STATES OF EMERGENCY - Patrick Lagadec

76 Technological crises and the actors involvedknew about the event, that steps were being taken to alleviate the suffering ofthe victims, that they didn't have any further information yet, but that theylooked forward to the best possible cooperation with the media, which wouldreceive any information as soon as Union Carbide did. A terrible accidenthad taken place, an accident that could not be ignored.Things escalated wildly very quickly. In the noon news bulletin, there wasalready talk of hundreds of dead. I immediately took the plane to Geneva.The problem in Europe was that, at the time, our client had nocommunications structure. What's more, the CEO for Europe was brand newand knew only a few people. And to top off our bad luck, he wasn't there -he was in Danbury on a routine business trip. Fortunately, he had a team ofvery qualified top executives.Monday evening, the story was already widely covered by the press, eventhough nobody knew exactly what had happened. Some spoke of 50 deaths,others of 400. It was horrible. We accepted calls from the media, but wereally knew nothing at all.Ten days of madnessThe first hours were crucial: naming spokespersons, structuring the crisiscenter and implementing the basic communications policy, informing themedia, providing in-house information.One of the immediate decisions was to name four spokesmen. Why four?There was both a language problem and a knowledge problem. You have torealize that there are twenty nations in Europe, and twenty languages. So wenamed two generalists: one vice-president, who spoke fluent English andFrench, and myself for the other languages (I speak seven). For technicalquestions, there were two top-notch expert chemists who knew how MIC (thecompound involved in the catastrophe) was produced.By 8 am the next morning, we had already chosen our crisis room, acentral room in the Geneva headquarters (to shorten the coming and going).There a blackboard was set up, on which I began by writing the rules that wewere to observe scrupulously in responding to all questioners:1. No contradiction among spokesmen.2. No questions without answers: if we don't have all the elements, wepromise to find the information and to call the person back - and we do it.3. Generalist spokesmen never answer a technical question.4. Mandatory politeness and maximum patience in all contacts.It's worth taking a moment to look at this general communications policy.In this type of circumstances, everybody wants to be heard: you get callsfrom crazies who insist they've invented an antidote. But a priori, you neverknow if the person is really crazy, or a genius, or even somebody who mayhave it in for you. You can lose your mind. However, it is capital never to bearrogant with anyone - otherwise you are lost. That is a matter ofpsychology, and a simple question of respect for others. The key is, "There