DESASTRES

DESASTRES

6/24/2015

VOST emergency drill reaches 268,735 in TATGranada15


A big industrial fire was the scenario where @LuisSerranoR, the dircom of Llorente y Cuenca, set up an emergency drill with the cooperation of @vostSPAIN, including president @Galvez Rivas, spokesperson (myself), @VOSTEuskadi Jokin Zubieta and @VOSTCanarias @JaviBlancoF presidents, as well as other team members and emergency communications specialists.

The drill started during Luis Serrano speech about crisis commons when he announced that a live exercise would be held using Twitter. It started when @GalvezRivas tweeted  that a big fire has just started in a  solvents factory and 15 fire crews plus 5 ambulances were in its way to the place, even though there was no one hurt.




After the first tweet, seven more Twitter fake profiles worked for about 20 minutes to show how emergency services, VOST team and mass media (a radio station under the name @OndaCerosimulac) deal with an emergency in the social network and do their best to inform the citizens and to stop rumor spreading through the web. 

I was in charge of the mass media profile, @OndaceroSimulac, working from my office in Madrid, while my colleagues where attending the event live in Granada (South of Spain). All of us worked coordinated following the Timeline using the hashtag #SimulacroTAT  and uploading information and pictures as we usually do when there is a real disaster here in Spain. 

We also were counting on two profiles spreading rumors (@Trollsimulacro - @josetes112- and @enteradillosimu - @ffdezalcaide). Besides, we also had a person who was asking for his father, @familiarsimul - @Ant_Varon- whom she has not seen and who finally died due to the incident. 



@112simulacro (112 is the official emeergency number in Europe)  and @industriasimul (@JaviBlancoF, from VOST Canarias) led the communications process from the beginning, updating emergency numbers, facts and figures related to the emergency. So did VOST, who also included a picture with the hazardous substances forming a toxic cloud. The mass media radio station retweed the official sources (@112simulacro and @vostsimul) and asked all the rest updated information



@Brigadistasimul (@gemaimorcillo)   and @enteradillosimu (@ffdezalcaide) played two controversial roles. The first being a fireman tweeting inconvenient pictures and confronting the emergency service and the second acting as a person who seeks notoriety trying to be a source of information.  



The troll @Trollsimulacro  (@josetes112) as expected, cursed all the time and everyone. Obviously, no one talked to him.



The drill’s impact

If we have a look to Tweet Binder, the drill had  268,735 Potential impacts, 130,358 Potential reach, 85 Contributors,  1,534 Followers per contributor and 2.45 Tweets per contributor.



The activity peak was as 1.05 pm on June 23rd.



It was my pleasure to participate in the exercise and I feel proud to be a member of VOST, since they play a fundamental role, when a disaster strikes. I also find it very important to practice using a simulated scenario, so we will be ready in case the black swan appears. 

Don’t you agree?

5/11/2015

Do the journalist need an ethic code?


Disasters and journalism in the digital age was the topic of the XVII Journalism Laboratory hosted by The Press Association in Madrid on May 7. I was inviting as iRescate director and as @vostSPAIN spokesperson to debate with my colleagues on the issue where some conclusions where reached. You may listen the whole lab here (in Spanish)

@LuisSerranoR, director of the Communication Crisis de Llorente y Cuenca, estimated that the communicatinons' scenario "has radically changed" and "Twitter has become the backbone os mass media". "Social networking will democratize the conversation," he said.

I spoke of the whole new landscape we face with social media since communication is not anymore a one way process and since the so called citizen journalism is making us dealing with rumors, also emerging for the lack of reliable sources of information. It was also my concern the double victimization of those whose faces were broadcast once and again, especially in the case of women of children, since their exposure prevents gender’s equality.




Alipio Gutiérrez, Nemesio Rodríguez, María Luisa Moreo y Pablo Herráiz. 
Foto: Elena Hidalgo / APM

Alipio Gutiérrez, President of the National Association of Health (ANIS), said that social media are a "huge opportunity, but also a great danger." Therefore, he asked journalists to report with "their most ethical commitment and responsibility." He also urged the authorities to require transparency when conveying information; otherwise, "you are doing a disservice to democracy".

Paul Herráiz, crime reporter from El Mundo point out the need of "not rushing to make a scoops on Twitter or Vine since one thing is the need to deliver information immediately and a different one to write a piece of news in a hurry, whose consequences are usually a mistake. "

Javier Barroso, crime reporter for El País, pointed out how much journalism has changed since we have social media. “Before (social media appeared, you worked, to some extent, with tranquility; today, information is delivered with two or three paragraphs to check out urgent search engine ". In the "maelstrom of immediacy," he urged caution and not to publish news before the official sources confirmed.

