A coffee Q&A with Christal Austin: climate emergency & disaster preparedness
I met Christal P. Austin, Director (Ag.) of the Public Affairs Department in the Ministry of Home Affairs and Information in Barbados, this summer at the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) conference in Toronto. Christal is a PR advisor, international speaker and Acting Head of the Public Affairs Department in the Ministry of Home Affairs in Barbados. Her hands-on knowledge and passion for disaster management is very impressive, and I am delighted to share Christal’s thoughts on crisis leadership in this Q&A.
Natalia Smalyuk
Christal, I am so excited to chat with you about disaster preparedness. It’s been a record hot summer with many extreme weather events. Wildfires. Smoke. Killer heat. Deadly floods. For you in Barbados, it's hurricane season. With the climate emergency entering unchartered territory, what should be top of mind for crisis communicators right now, in your opinion?
Christal Austin
Thank you so much for this opportunity to share Barbados’ perspective and chat with you on this very important topic. There’s an urgent call to action for all organizations to have a disaster preparedness plan. Whether or not to have it is not the question. The question is how we are going to respond when disaster hits. Climate emergency is not an issue separate from any organization or any industry these days so I am really eager to discuss this topic with you today.
Natalia Smalyuk
What is your number one message to the audience of crisis planners involved in disaster preparedness?
Christal Austin
We need to be true to our profession and look at all stakeholder groups, tailoring our messages for each audience. In a disaster, we must reach them all. In our culture in Barbados, we have daily call-in programs, and many seniors like to listen to them because of the banter that takes place there, with their peers calling in to raise issues that are important to them. Some don’t even turn their radios off so, naturally, we can use radio channels to reach them.
In this age of diversity, equity, inclusivity and accessibility (DEIA), we need to be conscious of the fact that some audiences we may end up overlooking are already marginalized. As communications managers, we need to make sure we are not compounding the extent to which they are already feeling excluded. There are age implications for crisis communications planning. Gender implications. Youth implications. We need to make sure we are catering to all these diverse audiences recognizing these intersectionalities.
Natalia Smalyuk
In our earlier conversation, you mentioned that Barbados is an aging society. How do you balance digital and analogue communications with senior micro-audiences to keep them updated, for example, on an upcoming hurricane and its severity?
Christal Austin
Creating our 21 century third-decade savvy communication plans, we have to be careful not to alienate anyone in our senior population. Some of them are very savvy, like my father, for example, and my grandfather. Before he came down with dementia, he used to be on Facebook. So you have a portion of this senior population who will see your Facebook post, follow your website and click the bell button, as my daughter would say. And then you have a large percentage of those who are just not comfortable with technology. For example, we have a microcosm of an elderly population we call shut-ins. Because of their age and lack of mobility, they do not leave the house or even their rooms. We found we have to “pound the pavement” through creating a database of these persons, introducing home-help programs for them and even going into the neighbourhoods with bullhorns so residents who are primarily offline are still aware that they need to be prepared.
Natalia Smalyuk
Another group you mentioned in our earlier chat is disengaged youth. How do you get through to them?
Christal Austin
That is the question of the hour. These young people on the blocks are social media savvy and are on mobile phones, but a lot of them don’t have the data. Many of them don’t have jobs. When they do get the internet, they are not using it to check the local information service or the media. These young people are checking things more interesting to them like pop culture. One way we’ve worked with these groups was through influencers. They’ve done jingles for us.
I believe there needs to be a greater level of consultation on how to bring these young people into the fold in a meaningful way as part of a climate crisis solution. We have a dense network of emergency organizations across our ridings in Barbados that rely on volunteers. Unfortunately, unemployed youth are not interested in volunteerism – for example, taking money from their girlfriend to take a bus and get to a place where they can learn how to use a chainsaw or how to operate a radio and report damage in their community. They want to get paid.
Natalia Smalyuk
Do you feel there’s value in more stakeholder consultation during crisis planning to gain a better understanding of how different stakeholders can be best reached and engaged?
