Crisis Management 1: The Day After Tomorrow

There is probably no give out photographic film in the world to look at crisis perplexity and Hollywoods miss of understanding than The Day After Tomorrow. This pic deals with a study catastrophic shell worldwide and shows viewers the alleged re fiddleion of the Ameri good deal government. Although it provides interesting drama for the movie, the focal point the Ameri laughingstock government reacts to the crisis is non exactly a poor example of crisis focussing, except likewise paints an unrealistic draft of the efficiency of the government and want responders.From the reservoir, the movie is a bit instructive about the environment and the American governments un provideingness to mind to the doomsayers about the coming crisis. No one from the vice president reduce wants to hear what the government employed climatologist has to say about the weather. The first paradox with this is that the climatologist is even trying to report to the vice president.It is possib le that in an positive crisis situation, the chain of command might be broken to convey more(prenominal) tuition cursorily to decision- shoprs, but the main character does so in the first place the crisis even hits the fall in States. If he had followed the chain of command, it appears more likely that crisis response teams could puddle begun developing scenarios for the crisis he was envisioning.Evaluating the crisis response in this movie in m some(prenominal) ways comes down to evaluating the response to several(prenominal) study(ip) crises jumper cable up to the huge global cooling event. The first event that affects the United States is a huge weather system, so-called super storms which ground pedigree traffic and begin causing flooding in Lower Manhattan. At approximately the same time, we see a series of huge tornadoes ruin Los Angeles and so we see the President declare a national specify forward of collar. However, non a single one of these crises were ha ndled in accordance with crisis focussing theory or crisis management reality as it exists today.First we will deal with the super storm and the subsequent plane crashes. The first shew that we as viewer accept of the increasing storm activity is on the flight of Jake Gyllenhaals character from Washington D.C. to New York for a assimilator bowl competition. Sam, Gyllenhaals character, is supposed to be terrified of flying any(prenominal)way, so when the plane hits turbulence the effect is supposed to be suspenseful. But from an mite management point of view, it is evidence that the Federal Aviation Administration would prevail grounded flights long in the lead the lightning got so hurtful that it was knocking planes out of the air.The movie claims several major plane crashes occur before the FAA can constrict planes out of the sky. This is just hogwash. After September 11, 2001, the FAA has procedures in place to beat to get planes on the ground. Tiny airports dotting the commonwealthside are equipped for emergency landings and later(prenominal) the turbulence on one flight was bad teeming to initiate oxygen masks, the FAA would subscribe at a time grounded flights flying through that storm.The second major problem that the movie has with crisis management comes in the form of the flooding in Lower Manhattan. When the problem is simply a backed up toilet at a prep school, it is possible that the response would be to remove the students to alternate locations in the city until the morning. However, these were high school children. There is no way that the school system would sop up allowed them to begin randomly moving around the city the next morning when the flooding had extended to the streets and do some roads and rail lines impassable.In addition, major flooding on an island like New York is a major crisis event. The movie depicted the beginning of the horror in New York City as just some other rain storm and showed no evidence of a crisis response from city hiticials. Even if the sudden cold snap had been unpredictable, the rain forecast wasnt and city officials and emergency personnel would have been preparing in one way or another before the freeze hit.This utter lack of demand for reality and crisis management strikes home again later in the movie when Sam and others have taken refuge in the library. For unknown reasons, the unaccompanied police officer in the bunch decides that it is remedy to encourage raft to walk out of the city rather than stay in the relatively warm and dry library where they have shelter and some food. turn not all police officers are trained to handle a serious crisis, the idea that this one encouraged mass to give up shelter and food to world an unknown trek is completely against any crisis management theory taught in the world. He had no reason to regard that pot would not be safe in the library and should have, would have kept them in that location.The response in Los Angeles to the tornadoes was also just ridiculous. The movie shows the country watching in horror as LA is destroyed, but no once do we hear the Federal Emergency Management violence begin mobilizing or calling their local counterparts or in any way reacting to the scene. Given the nature of the disaster, FEMA officials should have been on the phone before the winds stopped mobilizing search and pull through teams quickly to secure the city and retrieval teams should have been getting their alerts as well. Instead, the movie makes it appear that California was fundamentally ignored as it was blown extraneous.Finally, the real tragedy of the crisis approach in the movie is that the movie makers failed to realize that this type of national event would or so immediately result in martial law. Doctors would not be allowed to take care around at hospitals to see if their patients were evacuated and private ambulance companies would not be the ones excreting the hospitals of the t ransportable patients as the country was evacuated. And, the president would not be allowed to dare to move out of his office. He would be taken into some form of mobile command center, against his will if necessary, for the preservation of the country.Like any skillful Die Hard movie, Die Hard with a Vengeance involves bad guys and hostages. What makes this a classic crisis movie is the share of the movie dealing with the hostages in a public elementary school in New York City. The radical plot of the movie is that Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson have to stop the bag guys and get the code to defuse the run out in the school so that the hostages can get away. The problem is that the bad guys have claimed that if they see anything indicating that the school is being evacuated they will use a remote detonator and set off the bomb as the children try to evacuate.This movie does some things right as far as crisis management theory goes. School personnel, including teachers, are enlisted to sustain emergency personnel devise a plan to evacuate the structure and the bomb squad is brought in to attempt to find and defuse the bomb. Then, it wanders away from reality and never finds its way back. Detective John McClain (Bruce Willis) runs into a take with two children at the school. Zeus Carter (Samuel L. Jackson) refuses to take no for an answer and insists on helping McClain find the bad guys. Wrong wiz of the most big theories of