[APPLAUSE] SARA MCBRIDE: Just going to make sure this all works. Hi.

Can everyone
hear me today? Great. Thank you for that lovely introduction, Richard. And thank
you for the invite. It's not often that they let me out of the building at the USGS
to talk to people. So-- even though that is my job. But so it's great to be here.
Just a word of warning-- I do occasionally swear. And I'm really sorry if I offend
you. AUDIENCE: [WHOOP] SARA MCBRIDE: If I-- thank you. If I do offend you, don't
come up after me and try to handle it like an adult. Just flame me on Twitter about
it and report me on Twitter and make it embarrassing for all of us, because I love
that so, so much. That was a joke. I try to-- I try to be funny. Maybe not. So
first of all, I just want to talk about preparedness. And how many people here are
really, really prepared for a disaster? Like, you've got it? I mean, Jen, come on.
Anyone else think that they're really ready for that earthquake coming? Well, FEMA
doesn't think you're prepared. But they also know that it's partially the fault of
preparedness programs around the world and within our own government. So this is
from the National Preparedness Report 2019. And I'll just read it out. "Attempts to
enhance levels of preparedness among individual households, communities, and
various organizations which lie outside the emergency management profession's
immediate sphere of control have shown little or no signs of improvement.
Preparedness campaigns such as Ready.gov, America's PrepareAthon, and National
Preparedness Month, all aimed at individual households and communities, have not
produced the desired result. Past efforts to apply top-down or one size fits all
solutions have too often ended in disappointment." What a powerful statement from
the national leading preparedness agency of our country. 2019, they're saying, for
the last 70 years we've been telling people to get prepared. And it has really
failed on a systemic level. And this is in their report. So I'm not calling out
FEMA. FEMA's a great organization. I have a lot of friends in FEMA. So just quickly
about this talk-- I just wanted to set the tone of positivity from FEMA for this
talk. I'm going to talk about working in disasters, my professional and personal
experiences, disaster and communication research, which is the space that I like to
occupy, and the communication research and practice. So how do you take all of this
very esoteric communication research and apply it in real life? So this is a little
bit about me. I'm actually from this area here. For those of you who don't know--
is anyone here from Eastern Washington state, like the Eastern part of Washington?
No? Great. I can just make stuff up now. That's the Hanford Nuclear site. It's the
second oldest facility-- nuclear facility on the planet. This is where my father
worked for 40 years. So I grew up within the 10-mile radius of the plant, which
means that I have a glowing personality. When I was very young-- and I'm not going
to say what my age was-- this little mountain erupted and covered my entire family
farm in ash. And that was Mount St. Helens. Again, I'm not going to tell you how
old I was. And here was the city of Spokane in 2001, where I was-- again, not going
to say how old I was. But I was attending university up in Spokane, Washington. And
there was a swarm, a very unusual swarm, that occurred in 2001-- which we still
have many questions about. And that's when I first felt an earthquake. I was in
this little area in Spokane called Browne's Addition. And I felt like a truck had
hit my house. Has anyone felt that before, where you're just like, a truck has hit
my house? And you don't think earthquake. You think, obviously, a vehicle has hit
the house. That's the most logical reaction, because we don't get earthquakes in
Eastern Washington. Well, turns out we do. And so that was my first experience. I
worked quite a bit in different parts of the world. I lived in Hawaii for two and a
half years. I got my master's degree at University of Hawaii at Minoa in public
administration, with a specialty in disaster management and humanitarian
assistance. And my first really big deployment-- I did work a FEMA disaster in
Hawaii during that time. But the really big one that impressed upon me was, I was
called out within 36 hours to work this event in Samoa. And do we have any Samoans
in the audience at all? No? For those of you who don't know, there was an 8.2
earthquake just off the southern coast of Samoa, of the main island of Samoa. And
it killed 185 people. The tsunami wave which-- from different inundation areas was
up to 30 feet tall. And it only had-- the community only had 10 minutes to run. And
so this was my first real experience of going out to the field. And it really
impressed upon me about the power of knowing what to do before the event occurs.
And what was interesting was that there were a lot of people living in this area.
And while 185, 186 people seems like a lot of people, and it certainly is, a lot of
people were able to get away. And that was because of community knowledge, of
indigenous knowledge of when the sea goes out, you go up. And so a lot of the
village elders were able to tell their communities to go up. So Samoa has recovered
a lot from this, but there is still work to do, as always. And so I got really
interested in working in disasters and in humanitarian assistance and development.
And I moved to the Solomon Islands for a year. Do we have any Solomon Islanders in
the room? No? Who here knows where the Solomon Islands are? Yeah, guy in the back.
You guys know. So the Solomon Islands are between Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.
They're in a part of the world we call Melanesia. You might know a lot about
Polynesian culture. That's Hawaiian culture. It's Aotearoa, New Zealand. Samoa,
Tonga. But actually, about 80% of the Pacific peoples live in Melanesia-- in Papua
New Guinea, in Vanuatu, in Solomon Islands. Very, very different cultural groups.
And so I got to live there for well over a year and work on humanitarian projects,
gender-based violence projects, working in this environment. So that taught me a
lot about surviving in the islands and living there. It's a very, very rough
environment. It seems like paradise, but when you spent three weeks sleeping on a
grass hut floor you begin to appreciate a nice comfy bed at night. And then the
last-- well, I've done a couple of other big events. But this was one I did in 20--
not 21, because that hasn't happened yet. 2012 to 2013 I went out for a category
five cyclone. So they say hurricanes. Here in the Pacific you say cyclones. This
hit Fiji. And it displaced 90,000 people. And so I spent my Christmas and New Year
working with the Fijian people in-- near Suva, if we have any-- not Suva, sorry.
