WHAT IS CRISIS MANAGEMENT? Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with a major event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public

10 WAYS TO HANDLE A CRISIS  1. Prevent it.  2. Stabilize the situation.  3. Notify your boss.  4. Control your worries.  5. Consult and coordinate.  6. Don’t act in haste.  7. Establish a core team to handle the matter..  8. Have a central contact person or group for information.  9. Pay attention to fatigue.  10. Pay attention to your core values.

10 RULES OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT  1. Being Unprepared Is No Excuse  2. You Know The Threats – Get Ready For Them.  3. Know What You Want To Say Before They Ask  4. Admit That You Are Wing-It-Challenged  5. Three Key Messages For Every Crisis  6. Beware Of The Court Of Public Opinion.  7. You’ve Got 48 Hours  8. Divide And Conquer  9. Get Outside Help  10. Every Crisis Is An Opportunity

EXXON VALDEZ OIL SPILL  On March 24, 1989, a tanker belonging to the Exxon Corporation ran aground in the Prince William Sound in Alaska.

 The Exxon Valdez spilled millions of gallons of unpolished oil into the waters off Valdez, killing thousands of fish, fowl, and sea otters.  Exxon, by contrast, did not react quickly in terms of dealing with the media and the public; the CEO, Lawrence Rawl, did not become an active part of the public relations effort and actually shunned public involvement

 The company did not appoint a public relations manager to its management team until 1993, 4 years after the incident; Exxon established its media center in Valdez, a location too small and too remote to handle the onslaught of media attention; and the company acted defensively in its response to its publics, even laying blame, at times, on other groups such as the Coast Guard.

BOMBING OF PAN AM FLIGHT 103  As revenge for the bombing of a Berlin nightclub where two U.S. personnel were killed, President Ronald Reagan ordered the bombing of Libya's capital Tripoli and the Libyan city of Benghazi in 1986.

 On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board as well as 11 on the ground.

 Though it was almost immediately evident that a bomb had caused the disaster, it took more than eleven years to bring anyone to trial.  The two men whom investigators believe are the bombers were in Libya. Though the investigators were once confident that these two men were the bombers, there proved to be many holes in the evidence

FERRY DISASTER  The accident happened just off the Belgian coast, near the harbor of Zeebrugge from where the ferry had left. A spokesman for Townsend Thoresen, the ship's owners, said the company stood by its figures of 409 survivors, 55 dead and 79 people missing.

The ship had a crew of 80 and carried 459 passengers, 81 cars, 3 buses, and 47 trucks.

 After weeks Smith International salvaged the ship, which was taken to the Far East where it was demolished. Investigation led to put the blame entirely on ship owner Townsend Thoresen, who had purchased the ship in March from P&O.  The main reason for the Townsend Thoresen guilt was the warning one of their captains had issued right before the disaster. He had reported that the procedure to close the doors was alarmingly thoughtless and that he also had no opportunity to double-check if the doors were really closed.

CHERNOBYL POWER PLANT  April, 26, 1986, a test was scheduled at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to test a method of keeping the reactors properly cooled in the event of a power grid failure.  The problem at the Chernobyl plant was that following an emergency shutdown of all power, diesel generators were needed to run the cooling pumps.

 By 1986, the plant had been running for two years without the implementation of a method to keep the cooling pumps running continuously following an emergency shutdown.  This was an important safety measure that the plant was lacking, which gave the plant managers a considerable amount of urgency in completing another test.

 The experiment was scheduled to run during the day shift of 1985, while the night shift would only have to maintain cooling of the radioactive decay in the shut-down plant.  Pripyat, a city nearby the power plant, was not immediately evacuated. The radiation would affect all parts of the environment surrounding the plant, killing plants and animals and infecting the soil and groundwater.