Introduction
This paper examines two types of crises: riots and earthquakes. Both types of crises occurred in the Los Angeles area in the 1990s: the Rodney King riots of late April and early May 1992 and the January 1994 Northridge earthquake. Both disasters caused numerous deaths and injuries—and widespread economic damage throughout the city. However, there were notable differences between the two disasters.
The 1992 Los Angeles riots resulted in 53 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and more than $1 billion in economic damage (Baade, Baumann, & Matheson, 2007). The riots began, Useem (1997) wrote, “shortly after a jury acquitted four Los Angeles police officers charged with beating Rodney King, who had refused to get into a prone position following a high-speed automobile chase” (p. 358). The riots lasted for four days, but their impact on the city was much longer, Baade, Baumann, and Matheson (2007) wrote. “Economic activity in Los Angeles following the riots took at least 10 years to return to its previous levels,” they noted, “if indeed full recovery ever occurred” (p. 2062). The riots, they found, had “a long-lasting negative impact” on the City of Los Angeles while “while leaving the economy of the rest of the County of Los Angeles relatively unscathed” (p. 2069). The areas of Los Angeles most affected by the riots were the poorest of the city, and FEMA designated just $148 million to efforts to rebuild after the crisis (Baade, Baumann, & Matheson, 2007). “The failure of Los Angeles’ economy to recover following the Rodney King riots,” Baade, Baumann, and Matheson (2007) contended, “suggests that there is potential for an uneven recovery biased against racial minorities and the economically disadvantaged” (p. 2075).
The 6.7-magnitude Northridge earthquake also was devastating to the City of Los Angeles, causing 57 deaths, more than 1,500 serious injuries, and multiple billions of dollars in economic damage (Nelson & French, 2002). However, many of the areas affected by the earthquake were relatively affluent (Heller, et al., 2005). “In wealthier areas,” Baade, Baumann, and Matheson (2007) contended, “the pecuniary incentive for private business and citizens to rebuild is stronger and in some cases the rebuilding effort can cause net income gains in response to a natural disaster” (p. 2075).
Risk, crisis, and the Los Angeles disasters
Coombs (2007) defined crisis as “the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes” (pp. 2-3). According to Heath and Millar (2004), “a crisis can harm stakeholders and damage the organization’s relationship with them” (p. 2). A crisis, Coombs noted, “is unpredictable but not unexpected” (p. 3). California has a history of earthquakes that cause death and economic damage. In Los Angeles, for example, the 1971 6.4-magnitude Sylmar earthquake resulted in 58 deaths and more than 2,500 injuries (Nelson & French, 2002). Civil disturbances, including the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles, also have occurred in the state (Useem, 1997).
Risk, according to Coombs (2007), involves likelihood, or “the probability of an issue gaining momentum” (p. 39), and impact, or “how strongly the issue can affect” (p. 39) an organization. Risk factors, he noted, are “a normal part of an organization’s operation” (p. 23) and “can never be eliminated completely” (p. 24). However, organizations have a responsibility to plan for risk, Coombs (2007) noted: “Organizations have long been considered negligent if they did not take reasonable action to reduce or eliminate known or reasonably foreseeable risks that could result in harm” (p. 10). Risk assessment, he wrote, can help an organization determine “the probability that a weakness will be exploited or developed into crises” (p. 23).
According to Nelson and French (2002), California officials were aware of the risk of a devastating earthquake before the Northridge disaster and required communities to plan for the possibility in their land-use codes. “We found that fewer homes were damaged,” they wrote, “when local governments had developed high-quality factual bases, formulated goals for improving seismic safety, crafted regulatory policies to manage development in hazardous areas, and advanced policies that made the public aware of seismic risk” (p. 194). Furthermore, officials send messages through the mass media to encourage individuals to prepare for the possibility of an earthquake. (Heller, et al., 2005). However, the responses to these messages vary. “Apparently, for many individuals,” Heller, et al. (2005) wrote, “it takes the experience of damage to recognize one’s vulnerability and to take the necessary steps to reduce future damage” (p. 417). Older or longer-term residents who have experienced past earthquakes, they noted, may even become “comfortable about the possibility of surviving an earthquake without injury or household damage” (p. 417).
Before the jury’s decision in the Rodney King beating case, Useem (1997) noted, the Los Angeles Police Department’s leadership “predicted that there would be civil disorders following the trials, regardless of the verdicts” (p. 368). However, the department itself was fractured in the aftermath of the beating, and political officials worried that an aggressive police effort to prevent rioting could actually fuel unrest (Useem, 1997). Furthermore, the LAPD was at the center of the rioters’ rage (Useem, 1997). After the King beating, a city commission concluded that the department’s leadership tolerated the use of excessive force by LAPD officers—a view shared by some in the department. Chief Daryl Gates believed the four officers had used excessive force, but described the King beating as an “aberration” (p. 372). “Many officers (likely a majority),” Useem (1997) wrote, “believed that the four officers on trial had not used excessive force” (p. 372) meriting criminal charges.
