In order for a police officer to arrive safely at a call, he or she must be able to drive without obstructions and distractions, which can be very difficult in today’s environment. When driving, police officers often need to use radios and Mobile Data Terminals (MDTs) or computers while operating emergency lights and sirens, not to mention the simultaneous use of cell phones. Distracted driving is a growing trend among police officers in the United States and the impairments associated with completing their job duties while driving can be as profound as those associated with driving while drunk.

Recent studies have found that distracted driving by officers is on the rise and in more than half of all police crashes the officer was distracted by something inside the squad car, such as a cell phone or computer. Looking at the computer while the vehicle is in motion or worse yet, typing while the vehicle is in motion is a major distraction that can have serious consequences. Looking at the computer causes an officer to take his or her eyes off the road for a minimum of five seconds. If driving at 50 MPH, the vehicle will travel over the length of a football field. A simple solution to this distraction is to enforce a strict policy prohibiting computer use and requiring computer lids to be closed when the vehicle is in motion. Additionally, law enforcement agencies might want to consider investing in a software program that deactivates the computer screen when the car is in motion or while the car is moving in excess of certain speeds.

Another driving concern is obstructed vision, wherein an officer doesn’t have good line of sight. Considerable advances have been made in squad car technology, much of which assists with quickly gathering information, but may also limit driver visibility if not installed correctly. Today, many squad cars have MDTs, radar guns, global positioning system equipment, video cameras, suspect detainment cages, and rifle or shotgun racks, all of which may limit an officer’s view of hazards on the road. Many crashes occur at controlled intersections where officers indicated they had difficulty seeing vehicles approaching from the right. The placement of squad car camera and computers that are mounted too high are considered a strong contributing factor to these crashes. Cameras and license plate readers are often mounted to the right side of the rear view mirror, which greatly diminishes the visibility of vehicles approaching from the right. In addition, MDTs can be mounted in several different positions, some of which limit the field of view of the officer. Addressing whether or not the equipment is placed in the officer’s field of view and adjusting the equipment so that it is less likely to affect the officer’s ability to see and drive safely is highly recommended. In order to place equipment in the most effective and safest manner possible, consideration should be given to the design of the squad car and input from officers who utilize them daily.

The risks associated with distracted driving by law enforcement cannot be ignored and police administrators should consider that the liability related to those risks can negatively impact a department and community. Implementing policies and procedures that address distracted driving with the objective of mitigating the risks associated is paramount. Prior to being enforced, policies and procedures should be verifiable and consistent with current laws. Furthermore, they should be reviewed by legal counsel and included in training, as well as the employee handbook or personnel manual.

As an administrator, it is critical to focus on officer and public safety. Police officers have a difficult job that is often made more difficult by the multitasking they are required to do on a daily basis. Help them by minimizing or removing in-vehicle distractions and obstructions.

Local governments often benefit from private and public partnerships formed around special projects and routine services. For example, public entities often work with national organizations such as the Nature Conservancy or a local conservation trust to obtain land for parks or nature preserves. Additionally, many local governments entrust the operations of wastewater treatment and refuse collection to private sector service providers. These partnerships are mutually beneficial and we expect more initiatives among public entities and both private for-profit and non-profit entities in the future.

The insurance and risk management needs that arise from these routine services or special projects are not so different from the requirements that were in place before the public/private initiatives started. After all, most local governments continue to directly purchase land, treat water and collect refuse. While not necessarily in direct competition with local governments, private individuals and companies also continue to perform similar activities and services.

There is an emerging trend to consider joint public/private operation of services traditionally viewed as exclusive governmental functions. Examples include traffic violation cameras installed and operated by a private contractor, probation services delegated to a third party, and in at least one instance so far, an initiative to assign most of the daily administration and oversight of a local government to a not-for-profit outside service provider. The former public sector employees are actually transferred to private sector employment status but continue to perform the same governmental duties. For local government agencies dedicated to providing public transit, there are also examples of joint public and private operation when an outside private sector management firm is hired to assume oversight of staffing, scheduling, and maintenance.

Unlike many of the routine services or special projects, these new hybrid public sector/private sector initiatives to jointly administer services once exclusively governmental, do prompt numerous insurance and risk management questions.

