In this presentation, Jacqueline Roy of Canada's Transportation Safety Board (TSB) describes her experience handling TSB communications related to the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster. This was a joint event hosted by the Federal Communicators Network, Canada's Communications Community Office, and the U.S. General Services Administration.

1. Communicating during a crisis:
TSB response to Lac-Mégantic
Jacqueline Roy
Director, Communications
6 February 2014

2. Outline
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About the TSB
Communicating a transportation accident
Lac-Mégantic accident: background
Communications strategy
Evaluation
Best practices
Lessons learned
Take aways
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3. About the TSB
Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) mandate:
To advance transportation safety in the air, marine,
rail, and pipeline modes of transportation that are
under federal jurisdiction by:
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conducting independent investigations
identifying safety deficiencies
identifying causes and contributing factors
making recommendations
publishing reports
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4. About the TSB
• 5 Board Members, including the Chair
• 230 employees, 10 offices, across Canada
• Vancouver
• Edmonton
• Calgary
• Winnipeg
• Toronto
• Ottawa
• Gatineau (HQ)
• Montréal
• Quebec
• Halifax
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5. About the TSB
Three phases of an investigation:
• Field phase
• Examination and analysis phase
• Report phase
• Lac-Mégantic investigation is moving to report writing phase
• If we identify safety deficiencies during an investigation, we don’t
wait for the final report to communicate that information to the
industry, regulator and public
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6. Communicating a transportation accident
• Transportation accidents ARE News
• They attract a lot of attention from traditional and
non-traditional media outlets
• 24/7 news cycle
• Constant pressure to update stories for websites,
blogs and news for morning, noon, evening drive and
night air times
• TSB has many ways to publish information
• Newswire, website, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, blog
• TSB must be accessible and transparent
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7. Lac-Mégantic accident: background
• July 6, 2013 – runaway train descends into Lac-Mégantic,
Québec, derails and a fire causes mass destruction
• Majority of downtown Lac-Mégantic is destroyed
• Several businesses were lost
• Environmental damage was widespread
• 47 people were fatally injured
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8. Lac-Mégantic accident: background
• The human/economic/environmental loss was extensive
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9. Lac-Mégantic accident: background
• How do you really prepare for ….
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10. Communications strategy
• Launched standard operating procedures
• Enacted crisis communications plan
• Used regular communications (traditional and social
media) – but upped the frequency of communications
and details released
• Adjusted to being involved in the top media story
nationally (as well as in the top 3 internationally)
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11. Communications strategy - First hours
• Assess
• Received various reports and (mis)information about the
accident
• Engage senior management
• Mobilize and act
• Determined first steps
• Decided who deployed and when
• Released key information as soon as possible
• Liaise/reach out
• Made contact with key communications partners (TC, SQ,
EC, etc)
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12. Communications strategy - First days
• 3 TSB communications advisors on site
• 15-20 TSB employees on scene in Lac-Mégantic
• 3 NTSB employees launched to Lac-Mégantic
• Daily tactic meetings
• Internal communications
• Media relations
• Non-stop media requests
• Surge capacity of communications team
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13. Communications strategy - First days (cont’d)
• Media events
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Scrum on July 6 (with partners) – deployed investigator
Stand up on July 7 (with partners) – lead investigators
News conference on July 9 – lead investigators
News conference on July 12 – Chair/COO
News conference on July 19 – lead investigators
• Website – active investigation page
• Social media
• Twitter/Flickr
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14. Communications strategy - Following weeks
• Rotated deployed staff in Lac-Mégantic
• Media relations
• Regular media requests
• Media events
• News conference on August 1
• News conference on September 11
• News conference on January 23
• Simultaneous communications with NTSB
• Website
• Social media
• Twitter/Flickr
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15. Communications strategy - Ongoing
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Regular media requests
Updates/news conferences as required
Briefing/liaising with stakeholders
Preparation for eventual investigation report release
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Communications products
Visual aids (videos/animation)
Location/logistics
Briefings (next of kin, town of Lac-Mégantic, other
stakeholders)
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16. Evaluation
• For most, first time public had heard of the TSB
Media relations
• Prepare regular news and social media analyses
• Rail safety remains top of mind for Canadians
• To date, received ~500 media requests
• We have responded to all
Website
• More than 100,000 page views of the communications
products on TSB website in over 6 months
• Majority in first week, then @ each media announcement
• Twitter drives a lot of traffic to our website
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17. Evaluation (cont’d)
Social Media
• From July 6 to 17
• Twitter - added 1103 followers
• ~600 retweets of information/photos
• Flickr - 204,000 views of all photos
• Top photo (27,103 views)
• YouTube – TSB videos viewed 8,445 times (most
viewed – 2 rail videos)
• Blog - viewed 320 times (unrelated to the accident)
• Ongoing – social media activity is very well received by
media and public
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18. Feedback
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19. Best practices
External Communications
• Strategic media briefings
• Social media
• Reached new audiences
• Helped manage the message - tweeted key messages
throughout announcements
• Controlled photos
• Identification of primary spokespeople (reserved for key
media) and overflow support from across Rail branch
• Maintenance of evergreen media lines for spokespeople
• Updated website
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20. Best practices (cont’d)
Internal Communications
• Senior management engagement and support
• Updates to employees
• Checking on the team’s well-being regularly
• Health officials in Lac-Mégantic and in-office follow-up
• Rotated on-the-ground communications support
• Mobile office / command post
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21. Lessons learned
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Underestimating the event in the very beginning
First scrum wasn’t effective
First news conference didn’t go as smoothly as hoped
Identifying potential shortfalls
• Seeking MOUs with other government departments for
future surge capacity
• Worst-case scenario: outside example
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22. Take aways
• Validate information quickly
• Obtain senior management engagement and support
• Identify and prepare spokespeople
• Maintain dialogue with key stakeholders
• Communicate, communicate, communicate
• Use many different media – not everyone receives
information the same
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23. QUESTIONS?
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