Crises and communication strategies
Coombs (2007) identified three crisis stages: precrisis—with three substages, signal detection, prevention, and crisis preparation; the crisis event—with two substages, crisis recognition and crisis containment; and post-crisis actions such as evaluation and follow-up communication with stakeholders (pp. 18-19).
Communication plays a role in each of these three crisis stages. According to Heath and Millar (2004), “a rhetorical approach to crisis explicitly acknowledges that the responsibility for the crisis, its magnitude, and its duration are contestable. It stresses the message development and presentation part of the crisis response” (p. 5). Messages, they noted, “need to responsibly define the crisis, the actions that need to be taken, the actions that will be taken, are being taken, or have been taken” (p. 9). Furthermore, they wrote, a crisis interrupts a narrative—“the normal activities of an organization, but it also begins its own narrative, one that may or may not end happily ever after” (p. 11).
Crisis narratives often unfold in the media. “Generally,” Coombs (2007) wrote, “we experience crises through the news media and the Internet” (p. 20). As Heath and Millar (2004) noted, “Crises are events that are newsworthy” (p. 15). According to Oraniran and Williams (2004), “the rule with media” for organizations is “to control information” (p. 93). During a crisis, Borda and Mackey-Kallis (2004) noted, public relations practitioners should gather relevant information, package that information for various audiences, and deliver that message quickly. Borda and Mackey-Kallis (2004) and Coombs (2007) noted the importance of designating a spokesperson and backup spokespersons who present a unified message for the organization. “Getting word to the public from a reliable or recognizable source,” Borda and Mackey-Kallis (2004) noted, “gives the public reassurance” (p. 126). An organization, Coombs (2007) noted, should present “a consistent message. Working together, multiple spokespersons can share one voice” (p. 79). Previously established relationships with news personnel, Oraniran and Williams (2004) noted, “become valuable, as members of the media are likely to help present the organization’s messages as accurately as possible based on the established trust” (p. 94). As for negative information during a crisis, they wrote, “it is essential to come clean to the media and the public regardless of how damaging the information” (p. 94). It is better for an organization’s stakeholders to hear that information directly, they warned, “than from a different source” (p. 94).
California State University, Northridge (CSUN) was an institution that was heavily affected by the Northridge earthquake (Holder, 2004). CSUN’s administration, Holder (2004) noted, lost “access to buildings, telephones, power, supplies, or any communication and information-gathering tools” (p. 57). Even so, CSUN’s public relations officials compiled background material and “successfully relayed information to the University’s various publics” (p. 57). According to Holder (2004), “CSUN was cited for its effectiveness, because campus officials were able to organize quickly and effectively process a great deal of ambiguous information with its various publics” (p. 57).
During the 1992 riots, the LAPD “was the key responding agency,” Useem (1997) noted, but was “criticized for its purported failure to stop the disturbance” (p. 362). The flashpoint of the riots was Florence and Normandie avenues in South Los Angeles, where protesters and rioters assaulted passing motorists, including truck driver Reginald Denny (Useem, 1997). Television news helicopters circled overhead, Useem (1997) noted, “broadcasting live coverage of numerous acts of violence with no evidence of police response” (p. 364). Although the LAPD had a plan for responding to such civil disturbances, the department was hampered by conflicts between two command posts—one established by a South Bureau lieutenant in the field, the other by a Metropolitan Division (or LAPD headquarters) captain at a bus depot (Useem, 1997). “By early evening,” Useem (1997) wrote, “the riot had spread across large sections of the city. At this point, the intensity of the riot—fast-paced, widespread, dangerously hostile—hampered, and perhaps precluded, the LAPD from developing a focused response” (p. 364). Meanwhile, he wrote, “unity of command dissolved” (p. 368) and police officers formed squads, only to wait 45 minutes to three hours for commanders to give them their assignments.
Conclusion
Riots and earthquakes are both examples of crises that organizations could face in large urban areas of California. The Los Angeles riots of 1992 and the Northridge earthquake of 1994 are only two examples of civil unrest and natural disasters that have caused death, injury and property damage in the state. Both disasters offer lessons in crisis planning—including the importance of identifying risks that could cause harm to stakeholders, as well as the need for consistent communication as an organization responds to a crisis.
References
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