This paper examines the communication challenges posed by a large-scale mining emergency, using the 2010 Chilean mine collapse as its central case. It identifies two key audiences — affected families and employees — and analyzes their distinct informational needs, emotional states, and levels of technical sophistication. The paper argues that effective emergency communications must be carefully calibrated in tone, detail, and format for each group, and demonstrates these principles through two sample communications: one addressed to grieving family members and one directed at fellow employees. Drawing on emergency management literature, it concludes that miscalibrated messaging risks eroding trust, inflaming emotions, and damaging organizational credibility.
A situation such as the 2010 Chilean mine collapse presents significant challenges for communications professionals. Among the most important is the need to identify the various different audiences and their respective needs and circumstances. Some audiences have a high level of personal attachment and emotional connection to the individuals directly involved, and a very limited technical background. Conversely, other audiences have much greater levels of technical knowledge. Providing excessive technical details to lay audiences — especially lay audiences with high degrees of attachment to the principals — can undermine the effort to inform them while unnecessarily increasing their stress rather than providing assurance or allaying their fears and concerns. Meanwhile, providing insufficient technical specificity to expert or professional audiences can undermine the goal of establishing or maintaining trust and result in increasing the frustration level of the audience.
Moreover, in both situations, choosing the wrong communications vehicles or content can give the incorrect impression that the organization issuing those communications is engaged in covering up the truth or misrepresenting the facts. Lay audiences may perceive excessively technical descriptions as a means of deflecting their attention from the truth, while expert professional audiences may perceive excessively general descriptions as purposely omitting important details and information.
The consequences of miscommunication with families include exacerbating the emotional toll as well as anger toward the organization. Anger is a natural impulse in highly emotional situations, and the organization runs the risk of becoming a scapegoat as a function of this natural impulse when communications with families are mismanaged. Ideally, specific contact people must be available around the clock to avoid frustrating worried family members — for example, by ensuring they reach live personnel at information centers rather than recorded hotlines. Similarly, the organization must establish sufficient employee involvement to avoid exacerbating any sentiments of alienation between management levels and employees. Employees who receive detailed information and even solicitations for input are much less likely to respond in anger toward the organization than employees who feel excluded or patronized by the organization's response.
Both groups need information detailing what happened, what the current condition or status of the individuals involved is, and what plans are being implemented to rescue them. Generally, families need to know any positive information or reasons to believe that their loved ones have not necessarily been severely injured or killed, and they will need to know what resources or procedures are available to update them continually. Meanwhile, employees need to know, in much greater detail, exactly what happened and exactly what is being proposed on a technical level to rescue the survivors. To a certain extent, both groups have similar needs; however, the organization must tailor its communications to provide the necessary information in the tone and format most appropriate to each group.
In principle, communications intended for families must emphasize sensitivity and provide the most optimistic perspective possible without crossing the line of truthfulness. As long as there is a realistic hope of rescue, communications intended for families should focus on the efforts the organization is making and on the effectiveness of the many safeguards and emergency procedures available. For example, in this particular case, those communications would emphasize the availability of emergency compartments to allow the miners to retreat into relative safety, the sufficiency of their emergency equipment, and the extensive emergency training that ultimately played a tremendous role in allowing the miners to survive as long as they did.
Communications intended for employees, by contrast, must provide much fuller disclosure of details than would be necessary to satisfy families, because the employee audience is far more sophisticated. As a result, the level of detail that might be appropriate for families would likely be perceived as insufficient — or even deceptive by virtue of omission — in communications intended for employees. Certainly, communications intended for employees must also express sensitivity, but they must emphasize the specific strategies and tactics being considered by the organization or already under way.
Toward those ends, the organization should establish in-person formats for representatives to meet with families, provide information, and address specific concerns in a manner most conducive to maintaining positive relations. The same is equally true with respect to establishing appropriate formats for conveying information to employees, except that the personnel selected for this purpose should be technical experts capable of responding directly to technical questions — rather than public relations staff who may need to defer answers, which can add to frustration or anger among an expert audience.
Dear Family Members:
"Drafted letter emphasizing reassurance and resources"
"Technical internal release for employee audience"
"References on emergency management and mining crisis"
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