Fire, Flood and Fury - crisis communications scenarios

I like a good disaster movie so the title of a UCEA conference Fire, Flood and Fury – crisis scenarios in HE piqued my interest.   I’m not so happy though when movie themes play out in real life.

The conference brought together HR and communications specialists from HE to examine the issues we face from government, media and public interest around potentially high profile crisis scenarios.  Universities are at risk of being subject to incidents, both minor and major, which could result in the disruption of services and threaten the reputation of the University through negative media coverage.

The venue was the UCEA offices in Tavistock Square was a rather sobering location for the theme, given the events of 7/7 just outside the building.

Our University has a Business Continuity Plan and the Registrar has a procedure for convening the Incident Management Team for major incidents and emergencies, as well as an on-call policy and rota.  But in any incident it is the communications team that is tasked with fielding calls from the media wanting facts and commentary.

Ulrika and I heard some excellent case studies from:

• Aberystwyth University about how they protected and communicated with their students through a storm and flood situation
• Glasgow School of Art about the fire in the Mackintosh Building



Journalism students don't let a flood
get in the way of a good story

• Newcastle University about a student who had being making bombs in his room in a hall of residence.

And the key points we took away were:

• ·     What we say will go to the outside world in seconds through social media
• ·     Be the source of information, so that people come to us first and we can control it
• ·     Any member of staff could identify the source of an incident, which may not be in office hours – it was a cleaner who alerted the University to the bomb making equipment in the hall of residence at Newcastle University – we all need to be alert

After a calming cup of tea Ulrika and I were left questioning the preparedness of our University to respond in similar crises - we do have a crisis communications strategy, but this will only be tested at the point it is needed.

So, next step – role play some disaster movies of our own….