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by Nancy Diamond
In April 1999, the United States suffered its single
most tragic episode of school violence at Columbine High School in Littleton,
Colorado. This same type of horrific event has been replicated at multiple
schools throughout our country since then. These episodes as well as
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on our homeland and the continued
threat of terrorism have shaken the sense of safety and security felt
by the citizens in our great country.
There is a new urgency across our land to ensure that critical incident
plans, communication plans, and parental re-unification plans are in
place at all institutions responsible for the safety of America’s
children. The U.S. courts have stated that preparation for disasters
is now a duty and expectation of those acting in loco parentis and no
longer will those responsible for a child’s well-being be protected
if they "keep their heads in the sand." Camp directors are
not exempt from these expectations.
Camps face unique challenges preparing for and responding to critical
incidents and unplanned schedule changes. Like most emergency scenarios,
effective communication is critical, and the camp community has the added
challenge of providing parents with timely and accurate information about
their child. Preferably, this information will be provided on a nonpreferential
basis to all parents at the same time and not based on the first letter
of the child’s last name.
One of the most common barriers to effective planning and response is
the perceived inability to rapidly communicate with parents. Worded another
way, most critical incident plans are formed around the obsolete assumption
that it is impractical or impossible to reliably contact parents during
a critical incident.
For example, many directors will choose to stay on the camp grounds rather
than evacuate, even when evacuation is the safest course of action. In
their judgment, there is a greater risk of keeping the children in a
marginally secure facility than having parents arrive to an abandoned
facility without notice. Knowing that every parent will be contacted
immediately gives the director more flexibility to respond to each situation
and can reduce the lead time in closing by several hours or more. A quality,
rapid-communication service should be able to contact a minimum of four
thousand phone numbers per minute utilizing today’s technology.
As public and private schools adopt rapid notification and it becomes
the standard, parents are beginning to expect similar capabilities from
the summer camp their children attend.
Parent Communication
Is Different
Several factors make parental communication different from other types
of emergency communication, such as police, fire, or ambulance:
- Parent Support. The first difference between camp-parent communication
and other communication is the unique relationship to one another.
Although the child attends the camp, the customer is the parent. Especially
in the early years, a parent’s judgment of the camp is often based
on his or her observations and the communication from the directors.
In most cases, the parent has many other competitive options from which
to choose and is entrusting his or her child’s safety and welfare
to the camp.
- Dynamic Contact Number Changes. In contrast to businesses, whose
phone numbers rarely change, parents’ home, cell, and other numbers can
change regularly. The high volume of these changes can severely reduce
any emergency communication system’s effectiveness. When parents
know that they will be contacted using a reliable, high-technology
solution, they tend to keep their contact information more accurate.
- Receiving Device Variations. Parents have a multitude of means
to receive information such as home phone, answering machines, home
phone voice mail services, cell phones, cell phone voice mails, forwarding
services, pagers, voice messaging, text messaging, or even Blackberries.
An efficient communication system, able to reach all types of technologies,
is essential in ensuring that all of these devices are contacted simultaneously
in order to ensure the likelihood of positive contact.
- The Parent Communication Paradox. Unlike other emergency communication
processes, there is no "chain of command" or policy to prioritize
which parents to contact first, under what conditions, and by what
method. Timely and precise delivery of accurate information that is
relevant to the parent is critical. The paradox is that every parent
and guardian expects that he or she will be treated equally, as the
first priority. The paradox can be even more challenging given that
the primary emergency contact can vary, literally by the minute, within
a family. For example, one morning the mother may be inaccessible because
of a meeting out of town, making the father the primary contact, and
his work phone and cell phone the primary emergency number. That afternoon,
she returns and her cell phone becomes the primary emergency contact
number until 3 p.m., when the grandmother arrives at the house and
the home phone is the primary emergency contact number. Camps have
a unique challenge in that often the parents may be out of town, vacationing,
while their children are at camp, with yet another phone number as
their emergency contact.
- Passive Restraint. Another unique challenge to camp-parent communication
during a critical incident is the parent’s mindset. During a critical
incident, planners and responders are performing tasks for which they
have trained and prepared. Accustomed to the lead role in ensuring their
child’s safety, the parents are relegated helplessly to the sidelines
while their child may be in danger. In other words, while everyone around
them is actively engaged, the parents are asked to remain passive and
to stay out of the way. The more information they receive, the more apt
they are to cooperate with the camp’s instructions during the
event, which reduces stress and anxiety for the parents and reassures
them of the professionalism of the camp administration.
These factors could lead to a highly visible communication failure, which
is unacceptable since the camp’s success depends on parental support.
What Is a Crisis?
A "crisis" by definition is an event that presents an immediate
danger to a population or individual (e.g., armed intruder, fire) or
an event that negatively impacts the operation of a camp (e.g., flood,
gas leak, power outage). A rapid communication system providing a clear,
concise, accurate, and informative message minimizes the chaos that usually
occurs during these types of incidents. Parents are advised in minutes
after an incident about the magnitude of the incident, what emergency
responders are doing, and most importantly how to reunite with their
children. From the emergency responders’ point of view, informing
parents immediately allows them to respond to the situation without interference
or "help." Chaos is routinely the result of a lack of information
or inaccurate information being distributed.
Some examples of camp occurrences in which a rapid notification to
parents is crucial would include:
- evacuations/relocations
- accidents
- deaths
- medical emergencies (outbreaks)
- rumor control
- major threats
- terrorist warning, threat, or attack
- inclement weather
- bus delays
- routine camp announcements
Notification of parents regarding these types of occurrences allows for
clear, accurate information being provided before the “rumor mill” blows
the situation out of proportion. This permits camp directors to inform parents
that they are aware of the situation, that it is under control and being dealt
with by law enforcement officials and/or camp policies, and that campers were/are
safe. Additionally, it prevents the camp office from being disrupted because
of phones ringing off the hook and from having to call each family contact individually.
Time Is of the Essence
During a crisis, time is of the essence. The overwhelming task of placing
hundreds, or even thousands, of calls manually, while receiving numerous
incoming calls, is clearly insurmountable and consequently delays the
delivery of potentially life-saving information or instruction. With
the ability to perform both complex emergency and routine call-outs,
high-speed notification assists camps to better handle the growing communications
demands surrounding such crises.
Accuracy, perhaps even more so than speed, is essential to successful
communication during all types of situations. Statistics reveal the limitations
of manual notification procedures, especially for large-scale situations
and, more importantly, the extremely high risk of failure.
The proven model of rapid emergency-call systems is located in every
town in America—the Emergency 911 Centers. These centers are “live” 24
hours a day, 365 days a year, and are manned by trained emergency personnel to
ensure that the needs of the caller are met, especially in an emergency situation.
The same should be required of your rapid communication vendor. Do not rely on
the “blind faith” of a computer-based system. “Live call centers” are
there to immediately ensure that the messages are being delivered.
One of the most critical components of managing a camp is the
ability to assure the safety of campers and create open lines of communication
with parents. Every camp, no matter how large or small, should consider
its ability to communicate instantly with parents in case of an emergency.
While emergency pages on Web sites are effective to communicate certain
messages and information, one must realize that parents are not online
24/7 and may not learn of the message in a timely matter. Instituting
an emergency notification system will allow that message to be communicated
efficiently and quickly.
Originally published in the 2005 January/February
issue of Camping Magazine.
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