The other-- Nandi, the other side of the island. The country I've spent the most
time in-- and it's not about humanitarian assistance or development-- is Aotearoa,
New Zealand. And just a little bit about Aotearoa, New Zealand-- do we have any
Kiwis in the audience, by chance? [NON-ENGLISH]? No? It was settled by Mauri, who
are the indigenous peoples of New Zealand, about 1,000 years ago. And it was
discovered by Abel Tasman, who's a Dutch Explorer, in the 1600s, and then again by
Captain Cook in the 1700s for settlement. Now, New Zealand became a country right
around the time in 1840s when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, which was an
agreement between the British crown and 22 iwis, or tribal groups in New Zealand.
And this was an agreement of how New Zealand would be governed. I think one of the
phenomenal things about New Zealand-- in 1890, New Zealand was the very first
country in the world to give women the right to vote, which I think is pretty
amazing. And they also provided pensions, which was also pretty revolutionary, in
the 1890s. New Zealand actually has done a lot of things in terms of providing
troops during World War I and World War II. And it continues to be a free market--
a blend of free market and social support structures. It is also not Australia, in
case anyone has any questions about where New Zealand is. There's about 5 million
people who live in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Its major population centers are up here,
up north, in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch-- which I'll talk about in a
minute-- and Dunedin. It's the 53rd largest economy in the world. It's got about an
unemployment rate of 4%. And it sounds like an ideal place. And a lot of people
love New Zealand, and rightly so. I'm a citizen of New Zealand. I love the country.
But we do have poverty issues. About a quarter of our children live in poverty.
There is isolation. It's really far-- it's really close to Antarctica. We're kind
of holding hands with Antarctica down there. And so it's isolated. And there's
complexities with our infrastructure. So it's not a perfect place, because no place
is perfect. So I want to quickly talk about my experience with earthquakes. So this
is the Christchurch Cathedral. I lived in Christchurch for almost a decade before
the Christchurch earthquake. And how many people here have heard about the
Christchurch earthquake? Is that because you just heard about it from Richard? Or
you guys-- you saw it in the news? Yeah? Thanks, Richard. So this happened in 2010
and 2011. The really bad earthquake happened on the 22nd of February, 2011, when I
was living in the Solomon Islands. And I remember the reason why I cared so much
about earthquakes-- because I had lived in Christchurch for almost a decade. I had
also been the public education and public information manager for the Canterbury
Civil Defense Emergency Management Group. Now, Canterbury is the state in which
Christchurch resides. And I had taken a break to go overseas and work for a year in
the Solomon Islands. And I was about six months into my
deployment in the Solomons when this earthquake occurred. And I got a text message
from my in-country supervisor telling me that there has been a huge earthquake in
Christchurch and fatalities are expected. Do I want to go back? And I said,
absolutely. I'm going to go out and help. And so I spent 12 weeks in the art
gallery. I was the public information manager second in command for that
earthquake. And I also did-- I also was a public information manager, as well. And
we lost 185 people. This is one of the memorials for those people. So this is the
Christchurch Cathedral before. And this is afterwards. And the Christchurch
Cathedral, nine years later-- or, eight years later-- is still in ruins and has not
been repaired for a variety of reasons. So we had everyone from this guy, this
prince, visiting Christchurch during the time for our memorial. And we had all
these community meetings. We went out and talked to people. It was a very, very
busy time. I was working 12 to 16 hours seven days a week, trying to help get
information out to the public. And one of the things that people kept on saying to
me was, well, no one told us we could get earthquakes here. No one told us that
earthquakes could happen in Christchurch. We thought Wellington. We might have
hoped Auckland. But we didn't think that Christchurch could get earthquakes. And I
thought to myself, hey, I worked here for four years producing booklets and
brochures and roadshows all about earthquakes, telling you that earthquakes could
happen. And I got really angry. And after that happened, I was angry. I felt
guilty, like I hadn't done my job well. And I realized that I wanted to go-- for my
sins of not having done a great job in Christchurch I wanted to look to research
for answers, to see what could happen. So I started a PhD, which I think is a
pretty interesting process. And I went through this sort of treadmill that is the
PhD, the sort of running through all of the difficulties that is getting a PhD. And
I learned a lot about the history of communication. How many communication majors
do I have in the audience? Hey, guys. How's it going? So I'm going to talk about
your guys' field for a second, or our field. I hope you guys find this interesting.
If not, you guys are going to get-- if you're not in this field you're going to get
a little lesson on where communication started from in the United States and some
of the theories that are underpinning risk communication, which is what we're going
to talk about here. So this is a train wreck that occurred in 1905. It was The
Atlantic Railroad Company. And what had happened was, it was around this time of
year, and they-- this train was going from New York to Atlantic City. And they had
built the bridge, but they hadn't built it to withstand the weight of the train
going over the bridge and the ice that had formed. So the weight of the ice and the
train collapsed everything all at once. And the train went into the freezing cold
river and killed about 55 people. Reports vary. It was difficult to find out the
exact number of this disaster. And this gentleman up here is Ivy Lee. So Ivy Lee is
what we would call one of the founders of media studies or press agentry. And Ivy
Lee had been working for The New York Times. And he'd just shifted as a private
consultant in this new role as press agent for The Atlantic Railroad Company. And
he received a telegram in the middle of the night that this had occurred. Now, it
had been train company policy for a long time to never, ever talk about
derailments, and certainly never take any responsibility about derailments. So they
wouldn't acknowledge the derailment happened and they weren't going to talk about
what happened. And Ivy Lee thought that this was a terrible idea. And so he got the
telegram and he wrote what we know to be the first press release ever written. And
it was written because of a crisis, because of this train derailment. It's called
Statement from the Road. And it is the template that we still use today in terms of
media releases, which I think just shows Ivy Lee's skill and talent at that time.
