I have taken a few days to review all the public information related quotes pertaining to the plane crash and fire in Austin, Texas.
From an Austin Fire Department perspective they did all the right things. On the fire ground their response, attack and search all followed SOP. During the initial news conference Austin Fire Chief Rhonda Mae Kerr spoke briefly, discussed the fire, thanked the Department and applauded the response of the entire unified command in the city. She turned the investigation over to the FBI.
Her brief remarks can be heard at 3:10 of the outdoor press conference.
Ditto, kudos goes out to the Austin Police for their response and subsequent comments on the incident.
From a crisis communications standpoint the real key players in the incident were the IRS and FBI. Police and Fire did their jobs efficiently but due to the bizarre nature of the incident it was the FBI and IRS that needed to quickly address the public.
After Joseph Stack flew his small plane into the Austin IRS building, news outlets immediately reported that nearly 200 IRS employees worked at that particular building. Any act involving an airplane, a building and a crash profoundly echoes the Sept. 11 attacks, adding a dimension of fear and angst to the situation.
Add to the horrific attack the added fact that Stack left behind a detailed suicide blog documenting his gripes with the IRS and you have both an on scene as well as web based crisis to deal with simultaneously.
I’ll admit because of its preconceived reputation as a slow and lumbering federal government mega agency, their ability to quickly address a crisis would fall way below my expectations.
I give the public information arm of the IRS good grades though for its cool and controlled statement, released a few hours after the incident:
“We can confirm a small plane hit a building in Austin, Texas, that includes IRS offices in Echelon Building I that houses about 190 IRS employees. We are still in process accounting for all employees and will update as information is available.”
Later, a statement from IRS commissioner Doug Shulman was posted on the federal website irs.gov:
Like most Americans, I am shocked by the tragic events that took place in Austin this morning. This incident is of deep concern to me. We are working with law-enforcement agencies to fully investigate the events that led up to this plane crash.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the dedicated employees of the IRS who work in the Austin building. We will immediately begin doing whatever we can to help them during this difficult time.
While this appears to be an isolated incident, the safety of our employees is my highest priority. We will continue to do whatever is needed to ensure our employees are safe.
The response calmly addressed the story before it could snowball. The statement by Shulman focused on the efforts to account for all personnel, and it allayed suspicions that the act might be the work of a terrorist group.
It confirmed the facts without mentioning the perpetrator, promising additional information as was warranted.
The IRS response can be seen as concerned about its employees and having offered a measured acknowledgement about an isolated incident. Online and traditional media channels were left to fill in the blanks about the pilot and his motives.
Other governmental agencies helped the IRS maintain this control: The FBI reiterated that there was no indication of terrorism, and it had the suicide blog post taken offline for a period, while the Department of Homeland Security declared the matter a criminal investigation.
That initial response set the tone for the news cycle to follow. Without an immediate response, the blogosphere and social media sites such as Twitter could have run in any direction with the story.
The perpetrator might have been painted sympathetically or depicted as a martyr by tax-haters. Rumors about the involvement of anti-American interests might have indeed engendered terror, with escalating panic and silliness. And the IRS could have been portrayed as a soulless institution with concern only for the tax record and not for the human cost of the tragedy.
None of these, however, has happened. The public information provided by the IRS, FBI, Austin Fire and Police was brief, accurate, void of speculation and only fact and addressed issues in real time.
The events were covered by both the traditional and new media with fact and respect for the tragedy with the tone set by governmental agencies.
Also on The Fire PIO…
- Austin, Texas IRS Plane Crash – Virtual JIC Critique – March 5, 2010
- Poor NBC Reporting in Philadelphia – May 5, 2010
- Tragic Flint, Michigan apartment fire raises response time questions – February 17, 2010
- When to Pull the Trigger – Response to an Automatic Alarm – March 23, 2010
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