Panic, disasters and information

[nadinbrzezinski]

Insert disaster here... your job in EMS is to keep people from panicking.

This is why you get really creative into telling people the facts, while trying to keep them calm.

Japan, my view from the reporting from Tokyo (per BBC (they may have a panic) has entered into the point where people have stopped believing the authorities. Now this is a problem, from an Emergency Management perspective... once you lose the people, they are gone.

As somebody who'se done this... this is a hell of a balancing act. Oh and for the record we know that TEPCO has not been... truthful or forthcoming, to the point that the PM got into a spat... and I recommend you read the lines issued by the Emperor (a man who does not come on air often)

Oh and as somebody who's done this... watch what they do... it can and usually is telling. Oh and that goes for our own government too,

[Tansy_Gold]

1. I just want to let you know, nadin, that I have appreciated your

posts since the beginning of this "crisis."

I may not agree with you on every issue, but you have been a font of information and sanity in the midst of it all.

:yourock:



Tansy Gold

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Thanks I just try to draw on my experience

[MineralMan]

3. Me too, especially the one about buying lots of milk.

That one was cool. It showed really practical thinking, for sure.

Me, I'm buying out all the toilet paper in my supermarket. Radiation sickness, you know. A guy's gonna need plenty of TP. :sarcasm:

[kickysnana]

52. As soon as I hear from my Aunt, class A Dairy Farmer I will get back to you on this. n/t

[Make7]

4. On the bright side. Japan should come out of the decade long malaise...

... the country needs rebuilding after all.
 

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. I was thinking about that

but they will have a serious issue with exports. Many countries will not accept goods made in Japan due to the contamination,

[Name removed]

5. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JVS]

7. Add me to this post. These posts have been some of the more informative threads.

[Hannah Bell]

6. and this is because you have spoken with how many people in japan, exactly?

[Dappleganger]

12. I'll bet I know the number.

lol

[Hannah Bell]

19. people who announce the japanese gov't & media are lying seem to take the foreign

media as gospel, somehow presenting a full picture of japanese society & current events.

[kristopher]

25. I have spoken to a number of people in Japan and she is correct

Of those I've spoken to the older people are resigned while the middle aged and young are angry and afraid. They HAVE lost a great deal of faith in the government.

The fact that the announced US safety zone exceeded that posted by the Japanese Govt is only going to make that worse.

And I also think she is correct about observing the actions as the best way to understand what is happening. I have 8 years experience as a command post controller and I've written plans, conducted exercises and handled real world events. Information flow is up the chain at this point and what is pit out to the public is the minimum essential to effect control of the crisis.

That control of information is a given but there is another factor that is complicating the issue here. You have to know the Japanese very well to grasp the meaning in their words. The never willingly make direct statements. This is more ingrained than most people can realize, but it is critical to realize that when a public official says something is "perhaps" the meaning in English is closer to "it is" when they say "it is" the english translation should probably have an exclamation point.

[Hannah Bell]

27. i've spoken with several people in japan as well. i disagree.

i was married to a japanese man 10 years, lived in japan for 3, and worked mostly with japanese for about 10 years in japan & the us. i worked on contract for a prefectural government organizing an international conference & in a public school in osaka. thank you for the information about what japanese "never" do. i disagree with that as well.

[kristopher]

30. Yes I've heard that from you before.

I've known a lot of people like you who have lived there a while and never actually learned squat about the culture.

[Hannah Bell]

32. right, & that's why you felt called to repeat to me the utterly stereotypical

explanation about japanese "indirectness". which i can read in any superficial survey of japanese culture or in any of the pop psychology books published every year in japan.

because you're so sure i lived in japan only one year, and never heard THAT bit of startling info before.

I wouldn't even have had to EVER live in japan to have "known" that bit of trivia.

[kristopher]

33. Since you obviously haven't internalized the way that communication's strategy is employed,

...damned right someone had to remind you. "Stereotypes" can and often are valid cultural markers. Are you saying indirectness is not a fundamental aspect of the Japanese psyche? From what I can see there is very little about the country, the people and the culture that you actually did internalize.

