Earlier this year, a black bear was spotted in Madison, Wis., creating quite a media buzz around the community. This situation of a loose wild animal is just one crisis that any municipality can encounter.
It’s important for the municipality to be ready to communicate early and often with residents. Remember that at the end of the day, the goal is to ensure the safety and protection of the community.
Here are crisis communication steps that municipalities can take to effectively communicate to their internal and external publics.
- Create and follow through on strategies. Strategies for this incident could include: working with local and federal authorities, adjusting operations/safety measures and being public about it, showing support for victims’ families (if applicable) and sharing information on your communication channels.
- Pick a spokesperson. Depending on the situation and the size of your municipality, it could be the police chief, the administrator or someone from the parks department. This person should be media trained.
- Establish and follow an order of operations, which includes a phone tree (if lives are in danger), sending an internal memo, holding a staff meeting and working with other government offices (e.g., DNR).
- Remove any pre-loaded social media posts as necessary so that your updates aren’t drowned out by other messages or content.
- Acknowledge the situation as quickly as possible.
- “There has been a [type of animal] sighting at [location(s).”
- “For your safety, do not approach the animal if you encounter it.”
- “We are working with [animal control/the Department of Natural Resources] to monitor the situation. Please report any sightings to the police.
- When posting updates, use talking points such as:
- “This is an active/ongoing issue that is being monitored by [animal control/Department of Natural Resources.”
- “Our primary concern is for the safety of our citizens.”
- Declare steps on how your municipality is resolving the situation.
- Express regret, if someone is injured or killed by the animal.
- “We are deeply saddened by the incident, and our thoughts are with the victim(s)/those affected and their family/families.”
- While it’s likely not your municipality’s fault for a wild animal running around, if there are ways to prevent future incidents from occurring, make sure to announce that you will take those preventative measures.