STATES OF EMERGENCY - Patrick Lagadec

E. Fasel: Schweizerhalle and the Rhine 87that we had always told what we knew. People could accuse us of notknowing everything all the time, but they couldn't call us liars.P.L.: On that basis, you had to rebuild from scratch.E. FA S EL: The personnel and equipment infrastructure at Baselresponsible for information and outside relations at the time of the fire wasvery weak. We created a telephone service to respond to the press: a team ofeight, then twelve men and women. The rules were: don't leave any questionunanswered, don't constantly disturb the specialists, who have to get theirwork done, make them come only for press conferences, don't systematicallysend every technical question to them (they are not communicators, that isn'twhat they are trained for). This service, which operated 24 hours a day,received some 200 calls per day during 30 days and dealt with 130 requestsfor individual interviews and with the presence of 17 television crews. TheJapanese were interested in the problem, and of course the Americans neverhesitate to put in a showing.But our lovely organization came too late. The problems kept building:around November 20, a Zurich ecological institute announced thattheoretically, "dioxin could have been released by the flames." Theinformation spread like wildfire. When the experts gave their opinion - thenresultswere negative - the media were no longer interested in the subject.That episode really killed us.In short, we could behave as properly, as skillfully as we wanted... thepicture remained unchanged. The information professionals had decided wewere liars, that we understood nothing, that we did just anything, that wewere the lowest of the low... The population of the area needed to expressthat they'd had it up to here with technology: Chernobyl, Challenger, localdiscussions on nuclear energy, and now "just anything" from the city'schemical industry... There was no real way to correct the situation.All we could do was pull our heads in and wait until people were ready tolisten to us and believe us again. We made use of that wait to refine ourorganization and prepare our messages.Basically, in terms of information, we were setting out to make up for losttime. Because Sandoz had gone through its first century successfully, ofcourse, but without a true communications culture.P.L.: From this experience, what other lessons did you retain, especiallyabout the immediate reaction to the crisis?E. FASEL: The following, in particular:1. Foresee a crisis organization for the information department. Nobusiness can equip itself on a permanent basis with a sufficient number ofinformation professionals to handle a large-scale crisis. Therefore, you needa crisis plan. This should include lists of tasks to be performed and should setpriorities. In quantitative terms, this crisis organization should provide forthe rapid expansion of staff by co-workers "borrowed" from otherdepartments. These auxiliaries should have been designated and informedabout their tasks beforehand and should go through periodic training.