Is the local government authorized to hire an outside entity to perform traditional governmental functions? Are law enforcement duties for traffic control delegable to an outside contractor? Can the local government delegate judicial administration, remittance of fines or penalties, to a private vendor? Does a local government actually exist if its operations are delegated 100% to the private sector? Or, does that local government begin to resemble a property owners association?

The practical insurance and risk management issues that quickly surface contrast the differences between local governments and the private sector, profit or not-for-profit. Dependent upon individual state jurisdiction, local governments enjoy specific legal immunities, unique defenses and often maximum limits of liability. None of these features typically apply to private entities performing governmental work. There are exceptions for private entities regulated as public utilities, but such entities are not joint public/private initiatives.

We expect that economic considerations will continue the trend to increased joint public/private administration. “Tread lightly due to unknown territory” is the preferred risk management approach. Service agreements with vendors should indemnify the local governments. The private sector partner should not be permitted to transfer responsibility for poorly performed services to the local government. Never accept a private sector proposal to assume a local government responsibility at no cost to the local government. Such an agreement is unlikely to require the needed protection to the local government.

So, while there are cases of local governments beginning to privatize, the trend will likely proceed slowly as cautious risk managers try to weigh the risks – those that are insurance related and beyond.

A CEO I once worked for used to say quite regularly, “tell me what I don’t know.” His view was he could read the Wall Street Journal or any number of other typical sources of intelligence and information about running organizations, just like me as his senior risk leader. What he was most concerned about, as are most CEOs, board members and other key risk stakeholders, were the things once described by Donald Rumsfeld in 2002 (Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006) right after 911. That is:

“There are known knowns. These are things that we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don’t know, but there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

For many, myself included, this was a bit of a mind-bender. Yet the essence of his ruminating is really quite simple. He’s alluding to emerging risks, those things that are by one definition, articulated as:

“Those issues that have not manifested themselves sufficiently to be managed using the tools commonly applied to more developed exposures. They are “those risks an organization has not yet recognized or those which are known to exist, but are not well understood.”1

For leaders of all kinds, but especially for risk leaders, this area of the discipline is a black hole of possibilities, about which it is rarely immediately clear whether or not they require attention, let alone well-defined action. Some view these risks as “black swans” which by definition are things which didn’t exist, until they were discovered to exist. The unknown unknowns. But it is important not to ignore those risks we have some information and perhaps understanding about, even if they are remote or highly unlikely. This is true because they are often very destructive.

To understand these risks, let’s look at their common characteristics. First and logically, they are highly uncertain. As mentioned, their frequency is low but their impact is often very significant. They also have the potential to change quickly, even metastasize. They are risks that are difficult to drive a consensus about among subject matter experts. Because they may be completely unknown, they are typically not on anyone’s radar. Their qualitative characteristics are fuzzy at best. The ability to quantify them is usually non-existent. The relevance to the business, its strategy and objectives is also typically unclear at best. Most observers would say they are too futuristic to matter.

These risks are also hard to communicate. Because they are perceived as unlikely, possibly even irrelevant, they are viewed as deserving none of the limited time most executives have to address anything but the most pressing issues. Even so they may be embedded in existing practices and procedures, thus right in front of many, but not recognized as a serious threat to success. Finally and not surprisingly, these risks are difficult to find owners for, since accountability for addressing raises personal risks. Acting on these often complex exposures, implies redirecting time, resources and even priorities and thus can be expected to be met with substantial resistance.

In this increasingly VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world we operate in, we are required to be better at anticipating, adapting, maneuvering, preparing for, and responding to even (and especially) these unlikely but value-destroying risks that simply should not be ignored.

So what should risk leaders do in order to get ahead of emerging risks? Well here’s a simple four step plan for moving forward.

• Build an emerging risk strategy and process into your overall risk management strategy
• Enhance your risk identification process to include low probability, high severity possibilities as they relate to strategic goals and objectives
• Assess risk interconnectedness of these compared to other identified risks in order to understand how they relate to and possibly exacerbate other key risks
• Answer the key questions for these risks regarding their: importance; relevance; likelihood; impact; immediacy; and necessary response

Enhance your risk monitoring and reporting processes to include specific key risk indicators tied directly to key performance indicators.

You may feel you don’t have the time or resources to take on these tasks, but I think we can agree that you don’t want to be left flat-footed when your CEO asks “tell me what I don’t know.”