And basically he said, yeah, we're going to take responsibility for this. And we're
going to investigate what happened. And we're going to keep you up to date. And he
sent it out to The New York Times. And he sent it out to The Washington Post and to
all of the newspapers that were operating at that time. And they printed it
verbatim in there. And a few weeks later, in Pennsylvania, there was another
railroad derailment. And a train crashed with another company. And because Ivy Lee
had set a standard of communication and taking corporate responsibility, and the
other train companies had not come up to speed with it, the media just went totally
after that other train company, because Ivy Lee had set a precedent in terms of
transparency and clarity. Now, Ivy Lee was great in that moment. And I don't want
to sound like he's a hero, because he's not, because he did some interesting things
with the Rockefellers. And he also worked for the Farben Corporation in Germany
pre-World War II and was being tried by Congress for potential crimes before he
died of a brain-- brain cancer. And he wasn't able to defend himself. So I don't
want to say that he was a perfect individual, because he wasn't. But in this one
instance he did a really interesting job. So I just want to quickly define
communication for everybody. So this is my favorite communication definition, which
is, "communication is a transactional process in which people generate meaning
through the exchange of verbal and nonverbal messages in specific context
influenced by individual and societal forces and embedded within our culture." So I
want you guys to just put culture in the parking lot here. But just think about
that, because I'm going to talk a lot about culture later on. And it can be both an
art, with a creative and critical discourse, but it can also be a science, which is
the social science component that I'm going to talk a little bit about today. So
it's an umbrella term. And I'm going to go over the different aspects that
communication covers of public relations, media relations, marketing, and associate
subdisciplines. Now, for the marketing people in the room, you guys often say that
marketing is the umbrella and communication's underneath it. But I'm a
communication person, so I say that you guys are under us. So there's been a
tension for years on who's overlapping who. But they're related. And we're friends.
So related terms in emergency management-- so in emergency management we have our
own nomenclature, our own language, and our own terms, and our own acronyms that we
use-- which I'm going to go over today, a little bit, about. And we call it public
education. And that's before the event occurs. And then we-- in a time of crisis we
call it public information. So we have those two separate terms that we use. So
just quickly on public relations-- and this is from a Johnson book about media
relations from 2007. Basically, media relations is one part of the public relations
process. But communication overlaps it. So when I talk about communication I'm
talking about public affairs and lobbyists, promotion, press agentry, integrated
marketing, issues management, crisis management, press secretaries or public
information, publicity, financial relations, community relations, internal
relations, industrial relations, minority relations, media relations, public
diplomacy, event management, sponsorship, cause and relationship marketing, and
fundraising. So that's really what I'm talking about. Now, you might have a
different definition. And that's cool. I just want you guys to know how-- as
communication researchers, this is how we see the world. So just a little bit more,
because I just love talking about communication research. It's really
transdisciplinary. And what I mean by transdisciplinary is that we often utilize
and work amongst different disciplines. We're often termed as a magpie discipline.
It means we take bits and pieces from different disciplines and use what works for
us. So it's a fairly pragmatic discipline in a lot of ways. But it also combines
knowledge from practitioners, like I was before I became a researcher. So we work
with practitioners to define and to understand the practitioner world as well and
take that into research. So the roots of communication really are philosophy, and
ethics, and sociology, and psychology, and political science, and anthropology, and
marketing. And all of those combine with the theories of persuasion to give the
three branches of it. So earlier studies really focused on mass communication. And
when I mean mass communication I'm talking about advertising and marketing
television, radio, broadcast mediums. And now we've shifted. And some scholars are
calling it-- we went from the age of mass communication to the age of self-
communication. And that's because, what can we do now? We can communicate our image
and ourself to millions of people around the world. When you post about-- Instagram
about what you've done or Twitter you're posting about yourself. And you're
communicating your identity out to the whole world. And so this is where scholars
are at now, where they're saying, this is about shifting to the age of mass self-
communication. So we've shifted now. We've got-- the branches now include language
and discourse, which is English and media studies. And that's the branch that I
come from. And then we have critical public relations, which is humanities and
social sciences-- I do work in the social science realm, as well-- and applied
communication. And as a research discipline, communication is over 80 years old.
And a lot of the fundamental work was done by Bernays and other researchers, but
also by the military in the 1930s and the 1940s, with
propaganda. And then propaganda shifted, in the 1950s, back to the cognitive
psychologists and has grown from over there. So we actually have a very rich
discipline and a very rich historical discipline. And there's a lot of research out
there. So just quickly, on epistemology and theoretical perspectives and mapping
the territory-- and I'm sorry if this is putting anyone to sleep. But so we go from
this objective territory to an interpretive territory. And what I mean about
objective is really the evidence-based, quantitative survey-- that kind of thing is
around social, psychological, or cybernetic, which is about code. And rhetoric
works in that space between it. Social cultural is probably one of my favorite
pieces here, which really looks at societies and culture and how they interpret
communication. And that's a little bit of the interpretive territory here. And then
critical is when you do a critical analysis of content. And then phenomenological
is a personalized experience. So we actually go through this wide epistemological
map. So everywhere that social science maps out communication maps out, as well, if
you want to think about it that way-- if we have any social science studies in the
room. So here's just, really quickly, two communication theories that are often
used the most. One is from Shannon Weaver models of communication. Do we have any
engineers in-- engineer people in the audience, studying engineering at all? Or
telecommunication? So this model actually came from engineers. And I love to point
this out to the engineers that I work with because they're like, I don't understand
communication. And I'm like, well, our foundational model that we used in the 1940s
comes from engineers. And they always pop up and are like, oh, yay, us, too. So
basically you have an information source. So that's, say, me right now. And my
transmission-- I'm communicating out to you through public speaking. And you're the
receiver. You're in the audience. You're listening to what I have to say. And then
the message is disseminated to you. Now, what are the things that can get in the
way of you understanding is noise, for instance. There's always a lot of things
going on. There's a lot of information. And that can interfere in what you're
understanding. And then we also have a public relations model. This is one of my
favorites. It's called Grunig's excellence model. It's from 1992. And he's updated
it over the last few years. And essentially he's saying, look, there's four
different ways that organizations work. We have the press agentry publicity machine
that Ivy Lee was doing back in 1905. And it went into public information, because
it was also dissemination of information. It wasn't just propaganda. But where he
wanted us to get to was two-way asymmetric or two-way symmetric. And that means
that I, as a person, am going to talk to you. And you're going to talk back to me.
