Critical response: Communication Lessons We Must Learn from Malaysian Air Flight MH370

As you are aware, I recently completed a long term contract with the Department of Fire and Emergency Services in Western Australia. During that time I developed a great interest in the area of Emergency Management and the critical role communication and engagement plays within building resilient communities (so much so in fact that I went on to do an introduction course in Emergency Management as a professional development initiative).

As part of my ongoing interest I came to know about a major conference which is being held in Toronto.

The World Conference on Disaster Management is widely regarded as the leading conference that brings emergency management and business continuity practitioners together under one roof. WCDM provides delegates with the opportunity to gain valuable education, training and best practices to assist themselves, the organisation and the community to mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from emergencies and disaster.

As part of the conference they offered free online webinars and the one that caught my interest was regarding Malaysia Air flight MH370. Giving the talk was Catherine Matheson, Senior Communications Officer with a Crown corporation in British Columbia. She trained at the provincial and national levels in emergency response, and has nearly 30 years' experience in media and communications. In 2007 she researched best practices to develop an emergency response communications training manual. She is a Fellow with Emergency Media and Public Affairs (EMPA) in Australia, an international fellowship focused on establishing professional benchmarks for emergency and crisis communications practitioners.

The second speaker was Peter Rekers, CEO of Crisis Ready. Peter Rekers was the Manager of Media and Strategy at QLD’s then Department of Emergency Services managing all media liaison for Queensland Fire and Rescue Service and Emergency Management Queensland including coordinating all media liaison for Cyclone Larry. He is a member of the WCDM Advisory Board and in his spare time he runs his crisis communications consultancy, Crisis Ready.

The basis of the session was to discuss why has communication from the organization responsible become such an issue? In this session, they discussed the essential communication process; how it anchors all critical response efforts; how its misuse undermines these efforts; and what lessons we must learn from the loss of Malaysian Air flight MH370 to strengthen our communications plans and processes.

You are able to listen to the talk here (please note you will have to register an account) - it made for a very interesting discussion!