[Hannah Bell]

36. lol. "indirect" to who? in what situation? if the other understands the code,

is it actually "indirect?"

if you want to say something more specific to business context, to relations between superiors/subordinates, outside/inside, go right ahead. if you want to make stupid generalizations about japanese "culture", i can get it in any tourist guide.

believe what you like. it's immaterial to me.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

8. What are your credentials when you say "as somebody who's done this"?

You worked a nuclear disaster?

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[scarletwoman]

14. She worked as an EMT in Mexico at some point, iirc.

She is not to be mocked or questioned.

(I'm invisible, she already put me on ignore in another thread)

[Dappleganger]

15. Welcome to the cloud...

ask a question--ignored!

Make a joke--ignored!

:rofl:

[Hassin Bin Sober]

16. That's what I remembered.

She drove an ambulance. She really has that Bill O'Reilly "when I was in combat" thing going.

[scarletwoman]

21. I generally subscribe to my grandmother's philosophy:

"If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

But after months and months and months of seeing thread after thread after thread by this person whenever any kind of disaster was going down, I just lost it tonight and posted a mild rebuke.

All this time I had carefully refrained from any sort of interaction or comment, keeping my eyerolls and my OMFGs and my WTFs to myself. But now I've earned myself a place of honor on her ignore list with my very first ever post on one of her threads.

I regret nothing. :evilgrin:

sw

[pokerfan]

18. .

:rofl:

[kristopher]

26. How much experience in emergency management do you have?

[scarletwoman]

42. How is that relevant? I don't go around writing posts claiming expertise. (nt)

[kristopher]

45. How much experience in emergency management do you have?

Since you are claiming the authority to judge the modest claim she made and publicly ridicule her based on that judgment, I'd like to know what qualifies you to understand the qualities that are developed when someone DOES have experience dealing with rapidly developing, highly fluid crisis situations.

[cali]

48. she hasn't made modest claims. she's made sweeping ones. time after time.

[kristopher]

49. Stop harassing other posters.

She made a modest and reasonable statement regarding the value of proactively reading an emergency situation by events rather that being a passive consumer of mass media.

She was 100% correct.

Your accusation is far more of a "sweeping claim" than anything I've seen from her.

[cali]

50. please don't make false accusations. I am harassing no one. I added my comment

if you think someone is acting in a harassing manner, please hit alert. good luck with that regarding the post of mine that you are whinging about.

[kristopher]

51. Do you have a special permission to make the false accusations you level?

She made a modest and reasonable statement regarding the value of proactively reading an emergency situation by events rather that being a passive consumer of mass media.

She was 100% correct.

Your accusation is far more of a "sweeping claim" than anything I've seen from her.

[in_cog_ni_to]

11. I heard a report about how upset the people in Japan were after the Emperor gave his speech

because THEN they KNEW something is seriously wrong. They knew things are bad because the Emperor NEVER/RARELY gives speeches. People aren't as stupid as their governments think they are.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. And here is the speech

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12756801

[Hannah Bell]

20. false. completely.

[kristopher]

29. Bullpucky - that isn't false.

There has been a strong increase in people leaving tokyo since the address. That was the point of it.

And before you try to shove your experience in Japan to the forefront, I lived there for 11 years and my undergraduate work was at Jochi where I majored in cultural anthropology with the target of the entire curriculum designed to help me fully understand Japan and all aspects of its culture.

I was exempted from the virtually all the general 100 and 200 level classes and was privileged to be allowed to spend the entire 136 credits following my nose into all areas of Japanese culture. One area this extra study visited was the role of the Emperor past and present.

Y'all seem to want credentials, so there they are.

[Hannah Bell]

31. i didn't ask anyone for "credentials". i responded to this post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=664041&mesg_id=668519

and my response was specifically directed at these items:

"how upset the people in Japan were after the Emperor gave his speech
because THEN they KNEW something is seriously wrong."

"the Emperor NEVER/RARELY gives speeches."


1) The emperor gives speeches every year.
2) I have seen no evidence that "the people in Japan" were "upset" by the Emperor's speech because "THEN" they knew something was seriously wrong. My ex did not have such a feeling as you suggest. He's in Tokyo. Maybe *some* japanese had such a feeling.

if you have such evidence of all japanese feeling this way please provide.

[kristopher]

35. More bullpuckey

The emperor's word IN THE TIME OF THE WORST CRISIS SINCE WWII is not "a speech".