1 Source: Risk Management Society

Historically, our high dollar jail exposure has dealt with in-custody death, lack of adequate medical treatment, strip searches, assault and conditions of confinement (traditionally referred to as overcrowding). Coming soon to a jail near you are some new players: adequate treatment of the mentally ill, solitary confinement and a new way the courts are looking at use of force in jails. This article explores each of these evolving topics and suggests a couple of things that can help your jurisdiction, jail administrator and elected officials prepare to mitigate these challenges, risks and subsequent exposures.

Adequate Care for the Mentally Ill

The mentally ill in jails has been an evolving issue since President Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act in 1963. The lack of funding for community mental health centers, coupled with the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, has left jails as the de facto mental institution. Some jurisdictions have tried to decline accepting the mentally ill until stabilized, but with 16% percent of arrestees seriously mentally ill, and 40%-50% having some type of mental illness, when the mentally ill commit a crime, jails are left with no alternative but to accept the person and do their best to care for them.

In the past 24 months, advocacy groups have started to intensely look into how the mentally ill are treated and housed in jails. Popular groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American Bar Association (ABA) have joined the cause through the Disability Rights Agency in each state (in my home state the name of the advocacy agency is Disability Rights Washington). Under the federal Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act of 1975, each state is required to have a statewide protection and advocacy system in place (Public Law, 94-103). This was implemented to safeguard the rights of people with developmental disabilities. If you are not familiar with your local state disability rights agency, I strongly recommend doing so. Each of these agencies produces their own annual report, which outlines past litigation and areas of current focus. Jail conditions and the mentally ill are either a current or near-future area of attention.

Isolation or Solitary Confinement

Isolation or solitary confinement is the next area of change in jails (use the term segregation when talking with your local jail administrator). Segregation is used to separate jail inmates who are violent, or acting out, from the general population. It is a tool that has been used for decades in jails and prisons, but is now under scrutiny at the federal level because local jails, out of desperation in dealing with either the extremely violent or mentally ill, may have used segregation (isolation cells) for extended periods of time. A number of studies have been produced showing that segregation causes inmates to deteriorate and actually increases your risk and exposure, as an entity. Including your licensed mental health counselor in your jail classification process is a start to reducing your reliance on segregation. This consultation should include a behavior plan that holds the mentally ill person accountable to the level they understand, encourages behavior that conforms to jail rules and eventually moves them to the least restrictive housing based on the jail’s objective classification system.

Use of Force

The last area of evolving change is use of force in jails. In the past, jail use of force was addressed by the Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment) for sentenced offenders, and the Fourteenth Amendment for (due process) pre-trial offenders. The Kingsley vs. Hendrickson Supreme Court case shifted the way use of force is viewed for pre-trial offenders to the Fourth Amendment or Objective Officer Rule. “To prove an excessive force claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a pretrial detainee must show only that the officers' use of that force was objectively unreasonable; he does not need to show that the officers were subjectively aware that their use of force was unreasonable.” This is a dramatic shift for jail officials, particularly if your jail employees do not have a background or training as patrol officers. This concept is better understood when applied to the United States Supreme Court ruling, Graham v. Connor (490 U.S. 386). Finally, consult your local corporation counsel or legal representative for a clear explanation of the nuances and concepts of this ruling and the subsequent changes needed for your local jail’s policies, procedures and training.

Times are changing for jails and jail management. In future blogs, we will discuss the transgender population, incarceration of the poor and more reforms that are just around the corner.

Active shooter prevention for public entities and corporations is a relatively new training concept, but a reality that risk managers can no longer ignore. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there has been an uptick in violent incidents occurring in the work environment, from 65% to 73%. Therefore, training must be comprehensive, encompassing all areas of daily operations and should translate into an opportunity for organizations, by turning a “squeamish” subject into a benefit with a possible return on investment (ROI). The new world we find ourselves in requires risk managers to 'reach beyond the pale' to seek the best options in order to address growing concerns of workplace violence and now, threats of domestic terrorism in the workplace.

