Question:

Dear Crisis Guru:

I purchased your "Building Crisis Communication Plans That Work" Web seminar from IABC.  It was a helpful and informative presentation.  Thank you.

I’m in the process of developing our company’s plan.  I have one question regarding your statement that five percent of crises are non-operational (yet cause 95 percent reputation threat).  Where do disasters fall in these categories?  Or how are they believed to cause a threat to reputation?  I believe you said the non-operational crises were situations like extortion, lawsuits, sexual harassment, and the like, but you did not include disasters.

Any insight into this would be helpful.

Thank you,

Manager, Corporate Communications

Answer:

Dear Manager:

Disasters are excluded in that they are generally situations caused by the forces of nature, e.g., disasters, earthquakes, tornados/hurricanes, major/winter storms, flooding/torrential rain, explosions, gas leaks, fire/flames, toxic fumes, ruptured pipes, noxious odors, medical emergencies, power outages, and general disruptions/threats, or circumstances clearly beyond human control or malfeasance.  Disaster response comes into play when they are handled badly by companies, organizations, and institutions that should know better.  We’ve seen this in situations involving the hurricanes in Florida and Louisiana/Mississippi, and other natural disasters in the United States and elsewhere.  At first, no one blamed anyone for the occurrence of hurricane Katrina, but the government’s inability or incompetence quickly turned the disaster into a crisis where public officials, government agencies, and other organizations were quickly blamed for their failure to be ready and respond.

Disasters become crises when those humans responsible for responding screw it up.  It’s usually the airline during storms with long delays and flight cancellations.  It’s power companies during outages, which are badly handled.  It’s the vegetable producers who screw up the recall of contaminated spinach.  But the grand daddy of them all will be the U.S. government for its handling of Katrina and the ongoing problems there.

Hope this is helpful to you.

Jim Lukaszewski