California Fire
“The Whole World Was on Fire” : Infernos Choke California, Piling on the Grief”.
An article by The New York Times.Our case study for Crisis Lab by ADandPR Lab under the aegis of Panteion University.
Some words for the crisis:
The crisis is referred to the non-ending fire that burst on Thursday 11/11/2018. The fire-prone state was battling three major fires, one in the northern Sierra and two west of Los Angeles.
• The eruption took place on Thursday 6:30 am at the edge of Plumas National Forest , quickly moved towards to Paradise area.
• The estimated number of human loss is 88, and many people are counted as missing.
• Camp Fire continued to burn toward the outskirts of Chico in Butte County, forcing more than 50,000 evacuations and closing schools for two weeks. On Friday 12/11/2018, 75% of Paradise city had been evacuated.
• It can be said that this blaze in the most destructive one in history in regard to structure loss. (nearly 18,000 fire-ravaged structures, most residential)
Woolsey Fire:
• The eruption took place on Thursday afternoon in Simi Valley and started to threaten both sides of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.
• At least 3 people were killed.
• Malibu city was under evacuation.
• Woolsey Fire ravaged over 96,000 acres in Ventura and Los Angeles Counties in November of 2018.
• The fire shut down the 101 freeway, a major transportation artery connecting Los Angeles with points north.
• “Southern California Edison reported a “disturbance” in a circuit as well as outages near the Woolsey fire just two minutes before the fire began. SoCal Edison submitted a report to the Public Utilities Commission to alert it to the event, which could be connected causally with the fire”. [1]
• The name “Woolsey Fire” it’s because of the origination of the fire, near to the Woolsey Canyon Road in Ventura County.
Political Aspect:
• President Donald Trump made a tweet in which blamed the forest management for fire’s extension in California, both Southern and Northern.
• Brian Rice, firefighter’s president, respond to Trump’s tweet and describing it untimely and aimless.
• The U.S President made another tweet in which referred to firefighter’s work, human loss and claimed the severity of the situation.
Who is to blame?
The fire started by equipment owned and controlled by SoCal Edison near its Chatsworth substation.
Also, California’s climate is generally fire prone and dry. Climate change (temperatures that are about two to three degrees Fahrenheit warmer now than they would’ve been without global warming).
Our work:
After having selected this crisis, we started a brainstorming about the steps of this crisis and how we could manage to present it in class.
The first thing was to find an article which referred to this case and based on that for our research.
We decided to separate the crisis phases and then search about the causes, the effects and the results of this crisis. The whole team tried to look the bigger picture of this crisis and present the facts in a objective way.
As regards to the article, we found some interesting infos about authors and then the way they decided to present some things. Thomas Fuller, Jennifer Medina and Jose A.Del Real were the authors of the article by New York Times. All of them have a political background and so the judgement to estimate serious incidents like this one.
From the general info up to our conclusion, the way of work was the same.
So, we had the chance to present:
• An article which informs the people with many details about the fire with an objective way.
• The authors of this article
• Tone of the article and the expressions that authors use to determine some events and facts.
• Our conclusion and thoughts.
You can see more in our presentation further down:
Conclusion:
To sum up, this project made a huge difference to the approach of this lab as it was one real-time case study we had to follow and analyze.
We are happy that we had the chance to do this process and we realize now that it was our baby step to what came next, the big project.
We would like to say a huge thank you to our instructor and mentor Betty Tsakarestou, who is always by our side from the first time until now 1 year later, and of course to Mrs Ksenou that induct us to the crisis management world.
#MarketTeam and #ViralVixens
Elena Tsakiridou, Marina Karvouni, georgia flaouna, Myrto Antipa, Olympia Georgakopoulou, Konstantina Nikolopoulou
Sources:
• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/us/california-fires.html