Active shooter prevention training is often set aside because of the stigma of the words “active shooter”. It is every manager’s responsibility beyond virtuous leadership to create safe workplaces, but not at the cost of instilling fear in employees. Active shooter training has several meanings to several people depending on their occupation and understanding. To police, who are typically called to provide active shooter training, it means their response and coordination of efforts. To people who wish to do harm, it means the very definition of the term which translates to creating mass causalities and false bravado with success, while stretching the abilities of the community. For the shooter, this is reflected in the number of people they are able to kill. To risk managers, it should translate into an opportunity to proactively take measures to ensure a safe working environment by deploying preventative measures and training employees how to mitigate their risk using the most powerful weapon they possess – their minds. Because the active shooter has no profile, it is difficult to know who that one person may be and the risk ratio demonstrates that threats often come from the outside as much as from within. This is why active shooter prevention training for organizations and risk mitigation strategies is the new “normal”.

Active shooter events end in nearly 7 minutes or less by national average. It takes police, again by average, 17 minutes to arrive on scene and determine their course of action. In nearly every event, whether officers arrive on scene as early as 3 minutes or as late as 48 minutes, the average time to reach the first victim alive or otherwise is 23 minutes. Given these statistics, we must reach further to provide common sense training to every employee and beyond.

A comprehensive preparedness and training plan must include and account for more than just employees. A core plan must take into account: 1) employees; 2) leadership; 3) customers; 4) vendors; and 5) visitors. There are organizations that address all five but most try to get by with only addressing the first two due to budgetary constraints. Leadership should resist the temptation, even if at a discount, to forego the last three. We learn through the evolution of incidents and by studying the past to not only help predict the future, but to deny incidents that are preventable. By leveraging common sense training and policy development, Safe2Safest has found the balance of reducing risk while increasing the safety and emotional welfare of the five categories of people. Denial applications such as DefenseLite, and response informational and mass emergency messaging systems such as Regroup are other pivotal pieces to a holistic solution.

As for an ROI, managers can weigh the price of consultants and policy implementation against the cost of inaction. Recent and past events have occurred with great enough frequency that places of business can and will be held liable for “inaction”. When a victim’s legal representatives can prove with empirical data that active shooter prevention trainings and simple, inexpensive access denial technologies and mass emergency messaging systems could help save lives, employers will have no defense for failure to act.*

The national theme is “Run, Hide, Fight”, but this guidance was issued prior to the “Virginia Tech Massacre” and has not been updated to reflect our understanding of how these events unfold. Far too often the default of “hide” and the human psyche takes over, and people reduce themselves to hiding under and/or in unsecure (non-ballistic resistant) areas. A Google search for 'images following an active shooter incident' will show that in nearly all events, where individuals with no training decided to “hide”, many of them were injured or even killed. It is up to the risk manager to shift the paradigm to: "Evade, Evacuate and Engage as a last resort". Many will teach engagement as a good idea until a cursory study of incidents shows that 80% of persons making contact with a shooter alone did not make it home that day.

*There are two federal cases weighing in with decisions leaning against employers, see www.Safe2Safest.com.

We all know that disasters can come in all sizes and levels of severity, and each may be unique depending on your entity's location and function. While in a public school district, one of our most serious disasters involved a nor’easter over a veteran's day weekend. The storm ripped off a large portion of the school's northwest roof saturating and exposing several classrooms, and indirectly flooding all rooms on both floors. In another event on a much smaller scale, an incompatible metal plug in a middle school's boiler room on a pressurized line, released water over a three-day weekend. The released pressurized water stream shot into the pipe insulation, tore the jacket and insulation loose, and washed it to the floor drains, thereby clogging the drains. This resulted in severe flooding and damage to the hallways, classrooms and school gym. In both cases, the direct impact was possibly the closure of schools with lost teaching days. However, in both those events, potentially disastrous outcomes were mitigated by excellent organizational response. The facility maintenance staff was very familiar with these circumstances and mobilized quickly, with special contractors in place to assist in drying out the facilities. As such, both schools were opened on schedule with only some shuffling of classrooms.

In the occurrences above, the facilities, purchasing, and risk divisions were able to mobilize in a timely manner. In preparing for potential disasters, it is important to collaborate with a team or committee that reviews the potential for catastrophic events and consideration for mitigation needs. Selecting the members of the team is crucial. Each member should be representative of all areas of the organization, including purchasing (contracts and materials), food services, human services, education, planning, finance, payroll, risk & safety and particularly facilities maintenance staff.

