Community Engagement

In the world of today the disasters and dangers are not more threatening or more real than they have been at any other point in history. The difference is that with the role of mass media, there is a lot more information available to the world at large. This has created an environment of information fragments drifting through the ether to an audience that does not necessarily have the training to bring them together for a complete picture. In this environment the doctrines of fearful preparation have flourished, due in direct result of the massive misinformation the community is incidentally exposed to.

The specific instances of this would be the media presentation of disaster hit areas and the repeated stories of recovery effort failures. The higher the toll of death and damage, the more prevalent the story. The challenge that this poses is to move beyond recognition of the dangers of the event and the aftermath of the disaster, and into a cognizant acceptance of personal responsibility for preparedness. Facing this challenge requires ingenuity, patience, and persistence.

With the advent of multi-media advertising, the average person is exposed to literally thousands of informative tid-bits daily. This dulls the perception of truly salient messages and draws a melancholy reaction to a lot of message distribution. To overcome this, our department has stripped the message down to be more end-state focused. In this we have become more requirements driven, and less process motivated. We evaluated our need to conduct effective community education and outreach, and we streamlined our presentations to be very direct and to the point. This came as an amalgamation of effective risk assessment and management techniques with perceived threat environments. In this way we were able to draw the client's attention to what was most relevant for them because the briefing was centered around the most likely and the most threatening, and not the most terrifying.

Even after solidifying our briefings with empirical data, and improving our delivery processes, there has still been retiscence on part of some organizations and individuals. To this end, it has to be understood that the level of professional and personal frustration with perceived fear-mongering has risen to the point of active distrust in emergency management educational messages. This can only be overcome with patience. Accepting the fact that prior warnings have created a less than receptive audience is functionally necessary to move forward. This patience will pay dividends in the long run, not only from the direct impact on contemporary skeptics, but also in those same critics becoming some of your most vociferous advocates.

Successfully disseminating preparedness information also requires the key of persistence. This is not to suggest that you should harass your target audiences to the point of irritation, but rather pursuing a consistant, informative message with tenacity. There are times when individuals will question the necessity of terrorism preparedness training in rural areas, and this inquiry can cause doubt in the emergency planner. Considered carefully, and treated factually, it is understandable that the focus in those areas may not be on terrorism necessarily (depending on their exact threat environment), but in the same way that lightning is difficult to predict there are reasonable ways to plan for both.

By staying the course diligently, and explaining the case for educational outreach rationally and based on empirical data, a disaster preparedness manager can effectively reach his/her audience while overcoming these challenges.