And we're going to have a conversation. And that-- the two-way asymmetric is, I
will still talk the most, and you will talk a little bit less. It won't be entirely
even power-wise. But the gold standard is the two-way symmetric, where we have
equal conversation and equal discourse. So just quickly on the risk communication
side-- so this is where I really work in, too, which is crisis and risk
communication is socially-constructed reality that stimulates public scrutiny and
extensive media coverage and could threaten the organization's legitimacy. So we
talk about risk issues and disasters. And so really, I'm looking at these critical
issues that occur during intense periods of attention for organizations. And this
is another issues and crisis management relational model from Jaques. So basically,
as you say, we've got crisis preparedness, which is-- we've talked about-- a little
bit about preparedness. Crisis prevention-- we don't want the crisis to happen at
all. Crisis event management-- the crisis has happened, but let's deal with it. And
then the post-crisis management, which is the recovery period. So I just wanted to
speed through that because I can tell that that's probably not the most exciting
thing you're going to hear today. Disciplines are brought together by preparedness
campaigns. So we have the scientists-- Richard, our scientist here-- who then works
together with emergency managers and communication professionals to develop these
preparedness campaigns. So that's how it works. But they're not always equal
players. And sometimes one group dominates another group. But together we all-- we
all work together to create these preparedness campaigns. This is a really ugly
slide, and I'm sorry. I spent a while trying to fix it. And I just couldn't figure
out how to do it. But basically, we have this conflict between scientists and
emergency managers. And I don't know if we have any emergency management people
studying in the room at all, but emergency managers are what we call heuristic
thinkers. So they're guts thinkers. They're going to go with their gut, or they're
very process or hierarchy oriented. They're hierarchical in nature. And there's a
reason for that. They're also general knowledge seeking. So emergency managers love
to know a lot about everything at a certain level. They have to make very fast
decisions, because if you're in the middle of a wildfire, do you want an emergency
manager who's going to be like, you know, I really want to read that report from
2014 about how this fire is going to go before I send out fire trucks? No. You want
someone who's going to make a fast decision, because that's what the event
requires. And they also seek approval from their communities, their local
community, or from their hierarchy. That's where they're seeking their approval.
Now, scientists are analytical thinkers-- although I have met some very emotional
scientists. And there's nothing wrong with being emotional. But they're very
process-oriented, the scientific method. And they're specific knowledge seeking. So
while the emergency manager wants to know a lot about everything, scientists want
to know as much as possible about one particular topic, or maybe two. And details,
for scientists, are everything. They're not going to gloss over details. Scientists
live in the details. They will have really, really huge fights about nomenclature
and terminology and definitions that maybe to other people might not matter. But
this matters to scientists. And they're slower with decision making. They like to
take their time, to make sure they've analyzed all the evidence. And they also seek
approvals most from their peers, because think about it-- your career in science is
dependent upon the acceptance and approval of your peers, peer review. So all of
your journals, all of your articles have to be adjudicated by your peers. Your
conference talks, your jobs-- everything is related to your peer. So if you anger
your peer group you might lose your career. So that's who they really seek approval
from. And I'll give you an example. When I was working in New Zealand for GeoNet,
which is-- was the seismic network of New Zealand-- it's the USGS of New Zealand.
And I was the information manager there for a while. I was talking to a scientist
about a story I wanted to produce. And I wanted to use a funny analogy. And he
said, I can't say that because my colleagues in the United States will never let me
live it down. They'll never let me live it down that I used humor to explain a
scientific concept to people. They won't take me seriously anymore. And I thought,
how interesting. You care more about your colleague in the United States-- your
colleagues in the United States than you do 5 million people in New Zealand who
really need this information. That was fascinating to me. And I'm not judging him.
He had some legitimate concerns. But this is important for us to know when we're
working in these environments. So this is a famous structure. And as you can see--
who understands this chart? Do you guys get this chart? I'm a trained public
information manager, and sometimes I don't understand these charts or these
terminologies. Emergency management can feel very much like a closed room because
of the language we use and the structures that we use. So this is important. This
is an important thing to think about, that these systems can seem very opaque to
people who don't understand the language. And the only people who understand the
language are the people who are trained in this language. So what hope do we have
as FEMA, as Cal OES, as local emergency managers to communicate to a public when
we're using terminology and structures like this? Can you see the problem? So when
we're looking at the problem of preparedness, really, we have to go to the
communication literature, the emergency management literature, geography, public
health, sociology, earth science, engineering, psychology, and ethics and
philosophy. So we have to draw on all of these different disciplines to try to
solve these really important problems on preparing for earthquakes. And look, we
haven't done-- as FEMA pointed out, we've had problems in communicating about
preparedness before, in the past. This is Bert the Turtle. Bert-- I think we should
bring back Bert because I think he's hilarious looking. He was the mascot used by
the Federal Civil Defense Administration in the 1950s to prepare for nuclear
warfare. And what did we tell kids back in the 1950s? We said, get under your desk.
Duck and cover. And we produced wonderful booklets like this called "The Hydrogen
Bomb," which has the advice that should you have a hydrogen bomb explosion, make
sure to clean your car off of the atomic dust that comes in, because you don't want
it to muss your paint on your car. So in the 1950s-- which we kind of think of
people in the 1950s as, maybe, a little bit naive. They weren't naive. They thought
this was ridiculous. They thought, why are you telling kids to go under their desk
for an atomic blast? Because that-- it's just going to kill them. An atomic bomb
is-- how do you even survive that as kids? And you're telling us to wash off our
car? A hydrogen bomb kills everything in a 1,000-kilometer radius. And you're
telling us to wash off our car? Are you kidding me? I had to go through some of the
archives and read letters of people saying these campaigns were ridiculous and to
stop it. And so Bert the Turtle got retired, sadly. And what did we do? A few--
like, in the 2000s? We resurrected duck and cover for drop, cover, and hold on for
earthquakes. And guess what? Drop, cover, and hold on actually works for
earthquakes. We just had the wrong-- we had the right phrase for the wrong thing.