Additional subcommittees may also be critical to the disaster planning process, such as a post-disaster assessment team that may include key facility staff, engineers, risk/safety personnel and the insurance carrier. The difficulty in establishing a plan is knowing where to start. However, with a well-established representative committee, discussing vulnerabilities (risk identification) and determining the prospect of occurrence and severity (risk analysis), you can rank your priorities and budget focuses when considering your strategies and implementation. One of the great advantages of a well-represented team is learning vulnerabilities that may not be readily apparent. For example, in our entity, there was the food service warehouse that maintained over $1,000,000 in food in a huge freezer but lacked an emergency generator. Aside from the financial loss, the loss of food that could be used to feed the public in the event of a significant natural disaster was a serious consideration; especially since schools are often used as shelters in those severe events, and the food could be used to feed individuals at the shelters.

Meeting continuously, making plans, drafting documents are essential components of the planning process. Additionally, reviewing scenarios is a fresh approach to evaluating how plans will be implemented. One scenario we had was, what if a high school was shut down indefinitely? The plan in that case was to utilize a sister school in shifts – essentially two school days every day - something I experienced for 3 1/2 years in Northern Virginia due to the explosion of DC suburbs. Loss of a school is a very real possibility, as is evidenced by tornado-related school losses in the Midwest. For example, Louisa County in Virginia sustained a high school and middle school loss due to the infamous Virginia earthquake.

‘What if’ scenarios are an excellent method of looking at or developing effective response actions. During a PRIMA board meeting in Florida, the host city had to ban water use for 48 hours. Due to a rodent chewing through an electrical line, the switchgear failed and untreated water ran through the system. The entity had to get the word out quickly and initiate an appropriate plant response. This is a perfect example of how a minor event, like a squirrel, can lead to a catastrophe.

I would be interested in learning how other entities have developed their disaster plan teams and implemented their own scenarios or real responses. How have you developed your plans, scenarios and what have your experiences been?

“The employee had a clean criminal background check.” This is often a school’s statement following an allegation of abuse. However, statistics show that even the most egregious predators do not have criminal histories (only 4% – 5% do); and as recently highlighted in this month’s USA Today exposé, teachers who lose teaching licenses in one state often get a teaching job in another state because there isn’t a national teacher disciplinary tracking system.

So, what can schools do to ensure their hiring process screens out applicants trying to hide past discretions? Let us look past background checks and evaluate other critical screening components.

Start with the application. Require all applicants to submit a standardized application (not just a resume). Look for red flags, such as gaps in employment, short tenures at several jobs, or vague reasons for leaving jobs. Then, follow up in interviews. “I see you didn’t list any place of employment from February 2012 through December 2013. Can you tell me more about that?” The applicant might have a good reason (“I took some time off to care for my mother during her chemo”) but follow up with noted red flags and document the response or lack of a good response.

When conducting interviews, Praesidium encourages the use of behavioral-based questions. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. “Tell me about a time when you made a difference in a child’s life” or “Tell me about a policy that you disagreed with in a former job and how you handled that situation.” Utilize a set of standardized questions for all applicants and document responses. If feasible, conduct interviews with two personnel (even if one just takes notes). One of you might notice a side comment or nonverbal response that the other didn’t.

And, always conduct reference checks. This is the one source of information that doesn’t come directly from the applicant. Unfortunately, many professional references will only give dates of employment and whether the individual is eligible for rehire. Document who you spoke with and when, and that they would not give further information. This will protect you in case you later find out the organization hid something from you. If possible, ask questions about the individual’s work with children. “Are there any concerns about the applicant working with children?” “Did they engage in appropriate boundaries with children?” Plus, conduct at least one personal reference, asking similar questions and how long they’ve known the applicant. The length of the relationship might be a red flag (“I’m surprised she listed me as a reference … I’ve only known her for a few months.”). Yes, personal references often give positive information from friends or family members. But, our experience is that when they have concerns, they will tell you. In addition, you may learn about former volunteer positions or jobs that the applicant hasn’t disclosed (which is a red flag).

The first step in protecting the children you serve is by ensuring your hiring process screens for abuse risk in applicants. Although this is just one component in how to manage the risk of sexual abuse in schools, it is a great place to start. Contact Praesidium to learn more about what schools can do to manage this risk.

