Page 41 - Crisis Communication Practical PR Strategies

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2 22 Crisis Communication
piece of equipment, the human factor. In today’s world, environmental
protection and a healthy environment in which to live and work are hot
topics. It goes without saying that organizations faced with a crisis situ-
ation should communicate information quickly and accurately to the
population and those in the immediate vicinity.
On 12 December 1999, the Maltese oil tanker Erika went aground
near the Breton coast. A large oil spill contaminated a stretch of water
400 kilometres long as well as Breton beaches. Fish and birds died in
their thousands. The French people were furious.
The nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl power plant on 26 April 1986
is an environmental crisis that will remain etched in the memory for all
time. Fire in one of the nuclear reactors caused an extremely high
dose of radiation to be released. Whole villages had to be evacuated,
thousands of people became ill, many people died. And the Soviet
authorities tried to brush the accident under the carpet. Chernobyl
grew to become the biggest civilian nuclear disaster in history. In
response, many countries tightened up their controls and mainte-
nance procedures on their nuclear reactors.

Criminal intent

Crises are not just the result of accidents, the human factor, natural
elements or a tragic confluence of circumstances. Sometimes, criminal
intent plays a part. Often, the perpetrators want to make a statement
or to force a company or government to agree to certain demands by
extortion.
On 19 April 1995, a large bomb exploded in a federal government
building in Oklahoma City in the United States. One hundred and
sixty-eight people died in the attack and 500 others were wounded.
The perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, called his deed ‘a legitimate tac-
tical means’ in his personal war against the US government. McVeigh
was sentenced to death and was executed on 11 June 2001.
In Belgium, the bloody attacks of the ‘Gang of Nijvel’ drove the
country into crisis during the 1980s. The gang struck several times
during the period 1983 to 1985. A total of 28 people died in Belgium
as a result of their terrorist attacks on sites such as stores in the
Delhaize supermarket chain.
Terrorist attacks are carried out for the most diverse reasons, but
there is usually a single common thread: the terrorists want to bring a
country, a government, an organization or a company to a state of
crisis. Examples are numerous: the bomb that exploded on a Pan
American Airlines Boeing 747 above the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
The perpetrator was a Libyan terrorist, 270 passengers died. Eleven