Christal Austin
Speaking about Barbados, we are a small society, and I think we know the behaviours of different groups well enough. We’ve certainly had many trial runs in preparing for storms. That said, perhaps consultation can lead to more acceptance of the plans and more engagement, more co-creation in execution. To their credit, the Barbados Meteorological Services have been having town halls across the island. They are an opportunity to listen to stakeholders and help the public to understand their weather lingo. It’s important to keep this dialogue going to build more empathy in our communication strategies.
Natalia Smalyuk
What does communication look like before and after something as horrific as a hurricane you just mentioned?
Christal Austin
I’ve shared a bit on how important it is to be targeted with communication in the lead-up through the channels that will reach each demographic. By extension, we need to have clear goals and measurement mechanisms to ensure their effectiveness and the agility to recalibrate in a timely manner where there might be deficits in our execution. However, at the granular level, much of the work, sadly, is in convincing persons that they may need to move into shelters because of the structural weakness of their homes.
Most of those, thankfully found alive under the rubble of their homes in the aftermath of Hurricane Elsa, for example, would have refused the call to go into shelters. Can you imagine having to walk away from your home? Right now, right here, with all that can hold on to the back of a motorcycle, as a friend of mine would say? It’s a devastating thought. However, residents also need to understand that taking pre-emptive measures does not diminish their standing as homeowners in the eyes of society. It’s about preserving you. Preserving your life. We should be able to convince a 100 per cent of those whose lives would be in danger that they need to quit their homes and go to shelters. That’s not an unrealistic goal.
A lack of current insurance policies is another huge problem. Some residents thought that perhaps they had coverage, but their policies had expired. This has become one of our key messages – make sure you have an up-to-date insurance policy. We’ve had to repeat it each hurricane season and in the face of other weather events, such as the volcanic eruption on neighbouring St. Vincent and the Grenadines that resulted in our entire island being covered in ash. Our airports and seaports were closed for several days to allow for the clean-up. So that’s yet another message to hammer home: disaster is not just the hurricane season. We need to be prepared for all types of events, and insurance is a very, very important part of that preparation so scarce state resources go to those who are truly, truly vulnerable and dependent on the state.
Natalia Smalyuk
We have spoken about the challenges in reaching individual residents. There are also organizations, particularly small businesses, that can be vulnerable. How do you communicate with small business owners and operators before and after the disaster?
Christal Austin
A hurricane may have a devastating impact on small businesses, like food trucks and canteens. For example, we had a number of very upset small business people calling the emergency operating centre about the fact that they lost a lot of the meat they had refrigerated due to an extended power outage. Kudos to our electrical company who are usually very, very quick. To their credit, they were able to get us back up and running faster than many other countries might in a similar scenario where recovery could take weeks. But that last storm was the hurricane we hadn’t had for probably five or six decades. That, of course, doesn’t diminish how such an event can throw small businesses off kilter financially.
The Barbados Meteorological Services have been making a concerted effort to give us early and more frequent warnings. As soon as a system is formed off the west coast of Africa, for example, we get an alert. These warnings are a tool for entrepreneurs to plan and make decisions about certain investments during certain timeframes. Our job is to help small businesses make more conscious decisions. We target our messaging through business associations, on various media they consume, on our national channels. Ideally, we hope that those who can afford it would invest in generators that would give them extended coverage in the event of an outage until the national electrical service is restored. We also want small businesses to come out of the emergency with something in the kitty to restart their businesses so the government’s scarce resources can go to those who are truly vulnerable. I know it’s a touchy subject. My family ran a food business from the time I was a teenager so I get it. For example, it’s very tough to make a decision not to invest in produce and then hear the storm has diverted from Barbados, as is frequently the case, and you can’t open your business next day. That’s catch 22 for entrepreneurs.
I want to come back to insurance again. Small businesses can invest more in the insurance of their assets. The challenge is that it’s not part of our culture here to insure things. We think about insuring cars or our health. We buy home insurance because it’s compulsory, but insuring things like physical assets is not part of our culture. We can think more about partnerships with the insurance associations and communicating to small businesses that insurance policies are not as expensive as they might think.