But we eventually got it right. And I'll talk about shakeout in a few minutes. So I
just want to go back, really quickly, as to why we fail. And I think one of the
reasons why we fail to get people to prepare is we fail to work together as
disciplines. You know that list of groups that I put in that has to get along, all
nine of those disciplines? There's actually more than that. And scholars don't even
get along with each other in their same discipline, let alone in the discipline
outside. So you're really, really talking about in-depth interdisciplinary work
that is tough for people to do. So I just want to give a few lessons from research,
from risk communication. This is when the times that the groups have gotten along
and have worked together and have produced really useful research. So one of the
things that I often hear from different emergency managers or scientists is that
the public is lazy, that you're stupid, that you don't care, that you're never
going to care until it actually happens to you. And the research, actually, from
Rhodes indicated that actually, you're not lazy, or apathetic, or dumb, or
uneducated, because no-- the general public does not exist. Groups might exist
within a general public. But everyone is different. And everyone takes in
information differently. The number one reason why people don't prepare is you're
all freaking busy. You've got stuff to do. And you're telling me I have to take a
half Sunday every once in a while to buy 3 to 10 days' worth of food, and water,
and blankets, and all of this other material to get prepared? I have things to do
with my life. I'm busy. And that's the number one reason why people don't prepare.
It's not that they don't believe that disasters could happen to them. Some of them
don't-- and I'll go through that in a minute. But then we've all got stuff going on
in our lives. So seeing the public as one massive group is mistake number one that
officials often make, and researchers often make, and we all make. We all want to
make this assumption that everyone's a morass of people. We also produce things
like this. This is from a community meeting I went to that I thought was really
great. People don't necessarily respond to numbers alone. Like, if I say it was a
magnitude 7.5 earthquake, what does that actually mean to you? Does that mean
anything to you? What would that mean? It means, oh, that's a big earthquake. I'll
tell you what a magnitude 7.8 means, because I've been in one. And it was two
minutes long. It was the Kaikoura earthquake in 2016. And I was 60 miles away from
where the earthquake was. Now, Kaikoura was very weird. And Richard can confirm
that. It went across almost 22 different faults. Some of them we knew about. Some
of them we didn't. And I remember, I had all of this training. I'm an emergency
manager. I've been in hundreds of earthquakes. It felt like nothing I'd ever felt
before in my entire life. And someone quoted it saying it was like being on the
back of an awakened dragon. And that's exactly what it felt like. I mean, it's New
Zealand Aotearoa, so we're going to make some sort of dragon inference at some
point because of Lord of the Rings. And I'll tell you what I did in that moment. It
was midnight. I was on call for the USGS of New Zealand. And it started shaking.
And my husband had to wake me up because I'm a really deep sleeper. And he goes,
sweetie, it's shaking, and it's really strong. And you should get up, because
you're on call. And you have things to do. And in that moment, I knew, stay in bed.
I had all of this training-- stay in bed. I thought three things in that moment.
One, this is a really big and long and strong earthquake. We're an island nation.
Tsunami. Immediately, tsunami. Two, I've been preparing my whole career for this
moment, and I am not ready, mentally, to do this-- because I knew that the level of
strength and work that was to come. And three, I thought, I cannot find my pants.
Where are my pants? I can't do work without my pants. And I got up out of bed. I
did the wrong thing. I did the wrong thing, looking for my pants. And my husband's
like, get into bed. You know to get into bed. And the house is shaking everywhere.
And the cat is looking at me weird. And by the way, cats don't warn you of
anything. They might know an earthquake is coming, but they just don't care. So--
and eventually I found my pants. They were right next to the bed. I don't know why
I couldn't see them. And I thought, if you freak out, New Zealand's going to freak
out. So you've got to pull it together, Sara. And I did in that moment. But I'll
tell you, all the training in the world, all the knowing of a 7.8, and I lost my
shit. That's my swear word. Yay. So if you are in an earthquake and it is super
scary, don't feel ashamed. Don't feel embarrassed. Earthquakes are scary for lots
of people. If you are in an earthquake and you find it really fascinating and
everyone else is freaking out and you're ashamed that you find it really
fascinating, don't worry. You're normal, too. You're just a different kind of
normal. So a lot of people go, well, we just need to compare risks. How many people
say, well, you're more likely to be-- you're more likely to be killed in the car on
your way to the airport than you are flying like that's some kind of wonderful
comfort? But comparing risk alone does not work. Cows kill about 300 people around
the world per year. Sharks, about 20, maybe less. But nobody's screaming "fear the
moo." We're not walking around going, fear the cow. The cow is what we've got to be
afraid of. But the cow kills it. So you should be more afraid of cows than you are
of sharks. Who here is more afraid of cows than sharks? That guy. You're smart,
because cows kill more people. So good for you. I'm a diver. I love diving, scuba
diving. I've been in the water with a shark. Let me tell you, they are terrifying
nightmares underwater with teeth. And they're fascinating. And they're beautiful to
be underwater with. But can't compare one outrageous risk to a non-outrageous risk.
Doesn't work that way. So the other thing I hear a lot from emergency managers is,
we just have to scare the crap out of people. We just have to tell them how scary
it's going to be and how they're not going to have food, or water, or electricity,
or any of those things for years and years and years. And it's going to be
terrible. And what happens is that people go into a state of fatalism. They go,
that's too scary. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it.
I'm not going to prepare. So fear campaigns only work for a very limited time, like
a diet. And it's not going to get people to have a change for the rest of their
life. So we talk about communicating the risk and not the hazard. And this is a
really interesting topic for me in terms of the agency that I work in, because
people-- there's this thinking that if we just talk about what could happen people
will understand what that means to them. But actually, if I just say, hey, there's
going to be a magnitude-- like, in 40 years there's going to be a magnitude 7.
