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Emergency Planning College
Occasional Papers New Series
Number August 2012
Communication in the Event Industry
Laurence Foster Associate Course Director
Emergency Planning College
2
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Please Note:
This Occasional Paper is a discussion article, written and published in order to
stimulate debate and reflection on key themes of interest to the resilience
community. It is part of a series of papers published by the Emergency Planning
College on the Knowledge Centre of its website and available freely to practitioners
and researchers. The opinions and views it expresses are those of the author
alone. This paper does not constitute formal guidance or doctrine of any sort,
statutory or otherwise, and its contents are not to be regarded as the expression of
government policy or intent.
For further information, including a submissions guide for those who wish to submit a
paper for publication, please contact:
Mark Leigh Emergency Planning College T: 01347 825036 E: [email protected]
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Introduction
All disasters, the theorists would have you believe, are man‐made, a
claim which is usually challenged by those of a more pragmatic mind
who will cite tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes as ‘natural disasters’
Although the claim does seem rather extreme, it is probably more
accurate than would first appear. If a tsunami or a tornado struck a
desert island, would it impact on our lives? Would we hear about it?
Highly unlikely. Disasters are measured by the impact on the human
race or, in regard to the environment, the impact caused by the human
race.
But does that necessarily mean that all disasters are man‐made? When
an act of nature, such as a tornado, devastates a town in the United
States, is that a man‐made disaster? It can be debatable, but the answer
is invariably ‘yes’ when considered purely from an academic
perspective. The argument put forward is that we build communities
where they are at risk from flooding, high winds, erosion, forest fire, etc,
and we continue to do so even though there is evidence of past
disasters in the same location. Communities which have been destroyed
by acts of nature are often re‐built in virtually the same location, only to
be devastated at some time in the future.
Why does this occur (and re‐occur)? Authors such as Brian Toft, Barry
Turner and others suggest that we are quite poor at learning from the
past, that we can be complacent and blinkered. Essentially, we don’t
fully absorb the communication which tells us to do one thing and not the
other. Our actions are not objective, and the communication is
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influenced by the interference brought by cultural, political, financial and
organisational factors.
So while disasters are man‐made, it is communication which is inevitably
a prime causal factor, and ‘Communication’ in this form of debate has at
least three dimensions:
Communication of an historical event
The following is developed from research into the history of disasters at
UK football stadia, which witnessed 43 disasters in 100 years. In
between the official reports (listed below) were smaller incidences,
possibly incubating factors, but these weren’t recognised for what they
were until a major disaster struck, provoking official enquiries and
recommendations for change. An example of this is the Ibrox Disaster of
1971. There had been 3 previous serious incidents on Stairway 13 at
Ibrox over the years, but it took the death of 66 people on the fourth
occasion to recognise that there was a problem and launch the
Wheatley enquiry (this is known as ‘Tombstone Legislation’).
However, with the benefit of 20‐20 hindsight we can see that highly
relevant issues discovered in all enquiries were not communicated or
simply not acted upon:
‘Recommendations from the Shortt Report (Wembley ‐ 1924) regarding
responsibility and stewarding had not been pursued, nor had the
suggestion from the Hughes Report (Bolton ‐ 1946) regarding the
‘packing’ of stadia and the calculation of maximum capacities. The
Hughes Report had been the first report to suggest stadium licensing,
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which had been re‐emphasised by the Wheatley Report (1971 ‐ Ibrox)
some 26 years later, but the Hillsborough licence had not been re‐written
since 1984, regardless of the changes which had occurred to the
structure of the stadium during the preceding years. The perimeter
fences, suggested by the McElhorne Report (1977 – report into public
disorder) were present, but the evacuation gates requested by the
Popplewell Report (1985 – Birmingham & Bradford) were not. Although
there were gates in the fences, these were not intended to allow
evacuation on to the pitch. They had been designed to allow police
and medical access into the terraces. Both McElhorne and Popplewell
had recommended improvements in the turnstile facilities, to allow
speedier and safer access into the stadium, but this had not been
implemented.