crisis management is to minimize the risk. The police would never let an untrained civil get involved in the operation. If Mr. Carter insisted, he would be arrested and held until the crisis was over.The next dance step would be to remove the children from the location. Even though the bombers had baneened to detonate the bomb as soon as they saw any attempt to rescue the children, the first priority would have been to evacuate the children. A large portion of crisis theory is risk management and despite the fact that we we re dealing with children and the capableness impairment of life, those in charge of crisis management would have decided that it was better to attempt to get the children out of the building rather than leave them as sitting ducks for the bad guys to blow up at will. The goal of the crisis management team would have been secure the building in any way possible and to prevent as much loss of life as possible.Though they would understand the potential for second guessing if something went wrong, they would have also seen the potential for the situation to simply get worse if the children were not immediately removed from the building. While the idea of having the children sprint away from the building as fast as possible seems sound, the reality is that it would not have been attempt as the potential for injury there would be great as well. Real crisis management teams would have figured out when the bomb was and gotten the children to the exits last from it and then attempted to put in some sort of spud shielding to minimize the danger spot removing the children from the situation.Even more pitiful is the fact that the movie depicts the evacuation process as chaotic enough to allow two children to slip away from their teachers and law enforcement personnel to pass over out in the school. In a real emergency, teachers would have study and double-checked to make sure that every student was accounted for and emergency personnel would have been patrolling the building behind the evacuees to make certain that no one stayed behind.Finally, there was hardly a limited effort to control the news media. In a major crisis event of this type, cellular communication with the building would have been terminated in an effort to prevent word of the hostage crisis from attain the media and in the event that the media were made aware of the crisis, strict controls would have been utilize to keep them quiet about the crisis, including blackmail.It is not unusual for c risis personnel to make it clear to the media in the midst of a crisis that cooperation during the crisis will lead to better access to stories once the crisis is over. And, the news media makes decisions daily when it weighs the publics call for to know against security. If the reporters were informed of the delicate nature of the situation and the potential for the loss of human life, most would have willingly gone along with a blackout of the event until after the children were safe.The problem is that real crisis management does not necessarily make for good drama. Though the conflicts in decision-making procedures exist, they are not open discussions that anyone can participate in. In a real emergency, the crisis management is left to the professionals. Its too bad movies cant seem to understand that.The beauty of the crisis situation in Dawn of the Dead is that the crisis appears quickly, but not instantly and it develops mostly over night. This crisis is also insidious in th at people become infected and may not demonstrate their symptoms for several hours or even a day later. Worse yet, for crisis management teams, it is the clear up type of crisis imaginablethe nature of the scourge is unknown but speedily spreading and the disbelief that we have trained into ourselves and our children works to prevent speedy response to the crisis.The plague causing the zombi spirits in Dawn of the Dead has the capability to take hold and gain strength because the first few multiplication that medical personnel run into it, they disbelieve what they are seeing. Though it is measurable for emergency personnel to be skeptical, they c=should be willing to act based on observable facts even when the facts make no sense. That is the major failing of the emergency response in this movie. Otherwise, the writers largely got it right.When it became clear that a major epidemic was facing the city, officials would first have warned people to preserve in their homes and t hen, barring that would have set up emergency shelters. One of the good things about the use of emergency shelters in the movie is that they utilize traditional shelters like churches and a military base, an option that definitely would be considered in the event of a widespread event.The fact that before the emergency broadcasts end, they have contacted officials with the Centers for Disease Control and that the CDC is in charge on the event makes a great deal of sense. The only thing lacking would have been a stronger military presence on the streets once the state of emergency had been declared, but at least the movie attempts to explain this too when it mentions later on that the Army base has been overrun.Even more impressive than the away(p) response to the crisis, is the crisis management implementation that develops within the group of survivors. Though there is some initial posturing between the thief and the police officer, everyone quickly falls into roles appropriate t o the situation and begins to work together to overcome their immediate needs shelter that is safe from the threat.The opening scenes of the movie show people doing what is necessary to survive, even when it contradicts what it their normal behavior recipe, a classic remark of crisis theory. People will do what they need to do in wander to survive. This is true in the killing of the zombies and even the decisions to flee their homes.Once they total at the mall, after the mall is secured and they have successfully risen up against the mall security guards, the group begins to settle into the realities of crisis management they determine if they can meet their basic needs and then if there is an escape their condition. They put notes on the building roof to indicate the presence of survivors and they take up whatever pursuits help them get through the monotony of existence while the threat continues, including Steves incessant need for sex and the games of kill the zombie that the y play from the mall rooftop.Finally, the group reaches the point where it must investigate the threat and determine how to handle it. The movie does a good job of cover the learning process and the impact of all the stresses on the psyche of the people involved. The group determines to leave the mall when it becomes clear that they cannot live their indefinitely and then they begin a very crisis management approach to leaving, setting up supplies ad making their exit as defensible as possible. The only failure in their crisis management theory is the lack of available information with regard to other safe havens. It proves to be their undoing.However, unlike the other movies I have reviewed, this one seemed to understand that theory.1) Control or contain the threat2) Seek Shelter3)Seek other basic necessities.I think some other disaster movies would be more enjoyable if they could follow his pattern and stick to reality.