There's a 90% chance of a magnitude 7 in the Bay Area-- what's your next question
going to be to me? Well, what does that mean to me? And how does that relate to my
experience? And if I just go, I don't know. Good luck to you. I'm just giving you
the stats-- sometimes people don't prepare because of that. And again-- yeah?
AUDIENCE: Sorry, we've lost you on Zoom. SARA MCBRIDE: You've lost me on Zoom?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] SARA MCBRIDE: I think you've lost the call. Sorry, guys. Talk
amongst yourselves. [SIDE CONVERSATION] SARA MCBRIDE: Sorry about that, Zoom. I
think we're in now. Sorry, guys. So not addressing realistic concerns from people--
and again, this is the hydrogen bomb one. This was a UK poster and pamphlet that
was produced over there. My favorite campaign from that period was a much more
realistic one from West Germany, which was entitled "Everyone has a chance. It's
not a good one, but everyone has a chance." And I'm married to a German. And I
absolutely love that one because it's just so pragmatic. It's like, it's not great.
But if you do these things, you might have a better chance of survival. And it was
very pragmatic. And it addressed people's concerns. So I want to talk quickly of
science as a culture, about why scientists fail. And some of this is relevant to
emergency managers, as well. So scientists use unique language and terms and
concepts. There are specific channels that are only accessed by scientists, like
conferences and journal articles. And that can create isolation, but also echo
chambers, and based on their communication, on impressing colleagues rather than
interacting with people. So I just want to do a little group exercise. Have I lost
them again on Zoom? AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] SARA MCBRIDE: So in the audience, I want
you guys to think quietly about an earth scientist-- a famous earth scientist. Does
everyone have someone in their head that they can think of? Now, do you think of
these
people? This is Tanya Atwater, who's one of my favorite scientists. She was
looking at plate tectonics in the 1960s. Then we have David Johnston, who was a
volcanologist who lost his life in Mount St. Helens. Fairly famous scientist, as
well. We have Dr. Lucy Jones. A lot of people know who Lucy is. She's kind of a
buddy of mine. She's fantastic. Or maybe you know a president, Herbert Hoover, who
was also a geologist-- a mining geologist. Did you guys think of any of those
people in your heads? Did you think about this guy here? AUDIENCE: Yeah! SARA
MCBRIDE: I told you I was going to put you in there. Or you might actually think of
this person here-- Randy, from South Park, who's one of the-- I think he's Stan's
dad. Is that right? His first appearance was on season 1, episode 3 of South Park.
One of the great things about my job is I get to watch South Park and look at how
earth scientists are depicted. And he is a geologist. I believe he either worked
for the USGS or the Colorado State Geological Survey. I can't remember which one.
And he is probably one of-- currently one of our more famous earth scientists
depicted in media. So who here thinks that science might-- like, earth scientists
might have an image problem? Yeah? Like, was it really easy, other than Richard, to
think of an earth scientist that you knew? Like, a famous earth scientist? I mean,
Neil Degrasse Tyson's great, but he's an astrophysicist. How many famous scientists
do we really know? So I have a challenge for you. So if there's any aspiring
screenwriters, or authors, or poets, or game designers, or anyone who's a creative
in this class, please write us a great geologist character, a modern one. I'm tired
of the earth science community always talking about Volcano and Dante's Peak. We
need new movies. We need new stories. We need new discourse. We need new characters
about earth scientists. So please, if you can hear my voice and you're interested
in this, write us some really great earth science characters-- and not the guy
from-- The Rock, although he did a pretty good job. From-- what was it? San
Andreas. So this is a particular problem with emergency managers. And that same
exercise-- can anyone think of a famous emergency manager? So scientists have a
problem. Emergency managers, the people that are supposed to persuade you to
prepare-- we can't think of any famous emergency managers. Tommy Lee Jones was in
Volcano. He was an emergency manager. I thought he did a pretty good job. They
showed an emergency operation center in Volcano. That's why, when we always argue
Volcano versus Dante's Peak with the earth scientists, I'm always on team Volcano.