Carlos FernandezGuerra, journalist and community manager of the National Police, emphasized the importance of knowing how to distinguish the reliable sources of information.  He also emphasized social media as an information tool to helps authorities. Finally, he warned of the need to focus on the victims when talking of a disaster.

F Javier Barroso, Carlos Fernández Guerra y Luis Serrano. Photo: Elena Hidalgo / APM


From the conclusions drawn in this Laboratory of Journalism, which was moderated by Nemesio Rodriguez, deputy secretary and spokesperson for the APM, the following recommendations were developed to report on tragedies such as the recent rail accident in Santiago de Compostela, the Ebola crisis, the attacks of "Charlie Hebdo", the Germanwings aircraft crash and the Nepal earthquake.

You also have a Storify here (in Spanish)

Decalogue Madrid’s Press Association on disaster and journalism in the digital age.

1.- It's essential to focus attention to the traditional rules of journalism, due to the new communication scenario produced by the introduction of social networks and new technologies.
2.-Mistakes and hoax comes from the lack of verification, rigor and precision, despite the requirements of immediacy (related basically to Twitter). Contrasting the sources of information is an essential requirement. Before the overloading of information, it is a must to distinguish a reliable source.
3.- The Prudence should underlie before the rush inherent to digital media for reporting immediately. The rumor and speculation in disasters should not become news until confirmed by official sources
4 .- The Journalists should exercise extreme ethical commitment to reliably distinguish what to say, when and how. We are responsible for what we say.
5.-The Journalists must respect the pain and privacy of the victims and their families. We only should contact them under their previous assent. We should show our empathy when interviewing them and informing the public about them. We must always bear in mind that victims are the most affected.
6.- Striking images are suitable only in the case they provide an added value to the information. It is not acceptable to repeatedly broadcast victims' images, taken into account that after these images there is human beings’ suffering.
7.- The gender issue should be taken into consideration when seeking for victims’ images to illustrate news. Women and children usually appear as victims, while men take a different role in the aftermath of a disaster. This emphasizes the cliché of feminine weakness and does no contribute to gender equality.
8.-In case of terrorist attack, the journalists should exercise extreme caution and think twice whether to publish sensitive information on social networks.
9.-They journalist should keep in mind that this information can be valuable to terrorists. The journalist should also avoid turning the terrorist into the protagonist of the event, since there are victims suffering from their terrorist action.
10.- Coordination between PIOs and the press is essential to avoid and clear hoaxes in social media
11.- The authorities should be demanded maximum transparency when giving information related to disastera, since the absence of trusted and updated information foster the use of non-trusted information´ sources.
12.-The official Press offices must lead the information process in order to deal with the uncertainty of the lack of informationabout the tragedy.
13.-the Media must report "invisible tragedies", for example, diseases virtually unknown until they become an epidemic.
14- There is a need for a greater self-criticism among journalists. Although websites mistakes can be corrected, they are likely to harm any citizen during the time they are published.
15.-The Journalists covering tragedies and disasters can suffer emotional "shocks" or traumas. Therefore, it is necessary that these professional may receive psychological help in situ and in the aftermath of a disaster, as some other professional do.


All this said, do we need an ethic’s code? What do you think?

3/16/2015

Vanuatu, NGOs lead relief support though social media


Save the children, Red Cross, Oxfam and Care, among others, has played a fundamental rol monitoring information and taking over the pleas for help using social media after the President of Vanuatu, Baldwin Lonsdale , made an emotional plea for humanitarian assistance following the widespread devastation caused by category 5 Tropical Cyclone Pam last weekend.

Care was one of the organizations who warned people about the danger of Pam becoming a category 5 cyclone on Friday 13rd, affecting- they thought- to at least 20.000 people and anticipating what would inevitably come “extremely damaging wind gusts, heavy rainfall, flash flooding and strong storm surges”.

All at once, the NGOs in the area, as well as United Nations, used their twitter accounts to ask for help and to warn the citizens of the affected area.






Both, Red Cross  and @RedCrossAu reported utter devastation and also explained what the organization was doing to face the disaster.






@NZRedCross also took part in the relief operation using its twitter account to let the world know so.




#Vanuatu and #CyclonePam, two hashtags for a the Cyclone Pam

Social media is an especially important back channel when communications are down, as @RedCrolssAu and some others said. The good news is that all the information was organised in two hashtag, so is was not very difficult to follow the updates.

The bone to me was the lack of official information in Twitter. The Vanuatu's Govermnet has a Twitter account since november 2010, but it is dumb since july 2012. Being this the case it probably would not had been relevant its use, taking into consideration that it only has 723 followers. Moreover, a disaster is no the best time to create engagement. As any emergency management knows, you must create a community before using social media as a channel in emergencies.

What do you think? Would it be relevant to create a community if you are in area prone to natural disasters?