Lessons Learned from Maui's Disaster Communications

Criticism about Maui’s emergency management during devastating wildfires center around disaster communications and what could have been done differently. Students will see parallels with business communication in this public communication situation.

A PBS NewsHour segment includes an interview with Tricia Wachtendorf, director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware. She identifies a “sequence of behaviors that people need to go through before they even begin reacting to a disaster warning”: hear it, understand it, believe it, personalize it (is this about me?), and confirm it. The objective is to speed up this process as well as the evacuation process. As we might expect, Wachtendorf encourages more advanced warning to help people plan and, as business communicators know, using multiple channels of communication. She also said that research doesn’t support that people panic when hearing warnings, as some believe.

This sequence could be applied to change, bad-news, or persuasive communication. Understanding more about the audience response tells students how to adjust their messages in all of these situations. For example, in a layoff situation, employees likely would process the news in a similar “sequence,” although the process is accelerated in crisis situations.

The county’s head of emergency management resigned following questions about not sounding alarms for people to evacuate. He takes responsibility for the decision, saying people would have “gone Mauka,” meaning inland or into the fire, but he resigned for “health reasons.” I tried to find a statement on the website but got distracted by the lack of information. Here’s the home page with “no alerts at this time,” which seems strange given that Maui Now has this notice: “Maui wildfire disaster updates for Aug. 19: Death toll at 114; fires are still raging but not spreading.”

Investigations may take years, but more information about what happened may help other regions improve communications during similar events.