Without a clear clinical picture, treatment decisions for workers' compensation cases are often difficult. Surgeries, spinal interventions, opioids, stimulators, or intrathecal pumps are not always the best approaches. They may cause physical deterioration and drastically increase our expenses. Here are some suggested alternatives:

1. Occupational or rehabilitation physicians (physiatrists) should perform initial evaluations. This physician should typically treat acute injuries with non-opioid medications, recommend physical therapy as soon as possible, and refrain from excessive diagnostic testing. Avoid orthopedic surgeons or interventional physicians at this state.

2. There should be clear clinical reasons for any early diagnostic testing. Acute injuries in the first two weeks rarely require spinal interventions, opioids, or sophisticated imaging studies. A diagnosis is made by the physician via examination, using specific criteria. Testing confirms or rules out the physician's diagnosis; it rarely makes it. X-rays, for instance, are seldom helpful except for suspected bone fractures. Unfortunately many doctors request them because it has become a patient expectation: "The doctor didn't even X-ray me."

3. MRIs are needed if the examination suggests neurological injury requiring surgery. Often doctors request repeat MRIs without new neurological findings. Why? "My pain is worse." Pain can indeed worsen for multiple reasons, but MRIs will not likely clarify them. Again, claimant pressure: "My doctor didn't even order a new MRI."

4. After two weeks with no improvement, it's time to consider psychosocial issues. What about secondary gains, family support, disability history, previous psychiatric issues or addiction? Is the claimant following the physician's instructions? What about job satisfaction or performance? Is the employer adapting to the claimant's restrictions?

5. At this point, any procedure - surgical or not - must have clear clinical explanations and detailed expectations of outcome. They should address improvement of pain, but must include functional goals and life quality improvement. Some examples of expectations and functional goals are:

• After surgery, the patient will walk 1-2 miles without assistive devices
• Will return to work in one month with some restrictions
• Pain scores will decrease from 7-8 to 2-3
• Spinal interventions (epidural injections) no longer needed
• Opioids not to be resumed. Important: patients awaiting surgery should be weaned off narcotics. Surgeries performed on patients taking narcotics have a greater chance of failure.

6. If there are indications of delayed recovery, claims administrators should consider conservative approaches not formally "covered" under worker's compensation, which might help the injured worker improve. Properly monitored services like aqua therapy, acupuncture, limited gym membership, or even short chiropractic care are relatively inexpensive options. These can be helpful and far better than opioids or additional surgeries.

7. Finally, what about the claimant with multiple unsuccessful surgeries/procedures, heavy narcotic use, severe functional decline, major psychosocial issues, or poor life quality? For them, it is time to consider a Functional Restoration Program. While this can be an expensive option, it may be cost-effective in the long run, because at this point the claim itself is injured and slowly but drastically hemorrhaging dollars.

In the event you need to engage your Emergency Operations Plan (EOP), Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP), or Orders of Succession (OOS), do you also have a plan to ensure your communications capabilities? This can happen in the event that cell or internet service is overloaded or down, making your communications facility inoperable, whether your needs are short or long-range.

The good news is that a back-up communications system and process can save the day, even in the most challenging scenarios, to meet both short-range needs—from within your facility to city-wide—to long-range needs —for regional and national reach.

Hand-held Very High Frequency (VHF) radios have practical ranges from several hundred feet to city-wide. If you are dealing with sensitive operations, encryption is a feature of higher-end VHF radios. High Frequency (HF) radios can help you reach across the region or nationally.

Government, industry, and disaster response agencies and some other entities can use the federal SHARES (SHAred RESources) HF radio system. Local EMAs (Emergency Management Agencies) may have a relationship with their area Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) volunteers to help when normal communications are down or to facilitate communications in an area where they are not available at all.

If your communications facility is inaccessible or inoperable, you’ll need a contingency plan to relocate to another facility or area. If your issue is limited in scope to, say, a few unusable floors or areas, a cache of Handy Talkie (HT) radios could address the need. Another option may be texting, which sometimes continues to work even when voice cell service is overwhelmed, as long as the cell sites are still up.

For long-range communications, your options range in portability and performance: from Satellite phones to High Frequency (HF) radios, and briefcase-sized Satellite Wi-Fi Hotspots, up to large dish devices that can carry a very large bandwidth.