Natalia Smalyuk
Is misinformation or disinformation a challenge in your work?
Christal Austin
Misinformation, yes. On Telegram, Facebook and other platforms, people get together, form group chats, build these little communities. Some fancy themselves as just as competent as the meteorological staff. Some are from the opposition parties. A common scenario is when these alternative channels put out a notice faster than the government, which could be too slow putting that message out because it needs to go through approvals. This is citizen journalism where everybody wants to be first, get more likes and shares and be the one who started it all. Forgive me for putting on my academic hat (I am a philosophy student). Capitalism has a lot to do with this because a lot of who we are now as income earners is about having a digital presence and selling ourselves on social media platforms. This is how influencers make money and how bloggers sell ads.
The challenge is that when what the government is doing to protect citizens is undermined, the public may stop listening to it to their detriment. I’ll give you an example from our recent experience. There was an earthquake in the Caribbean and someone used the word “tsunami” in the report. Barbados suddenly became under a tsunami watch. Everyone was sharing this message. There was obviously panic because we are so flat. If you fly over Barbados, we don’t even look like a pancake. We look like a crepe. I don’t know if I am rightfully or wrongfully attributing this to the individuals who would want to get traction on social or build up their following and then monetize it. All I can say is that we had to jump into action very quickly to quell this misinformation and let the public know that we were not in any way under a tsunami watch.
Natalia Smalyuk
This becomes another crisis within a crisis that requires a communication campaign to address misinformation.
Christal Austin
Yes. One thing I’ve lobbied successfully for was a Whatsapp group with all the media, emergency management and meteorological personnel on it where notices are issued to us as a collective. This gives us the power of an omnichannel cascade if we need to issue a corrective message or an initial communication. The group has been a real game-changer. There used to be competition even among the press where one media house would want to get the message out first before even the Barbados Meteorological Services had the chance to put it up on their platforms.
I don’t know if similar approaches are taken elsewhere, but we are very much a coalition-type country. We have something we call a social partnership that deals with our economy and society where labour, government and the private sector come together on a regular basis to discuss what’s happening. It’s in our DNA to have collaborative approaches that transcend political, organizational, class and other dividers when it comes to the issues that blanket the entire country. I am very happy to know that we’ve reached a point where the media and the government work hand-in-hand on disaster management. When we have to pivot, it’s critical that we are all dancing together in choreography.
Natalia Smalyuk
I am glad we are ending on a positive note. Any final words of wisdom you’d like to share with Canadian and international crisis planners?
Christal Austin
I think the message for all of us across the world is that we need to localize the urgency around the climate emergency so each person, elderly or young, Caucasian or black, feels they can contribute to the solution. Movers and shakers on a global level, countries and conglomerates with the biggest footprints, need to demonstrate that they are taking action so when the man on the street, the old lady listening to the radio program or the young person on the block add their effort, they feel they are putting a crumb on top of a cake as opposed to a crumb on top of a plate of crumps. I think we have a problem with empathy at an individual level because bigger guns do not appear to be taking climate action seriously. Just like we have only one body and we need to take care of it, we only have one earth. We can’t move to Mars.
I must say that we do have some very beautiful passionate young people around the world who have been flying the flag high for justice when it comes to climate. Our own Prime Minister Mia Mottley has been campaigning for justice, particularly for small island developing states, largely former colonies, recognizing that there are imbalances in the global financial architecture that prevent us from being able to protect our sovereign borders against the climate emergency. I am hoping that in my lifetime and in my children’s lifetime we will find the collective spirit across the globe to manage the climate emergency.
Natalia Smalyuk is an award-winning advisor and trainer with a focus on strategic communication, planning, stakeholder engagement and crisis leadership. She runs a Women Business Enterprise (WBE) certified consultancy called NBAU. What is NBAU? Not Business As Usual. Why NBAU? Because there’s no such thing as business as usual for leaders who think ahead and see a landscape of opportunity – and risk – across the unchartered global space.