But so yeah, so the other problem we have is we try to keep people out by
controlling information, purposely not inviting challenging groups to
conversations-- people we feel uncomfortable with, people that are going to argue
with us and tell us we're wrong, or maybe challenge us to push ourselves. And
sometimes we don't acknowledge other people's point of view. And we determine
priorities based on our own perspective and not the diversity of the population and
the people around us. We look at the world in our own frame of reference. So is
there even a point to try to get people to prepare when the challenges feel like so
many? And I ask myself this question all the time. And I think there is. But I
think we need to challenge how we talk about preparedness and disasters first. So
should we consider cultural sensitivity models to help us communicate? I think we
should look at this, because this is about inclusion. It's about diversity. It's
about awareness. It's about knowledge, and consideration, and understanding, and
respect, and talking rather than predetermining outcomes and saying, this is how
people will think about this issue. And the consequences of cultural sensitivity
and communication is effective-- more effective communication, effective
intervention, and satisfaction. And expanding our language to talk about
preparedness is really important. I love this from Cal OES's Twitter recently,
where they translated everything into Spanish, which I thought was fantastic. And
they do a really good job in terms of translating a lot of their materials into, I
think, about 15 different languages. And is preparedness a discourse for the
privileged? If you're on the lower economic end of society and someone tells you
you need to have three days' worth of food and water in your house, can you afford
to prepare? Can you? And if you live in a one-bedroom apartment, where are you
going to store all that stuff? So I have this picture up here because when
emergency and preparedness campaigns started in the 1940s and the 1950s it was
aimed directly at white suburban families, people living in single-family homes. Do
we all live like that anymore? No, we don't. And yet the messages-- the three days'
worth of food, the water, all the kit stuff-- really hasn't shifted since the
1950s. Not that much. And so there's a fantastic article called Discourse for the--
"Get Prepared-- Discourse for the Privileged" in the International Journal of
Disaster Risk Reduction by Denise Blake, who's a colleague of mine from Aotearoa,
New Zealand, and where she breaks this down even further. I really recommend you
guys read this because I think it's really important for us to be-- have a lot more
open conversations about what we're actually asking of people, especially people
who don't have resources. So can people physically do protective actions as
suggested, as well? So we have drop, cover, and hold on. What if you can't do drop,
cover, and hold on? I just want to take a few minutes to talk about a piece of
research I did in New Zealand. We wanted to evaluate shakeout. How many people here
have done shakeout? Everybody? Fantastic. Well, there's not a lot of evaluation
research on shakeout. There were some, but not a lot. And so we did it in 2012 and
2015. And we asked people to observe each other doing the shakeout drill. And we
got 9,000 respondents for that, which was a huge data set for New Zealand. It's
actually a big data set for anywhere. And we asked, did everyone participate in the
drill? And if not, why do you, as the observer, think that happened? So we said--
we sent out these-- all these forms. They conducted the national drill. And then to
GNS Science-- again, the USGS of New Zealand-- please send us your surveys via
Survey Monkey, mail, fax machine, and email. One of the things that surprised me
the most on this study-- we got 800 faxes. I didn't even know that people still had
fax machines. And I was so surprised. And we got hundreds of faxes. But again, if
you give people multiple ways to report back they're going to do that for you. So
it was an observational methods. For any of the anthropologists in the room,
observation is one of the cornerstones of anthropology, of observing people's
behavior. And again, we had a huge response from New Zealand. It well exceeded our
expectations. And we found that while it was great having people observe, a lot of
people used observation to not do the drill. That was their way to get out of it.
That was one of our research learnings. So we had to tell them to make sure to do
the drill on their own. So we found that most everybody did the drill, but about
30% said yes, but not everyone did the drill. And did everyone participate in the
drill? Yes. Why did some people seem reluctant? And the one thing that really
surprised me was that people were embarrassed. That was the number one reason. I
would have thought disability or age. But embarrassment-- people felt embarrassed
climbing under their desks. And I was fascinated by this. This surprised me. And so
we want to dig in more to why people are embarrassed. And I want you to think about
that. When we did a qualitative-- sorry. We did do a message change in 2015 to
include disability in the iconography and the imagery, which did help a little bit
in people feeling-- in people being included in the shakeout drill. When we asked
them to explain a bit more we found that children were the number one reason why
people, in the text answers, said they didn't do it. And so that was a really
interesting question. We're like, well, if parents and teachers can't do shakeout
because they're looking after their kids, who's looking after the parents? We can't
have a bunch of injured parents running around, or injured teachers. We need to
figure out a way to protect our teachers and parents, our caretakers. A lot of
people didn't take it seriously. They didn't want to. They were uncertain what to
do. They didn't believe in the technique. They wanted to run into a doorway. The
instructions were confused. And then I had this little finding here with people
with high body mass index-- people who felt uncomfortable and physically couldn't
do it. And what really touched me is one of the respondents said, I don't want
people to see that-- the person came up to them and said, I don't want other people
to see I can't fit under my own desk, because I'm so embarrassed. I feel so badly.
And I thought, wow, we're creating, potentially, a harmful situation for people by
asking them to do this. Can we do better? Can we be more thoughtful in our
messaging for people with high body mass index? And so that really got me thinking
about this issue. So just exploring embarrassment a little bit, it's a social
emotion. It's what we call social norming or social milling process. And it can be
addressed by humor, visual aids, and messaging, and, really, repeat drills-- doing
it over and over and over again, or finding a different way to accomplish the same
action without putting people in embarrassing situations. And it's all about
normalizing the behavior. You know how when you do something for the first time it
feels really awkward? The whole idea is to do
it over and over again and be seen by other people. And this is Denis Mileti's
work-- be seen by other people doing this drill so it's then socially normalized.
And we want to look at helping caretakers of children. Now, we know from Northridge
and from the Darfield earthquake and a couple of other earthquakes that people are
more likely to get injured when they move during shaking. And these are not
catastrophic collapse building injuries. These are broken bones, glass and feet--
those kinds of things. And what we found is, people immediately rushed to their
children, which is a very natural instinct. I don't know how we change that. But
then we can look at airplanes. So people say, look, put your own mask first before
you help the person next to you if they can't help themselves. And the reason why
they say that-- if you don't put your own mask first you're going to pass out. And
you're not going to be able to help the person next to you, who might be your
child. So you've got to help yourself before you help others. And so I think we
need explore options in terms of messaging. So is there any hope? So that's my
research piece. There were limitations on this. We had observer bias and
interpretation. The Hawthorne Effect-- which, the Hawthorne Effect is really
interesting, if you're into anthropology or sociology, in terms of observation. And
trauma from recent earthquakes, from the Christchurch earthquake, was also a
problem, because a lot of people didn't want to do it because it reminded them of a
very traumatic experience that had just occurred in New Zealand in 2012. So is
there any hope? This came from the FEMA report. But it also comes from the Cultural
Disaster Action Network. So where is FEMA headed? Where are emergency managers
headed? Where do scientists need to head? So there's this whole movement called the
culture of preparedness, which I really like. So instead of just me going up to
people and going, you need your food. You need your water. You need this. You need
that-- there's a shift to talk about the whole of society and how we can
incorporate preparedness in people's rituals, in their food, in their laws, in
their beliefs, in their morals, in religion, and family, and art, and nature, and
customs, and world view-- how we can look broader than just telling people to
prepare three days' worth of food and water, or a week worth of food and water--
that there's actually all kinds of things that go into preparedness. And we need to
look at working with the cultures we're working with rather than trying to enforce
our world view on them, but bringing everybody into this conversation about
preparedness. So summing up, there's a lot of reasons why people don't prepare.