It is far,far more than that, but if you don't know that by now you never will.


TTFN

[Hannah Bell]

37. would you prefer "address"? "message"? The emperor gives

regular "messages" to the people. The poster i responded to used "speech". which is why i also used "speech". take it up with the poster.

It is not the fact that the emperor gave a "message" to the people that makes this an emergency, and the people were quite aware that it was an emergency before the emperor came on tv. They didn't all suddenly sit up and say "OMG! We're in deep shit, the emperor is on tv, he's giving a 'message' & he never gives 'messages'!!! This must be really serious!!!"


"orientalism"

owatta.

[kristopher]

38. Actually that is precisely what my wife and I read into it.

I'll bet you felt like you were in prison when you were there.

[Hannah Bell]

41. you read the same into kan's speech on the 13th, three days before the emperor's.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x631822

[kristopher]

43. Yes I did, and I was correct.

In case you haven't noticed this crisis has steadily escalated. What the record definitively shows is that the nukapologists have been universally wrong; which is what happens when you interpret an event like this though an agenda centered on protecting the reputation of the industry that is causing the calamity.

So yes, I also interpreted Kan as warning of a crisis, and I was I can't recall a single damned instance of you being even close to that accurate.

Here, just for your review.
I just watched PM Kan prepare the Japanese people for something bad Updated at 2:09 AM

Edited on Sun Mar-13-11 09:21 AM by kristopher
He told the Japanese people in a Sunday afternoon address that Japan was facing the toughest, most difficult crisis in the 65 years since WWII. He asked them for their understanding and warned of coming "planned" power shut downs in Tokyo for an unknown duration.

He then turned the mic over to a Mr. Edano (Chief Cabinet Secretary) who briefed on reactor 3. He stated "About #3 reactor in Fukushima Power Plant. A short while ago they started the sea water injection into the reactor and the level of water has risen. It has risen to a certain level and then it seems that the gauge is showing the level of water is not going up however the supply of water continues. We do not know what to make of this fact. Yesterday ever since the explosion in the #1 reactor the situation like this is continuing, now #3 reactor vault might be showing some failure. And the failure in the vault has to be solved and the air pressure inside has to be lowered (said forcefully). And currently the radiation monitor hasn't shown any change. That is the situation in reactor #3."

Asked for details he added that "it is possible there is a malfunction of the valve to remove the air, we are trying resolve this issue right now". Don't let this phrasing fool you, it is a statement that there is a problem with the relief valve and they can't vent the pressure.

They seem frightened and emotional.

To appreciate this it might help to know that when someone is ill and dying there they are not informed of their disease nor prognosis. Instead they are told by family and doctor that they are suffering some temporary malady that will pass soon enough with the proper care.

Some things can't be hidden however and the sick person understands from the circumstances and people's behavior that there is a real problem. They rarely pursue their suspicions, instead they trust the judgment of the significant others in their life to ensure their well being to the extent possible.

Watching this I was left with the feeling that was the type of message that had been conveyed. I think they are in a race between the pressure limits of containment and how fast they can cool the core. IMO It is a race they do not think they can win.

[Hannah Bell]

44. you seem to have missed my point.

[kristopher]

46. You didn't have a point, you were grasping at straws.

[Hannah Bell]

47. as you like.

[Hannah Bell]

54. ...

[Name removed]

55. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[darkstar3]

22. Well, since I'm on ignore, I suppose you won't answer this question,

but someone has to ask it:

How has your recent lock-fest/OP-stream done anything to keep people from panicking?

[gkhouston]

23. Was it supposed to? n/t

[Maru Kitteh]

28. Presumably, since that is a major focus of this OP.

Hard to imagine how someone who so regularly goes around with their hair on fire could ever imagine themselves a calming influence.

[kristopher]

34. It?

Big on dehumanization, are you?

[gkhouston]

39. Look at the post I was responding to.

"It" refers to the phrase "lock-fest/OP-stream," not a person.

[kristopher]

40. My most sincere apology.

I was wro...

I was wro...

I was wro...

Hell, you know what I mean.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[kickysnana]

53. So the attack crowd are all going to stay at their desks, go to the Dome, swim in the Gulf.

The rest of us do want to know so we can make some decisions.

Thanks, Nadine.