The Taylor Report (1989 ‐ Hillsborough) can be seen to be an amalgam
of all the previous reports, as it re‐examines many of the issues which
had been recognised and reported on since 1924’.
(L. Foster – 2000)
If we existed in a perfect world where communication was received,
understood and acted upon, the Hillsborough disaster may not have
occurred. Unfortunately, we seem incapable to learn from the past; a
human trait which made Hillsborough almost inevitable.
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Communication between individuals
With communication having this pivotal role between success and
failure, how do we, in the safety industry, ensure that we communicate
efficiently with the thousands of volunteer and part‐time stewards who
provide such sterling support to the fetes, festivals and sporting events
which take place throughout the year? This may seem at a bit of a
tangent from the theory spouted above, but consider it from this
perspective: In each and every briefing that takes place we are
endeavouring to avoid a Hillsborough Disaster, a Monsters of
Rock fatality, a Duisberg crowd crush.
In essence, a briefing is (or should be) the distillation of experience
drawn from our history of disaster. I am not suggesting that briefings
should contain terrible reminders of what occurred in the past, but the
essence of the briefing material must be based on the lessons we have
learned.
Surely, you may say, we do this, and in the main you would be right, but
we are slow to learn and quick to forget, and as new generations of
safety officers, stewards and security staff join the ranks, the
organisational memory begins to fade, complacency starts to grow and
the importance of clarity in briefings begins to dilute.
Consider the following exert from a briefing witnessed during an event in
2011. It was given to a large number of stewards, of differing ages and
experience, in the open air where road traffic, passing aircraft and lawn
mowers combined to drown out much of the message:
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“I want B3 to work the bottom point until the start of phase 2. I want you
to remember that we had some crowd difficulties in that area last year,
so keep an eye out for that happening again. John, I want you to monitor
T1 as the FM has heard its defective; let me know how it goes on. Pete,
the RVP for medical response has moved because of the road‐works on
the main road. We have put it next to Jimmy’s. John, you are at your
usual spot, so give me a shout on 2 when you are in place. You might
need some back‐up later if last week is anything to go by, so keep in
touch”.
What does this mean? Place yourself in the role of a new steward at any
form of event and analyse the benefit of the information you are
receiving from such a briefing. It contains a significant number of
assumptions that those being briefed understand the abbreviations and
acronyms, that they realise there is more than one ‘John’ in the audience
and they know the location of ‘Jimmy’s’.
When briefings are carried out with such misplaced assertion, new
stewards find it difficult to declare that they do not fully understand the
message or their role in the operation. They remain silent, owing to the
newness of their surroundings and a possible lack of confidence, hoping
that they will learn what the terminology means by osmosis. However, as
the weeks progress, they are still unsure as to what the briefings mean,
but by now it is too late to ask, as they may be criticised for not asking
sooner. This creates what could be termed ‘concealed ignorance’, and
future briefings on any development in that venue will compound the
ignorance as it will be based on flawed information and assumptions. If
you add good material to bad material, you still have bad material; you
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have to dig up the foundations to start again so that the assumptions
and misinformation are removed.
In addition to the briefings, there is also the complexity of geography,
incremental design and sponsorship which can fudge communication.
For example, consider the following:
North Stand
Main Stand
Newton Road Stand
John Smith Stand
On first glance they could signify the names of the four stands within any
typical stadium in the UK, but time, habit, incremental design and
business development have actually combined to give one stand four
different titles.
So, what the Safety Team refer to as the North Stand is known to older
stewards as the Main Stand, whilst local supporters know it as the
Newton Road Stand, and the marketing department know it as the
John Smith Stand. A recent example of this is when a venue re‐named
a stand to that of a new sponsor and sold tickets for that stand (under its
new name) without advertising the change to the public, the safety team,
the turnstile operators or the emergency services.