I've just covered the major ones here I haven't even covered optimism bias and
things like that, which is also very interesting. But we can improve our
communication, I think, as scientists, as emergency managers, as communicators.
There's a lot we can do. And it is about culture and shifting into this cultural
dynamic. And that's more than booklets or fact sheets or brochures or YouTube
videos. All of those things help. But that's not getting into the real guts of the
issues here. So inclusive approaches and remembering the discourse of the
privileged around preparedness-- we really be more inclusive and diverse in our
approaches. And that's really key to more preparedness activities and success. And
we need all kinds of people to help us do better. So I just want to leave you guys
with a few other things. Who here wants to work in disasters after this talk? One
person? Really? I have had such a joy working in this field. Helping people as a
humanitarian is a wonderful experience. If you want to be an emergency manager--
and I think emergency management is a fantastic field to work in-- the degrees that
will get you in the door are things like GIS, land use planners, urban and
regional, engineers, communicators, those groups. And we need our creatives to help
us tell better stories. So getting degrees in these will help, but also working as
part of the police, military, and fire and ambulance can also help you. Science,
ask Richard, because he's the scientist. He can help you with getting into this
field from the scientific perspective. The social scientists-- so degrees in
sociology, anthropology, psychology. This disaster field is growing. And the market
demand is still there. But it's not as heavy as you might think it is. And you'll
probably need to get a PhD like myself to be really competitive in the field,
although you might be able to get away with a master's. If you want to humanitarian
response and international development, which I highly recommend as a career field,
because we need bright, intelligent, passionate people working in international
development and humanitarian assistance-- and there is demand there-- volunteering
for a year or doing a deployment, like I did in the Solomon Islands, is really
commonplace. It's usually a volunteer position. But you will get some money, like
the Peace Corps. Do we have any Americorps or Peace Corps people here? So this is a
way for you guys to get in here. The United Nations Volunteer Program actually pays
the best and is awesome. I have some UNV friends, and they're fantastic. And then
also remember, the way to get into international development is through
nongovernmental organizations like Red Cross, Red Crescent societies, Caritas,
World Vision, all these other different groups. But pick them wisely. And pick
groups that you are going to feel morally and ethically aligned to. And degrees in
international development, political science, engineering, communication, languages
are really valuable. So this is my final story. So we did a bunch of focus groups
in Christchurch before the Christchurch earthquake. And we did them by age. And we
had this really interesting finding. We found that the people that had the most
realistic expectation of what was going to occur in a disaster was you, your age
group, 18 to 25-year-olds. There might be a few older students in here. You guys
had a really good understanding because you've been watching disaster movies,
you've been playing-- you've been aware of all these disasters around the world and
what could happen. And you had a really good sensibility of what could happen. And
I gave this to the emergency managers. And they said, you're ridiculous, Sara. They
said that a lot. But-- they probably still do. They're like, nah. We're going to
focus on people of our generation, because we think they're the ones who really
care. Homeowners are the ones who care about preparedness. Kids don't care about
preparedness. And I was like, no, they really, really do. And they're like, no,
we're not going to let you run a campaign to work with that age group. And so what
happened? The Christchurch earthquake occurred. And this Facebook group called the
Student Volunteer Army, which was made up of University Canterbury and Lincoln
University students, popped up. And within a few days there were thousands of
volunteers from the universities. Now, here you can see some pictures. This is all
silt and soil that was brought up by liquefaction in Christchurch. A third of the
city-- people's houses, homes, buildings-- were covered in this stuff. And we
didn't have the workforce to clear it out. So who helped? The university students.
For the Darfield earthquake, the emergency managers really hated the Student
Volunteer Army and tried to get them to stop. But in time of Christchurch-- by the
time Christchurch rolled around the Student Volunteer Army was absolutely a part of
the response and was brought in, because people could see the value and the care
that the university students had for their community. So I want you to look to the
person to the left of you. And I want you to look to the person of the right of
you. Guess what? Those are the people that are going to help you out in disasters.
We know that 90% of the people saved from rubble in earthquakes are strangers.
They're not the trained emergency responders. They're not the rescuers. They're
you. So be kind to one another, because you don't know when you're going to need
each other's help. And you are more powerful than you could know. So thank you. You
can follow me on Twitter @DisastrousComms. You can tweet out to me and ask me any
questions. And hopefully I'll be around and answer. And I hope you enjoyed my talk.
[APPLAUSE] AUDIENCE: Are you going to explain the photo? SARA MCBRIDE: Oh, so this
photo is from shakeout. So you know how I said-- I like to practice what I preach.
I'm an applied communication researcher. So this is me crawling under my desk in
shakeout. And I said, look, shakeout's great because it has this great side effect
of being able to find stuff you've lost under your desk. I found two lipsticks, a
travel mascara, a pen, a USB drive, and a chapstick there. You guys should try it,
too, to see what you find. AUDIENCE: So as we call people [INAUDIBLE],, so any
questions [INAUDIBLE]? AUDIENCE: When you talk about some ways that [INAUDIBLE],,
what are other ways to achieve that [INAUDIBLE]?? SARA MCBRIDE: So what is
fantastic about where we are today-- before 1992-- so Grunig didn't have this back
in 1992. The best way for two-way symmetric and asymmetric communication now is
social media. Social media-- emergency management and science agencies use social
media wrong all the time. We broadcast out information and then we don't reply to
anyone. We get all these questions underneath on Twitter or on Facebook. This is
where we can actually have conversation. So it's mass self-communication, but it's
also mass conversation that is occurring. And that's a fantastic question. So
that's how we're really starting to get this ball rolling, is that-- that's the
benefit. As problematic and difficult
as social media can be sometimes, this is one of the real benefits, is that we can
actually have real conversations and answer questions that people have. AUDIENCE:
Any other questions? I think everybody's hungry. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] SARA
MCBRIDE: I'm hungry. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] on Tuesday.