Crisis Communication Failure: A Case Study of Typhoon Morakot

Robert Letterman

Crisis Communication Failure: A Case Study of Typhoon Morakot

Reference

Cheng, S. S. (2013). Crisis Communication Failure: A Case Study of Typhoon Morakot. Asian Social Science, 18-32.

Theme

The Taiwanese government to Typhoon Morakot exposes three themes: 1) Ignoring warning signs, 2) Failure in Crisis Response, 3) Taking corrective actions in post-crisis stage.

Summary

·         Taiwan experiences many different types of disasters.  Including earthquakes, floods, typhoons, landslides.

·         Typhoon Morakot hit on August 8, 2009 and cost the lives of 700 people.

·         The government and President Ma received criticism for the lack of quality crisis communication before during and after the typhoon.

·         This examination of Typhoon Morakot and the failures of the Taiwanese government's communication are to serve as an example to learn how to prevent future communication break downs.

·         The Central Weather Bureau issued several warnings detailing the typhoon but severely underestimated the amount of rainfall.  Consequently the CWB was criticized for it's failure to accurately forecast the storm.

·         Southern local resident of the country were not given enough time to react and evacuate by the central government.

·         Residents blamed the central government for its inability to launch rescue and relief operations within 72 hours of the disaster.

·         The Ministry of Foreign Affairs initially refused the assistance of outside nations, a move that slowed the rescue and relief response.

·         Five lessons learned from the Typhoon Morakot: Conducting Pre-event planning, Be accessible to the public, Collaborate with credible sources, Developing culturally competent crisis response, Build a community based support system.

Application

Communication is critical to the success of any endeavor in life.  In an emergency situation everything is magnified when communication errors occur and the disaster incident that happened continues to have a ripple effect on the community.

Application to Emergency Services

The five lessons that the article addresses are extremely important to emergency services.  Having a plan in place and key personnel ready to execute the plan require a solid communications effort.  Correctly assessing the situation and verifying conditions of natural disasters needs to be repeated and we need to seek the second opinion of credible sources.