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Such complacency, as outlined in the above section, can only contribute
to the communication errors which will obstruct a response to any
incident, be it from the steward who really doesn’t fully understand
his/her role at the venue, or the emergency services being directed to
the wrong location.
Technical Communications
The popular TV representation of a control room usually shows an
orderly, quiet affair, with one person relaying clear unambiguous
messages via the room’s one microphone, with a pot of tea and a plate
of digestive biscuits in the background. Those of us who spend our lives
in the real world know that the management of communication is a tad
more difficult, and sometimes question if the massive technical
developments in communication are more of a hindrance than a help.
Where once the technical elements of a control room consisted of one
telephone and one radio channel, we now have numerous phone lines, a
plethora of radio channels, CCTV, programmable signage, Public
Address systems, mobile phones, text messaging, emails, computerized
incident logs, computerized ‘flow rate’ indicators, etc, etc. However,
when you consider a multi‐agency, multi‐layered event, is there a
‘one‐size‐fits‐all’ communication system?
Hardly. Even with the development of ‘Airwave’ technology there is little
compatibility between the systems employed by the various agencies
that work at a public event, and the operation can run on a clashingly
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haphazard system ranging from a locally devised form of sign‐language
to Bluetooth with a bit of VHF radio thrown in for good measure.
Going back to the original premise of this paper, that all disasters are
manmade and communication is at the core of all disasters, can we
allow these situations to continue, and if not, how do we ascertain best
practice? How do we establish which is the most efficient communication
method for event management?
One method is to complete a matrix over a selected period of time,
highlighting those systems which are used to communicate between the
different disciplines / agencies involved in spectator safety.
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Starting on the left of the grid, the Safety Officer works left to right,
colour-coding how effective they have found the various methods of
communication; green for efficient, amber for less than efficient and red
for not efficient. The various disciplines down the left hand side do
likewise on separate grids, and when the results are brought together
the most efficient and least efficient methods of operational
communication are clearly identified.
A possibly over‐simplistic method? Yes, it could be seen to be, but to
dismiss the need for this type of assessment will leave us in the
ever‐growing morass of e‐communication. Beck (1992) suggests that no
institution is prepared for the ‘worst imaginable accident’, but that many
are specialised in denying the dangers by over‐reliance upon
technology. The ‘Dogma of Infallible Technology’ follows the line that ‘it
will never happen here because we have the biggest and the best
technology available’, a boast which doesn’t withstand much scrutiny
when compared with any technical failure from Titanic to the opening of
Heathrow’s Terminal 5.
Technical communication facilities are too important to be installed just
because they exist, just because they are the latest toy. We must avoid
the flash and brash equipment in our control rooms in favour of that
piece of kit which, although not cutting edge, meets the needs of the
venue, the event, the multi‐agency operation and, most importantly,
provides a high level of resilience in the management of public safety.
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Conclusion
We have had a brief look at how communication (in its various guises)
plays a part in the causes of disaster, from failing to recognise its
historical significance to how we can confuse ourselves in our thirst for
‘slicker’ technology in the future. However, the most important aspect, to
my mind, is the middle ground, where we brief stewards, security,
medics and all those other essential people who contribute to public
safety in stadia, arena, theatres, green‐field sites, etc.
For all the technical improvements that have been witnessed at our
events over the years, a system is still only as strong as its weakest link.
This weak‐link could be a sub‐standard briefing, leaving a small number
of stewards unsure as to what they have to do in the initial stages of a
crisis. Do they open a gate, do they close a gate? Do they move left, or
right? “What does that coded message actually mean? I meant to ask
three weeks ago, but now I am too embarrassed to ask”. “What does E
position mean, and where is it?”
We must always recognise that assumption is one of our greatest
enemies when we carry out a briefing, and when there is no answer to
your concluding point ‘Any questions’, that there may actually be quite a
few going unasked. Complacency is another factor against providing an
efficient briefing, and this may contribute to the paradox which exists
when preparing a sharp and concise briefing; an efficient briefing
requires significant preparation time.