Acquiring the back-up equipment to meet your needs, designating and training operators who are on (or integrated with) your team, will ensure practical use and success.

The water crisis in Flint, Mich., is not new. Water quality in the city has been an issue for years, affecting many people – residents, companies who use the water supply and elected leadership and environmental health regulators at local, state and federal levels trying to come to grips with the problem. The story has slowly spiraled out from being local to regional to national news.

Trying to keep track of the regulatory, engineering and political aspects of the story can be a dizzying endeavor. The risk communication piece can be just as difficult to get a handle on, for any "outsider." If we focus on the outrage aspect of risk communication, we can understand why people are truly upset.

Two risk communication maxims, from thought leaders in the field, come to mind when contemplating the crisis in Flint: Dr. Vincent Covello's, "Perception is Reality," and Dr. Peter Sandman's, "Risk = Hazard + Outrage." Understanding why people become outraged is a key component to both being able to understand the perception of risk and how to communicate it.

"Regular" people have different perceptions of risk than those of technical experts. While officials in Michigan spent years writing memos, conducting tests, refuting the results of other tests and working on alternatives to supplying drinking water, citizens who were using the water supply had a much more simplistic truth – "Something is wrong with my water, and I'm worried. It's discolored, smells foul and tastes horrible. It is tainted." Their reality was that the water was bad, and they did not have to wait for officials to announce this to them. The discolored, stinky and bad tasting water could have been safe, and that would not have mattered to anyone who had to communicate the risk to residents of Flint – their reality was what they perceived it to be. All this is what Covello has been getting at for years – if you're going to communicate risk to people, you have to do some empathetic brainstorming, because your reality of any given situation might not be the same as theirs, and they're the people affected by risk x.

Hand-in-hand with Covello's definition of perception are Sandman's outrage factors, which take on strong moral and emotional overtones. These factors predispose people to react emotionally (with fear or anger, at times), which can significantly amplify levels of worry and perceived risk. People weigh outrage factors according to their values, education, experience, sense of a given risk and stake in the outcome. The Flint water crisis is a "winning bingo card" for what Sandman considers some causes of outrage – for either real or perceived risks:

• Catastrophic effect
• Origin of the risk: In Flint, it is water from the tap – something most Americans consider safe, without giving it much thought. (Note: Human actions/failures cause more outrage than acts of nature)
• Effects on children: Reports of elevated levels of lead and copper in Flint's water have focused on how this affects children.
• Media attention: There has been intense media scrutiny, to say the least. Whether or not the media "gets it right,” all the time is irrelevant, since we are talking about perceptions of risk.
• Dread (Note: People are more worried about what humans can do to them than what nature can)
• Personal controllability: The residents of Flint have no control over who provides them with drinking water, unless it comes from somewhere besides the tap.
• Voluntariness of exposure: A skydiver, for example, willingly accepts the risks associated with her endeavor; residents of a city with clean, and then polluted, drinking water don't, in the same way.
  Trust in responsible institutions: After years of machinations at many levels – and the water problems persisting – I would assume that some (many?) residents of Flint have little trust in those organizations responsible for fixing their problem.
• Equitable distribution of risk: Many people responsible for fixing Flint's water problem do not have to drink from, bathe in or cook with the water that comes from the city's taps. At worst, this can establish an, "Us vs. Them," mentality.

If any one of these factors exists for a given situation, there's a good chance people will be outraged (and act accordingly) – many exist for the people in Flint affected by the water crisis!

Aside from understanding the outrage, all the risk communication learning points from the Flint water crisis are yet to materialize, as more work is being done to mitigate the real damage done. A guiding principle of risk communication is to tell the truth – "You are safe from risk x, because y and z," or, "You need to take action to protect yourself from risk a, because b and c." The complete truth of the situation, as of this writing, is still unfolding in Michigan.

I recommend two timelines of the crisis for anyone who feels they need to "catch up" on the glut of information on the topic:

The Detroit Free Press' How Flint's water crisis unfolded: http://www.freep.com/pages/interactives/flint-water-crisis-timeline/

The Center for Michigan's Disaster Day by Day: A detailed Flint crisis timeline: http://bridgemi.com/2016/02/flint-water-disaster-timeline/