155: The First 48 Hours: Amtrak’s Effective Crisis Response After the Derailment

On Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021 in North Central Montana, there was an accident that set a crisis management timeline in motion. 91 1, where's your emergency? Hi, I just. I'm on an impact train in Montana that just crashed.

Breaking news this morning. At first light this morning, the NTSB on site investigators sifting through the wreckage of a deadly train crash in northern Montana. Cell phones captured the aftermath, but. But tonight the NTSB confirms multiple train mounted cameras were rolling before and after the deadly Amtrak derailment.

Welcome to a podcast where we help communicators create the right response at the right time and deliver it in the right place. In today's episode, a look at a crisis response timeline from a recent tragic incident. The derailment of an Amtrak train that runs between Seattle and Chicago that caused several cars to topple onto their side. In this episode, I'll share with you the immediate steps Amtrak took to respond to this crisis. That offers a timeline to follow if you ever find yourself managing an incident, managing the media relations, the crisis relations, or both, especially if you work for an organization that has more limited communication resources. As I mentioned, the derailment happened on Saturday, September 25th. The westbound Empire train derailed about 4pm near Joplin, a town of about 200. The accident scene is about 150 miles northeast of Helena and about 30 miles from the border with Canada. So here we start the timeline. That information that I just shared with you came from a statement by Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams. And that statement was sent soon after the derailment was reported. Media statements. Let's discuss what they are for a moment. They are short and they are to the point because the longer the statement, the less likely all the information in that statement will be reported. Also, it gives the press the opportunity to hack away at the contents if it's too long. If you are writing a media statement, give the statement substance. Write the facts, just the facts, but as many of them that you can that pertain to the incident. Think of the media statement as you writing a story for the reporter. You're laying everything out in mostly a paragraph. And before you send it out, you'll want to get leadership and legal to sign off on that statement. Now keep in mind, a media statement is not a press release. Press releases are longer and more detailed and they're usually written to announce an event or a launch. So think promotional. A statement, on the other hand, is a reaction to an event. A press release wants to make news. A media statement controls it. All right, next onto the website as soon as the statements were released, The Amtrak website, Amtrak.com updated the information directly onto the website. If you went to their website, you would see an alert about the incident. At the top of the website there is a red banner. At the top of the homepage there is an explanation mark or point, however you call it, in a circle. And there's an arrow pointing to the Empire Builder derailment in Joplin, Montana. The Empire Builder, that's the name of the route. You click the banner, that red banner, and it will jump immediately to a popup. Not to a page, but to a popup. And in that popup is the most recent media statement. Also on that pop up, they added all the adjustments that were made because of that incident and they used the word adjustment, not cancellations, but adjustments. That's managing the expectation of the customer, someone who's going to that page who's wondering, you know, if the train is still on time. So in this case, in the adjustments, you read the cancellations, the delays of the other routes, the 1,800number for customers, and a note stating that Amtrak will provide additional details when they are available. It's that use of that pop up is a tactic to keep the crisis under control. It is pointing people, it's pointing the press, the customers, people affected by the derailment directly to one page. Not to a website, but to one page. Now next, it's September 26th, the day after the derailment. And if you go to the Media center page, so that's media.amtrak.com you'll see a message from the Amtrak CEO, Bill Flynn. You've heard me talk about this on the podcast many times and in my book as well. Really, the book is just a GU for leadership, communication, indestructible communications for leaders. And this is a tactic that I like to see in any crisis, any client that I work with. This is a tactic that we're using. In the case of Amtrak, Bill Flynn, the CEO is front and center. You go to that statement, you're going to see a photo of Flynn. Not your typical bio photo. You're not going to see this photo on LinkedIn or in the Wall Street Journal. It's a CEO looking straight faced. He's wearing a black pinstripe suit with a light blue tie. I don't know this for a fact, but this photo to me is the concern photo. It's the incident photo, it's the crisis photo. It's a photo you want to see when something has happened. Under the photo is his statement Let me read you the first sentence of it. His statement from Bill Flynn, the CEO of Amtrak. We are in mourning today for the people who lost their lives due to the derailment of the Empire Builder train Saturday near Joplin, Montana on the BNSF railway, as well as the many others who were injured. We have no words that can adequately express our sorrow for those who lost a loved one or who were hurt in horrible event. They are in our thoughts and prayers. Wise writing to put thoughts and prayers at the end of that first statement, starting with our thoughts and prayers as your first statement. It's too much of a platitude nowadays. That's an excellent first statement. The next section. We are fully cooperating with the investigation, working closely with the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Railroad Administration, so on and so forth. We share the sense of urgency to understand why the accident happened. However, until the investigation is complete, we will not comment further on the accident itself. Do you follow what Amtrak is following in this statement? It is straight from. Well, I would like to think it's straight from my plan, but my plan. The indestructible PR response is exactly how it is written in this statement. If you notice, the first step one is own it. They're owning it right away. Now, typically I mentioned that you acknowledge, you accept, you apologize, you admit all of the things that are there. What they did is they admitted their sorrow, their tremendous sorrow. So they started off with that and it did not come off as a platitude. Their next step is they're explaining it, explaining that they're fully cooperating. Now, the third step, sure enough, is in the third paragraph. Amtrak's immediate and sustained focus is on doing everything we can to help our passengers and crew, especially the families of those who were injured or died at this painful and difficult time. Our Incident Response team has been initiated. Step three, promise it. What are your plans? What are you doing about it? That is all in CEO Bill Flynn's letter. Also on that letter, at the end of his statement, his name, Bill Flynn, is hyperlinked. You can click on his name. Once you click on Bill Flynn, the link will go to a bio page and that's where you'll find out all the information that you need to know about Amtrak. Whether you're in the press, you're reporting on it, you're doing a story on it, whether you're a customer, all of listed in a pull down menu that's open to the press and to the public, everything they need by way of background. So as I mentioned board of directors, Amtrak facts, leadership, government affairs, FOIA requests if you want to send an employee praise. All of that is on one page under the media page. Also in this media section is the news contact. Where does the press go to get their information? There's the 1, 800 number. There is the email. Also a mention that it is not monitored after headquarters business hours. And then it explains when the headquarter business hours are Monday through Friday. For real time service information published 24, 7, follow where do you think you go? You go to Twitter @AmTraknec alerts and Amtrak Alerts. So that brings us to the last step here in the crisis incident timeline is the social media. Amtrak has four social media accounts. The first is Twitter. If you go to the Amtrak page on Twitter, you will see all of the statements, the press statements that they made, also the CEO statement and links back to the media page. If you go to their Facebook page, if you go to their YouTube page, if you go to their Instagram page, will you see any information about this derailment? No, not one bit. Why? Well, here's the hint in the Facebook page when they describe the page, they say on our Facebook page we want our riders to get to know us, but more importantly, we want to hear about your experiences aboard Amtrak and how we may help you make your journey more enjoyable. Tune in for deals and tips and the latest Amtrak news. You're not going to find information about a derailment in a social media channel that is dedicated for deals, tips and the latest positive Amtrak news. They're using Twitter alone to tell the story of the derailment. They're containing the crisis to one social channel. If your organization only has one channel and you only have Facebook, well, then naturally that's the channel where you need to go. But that's why I always advocate for my clients and on this podcast as well, to add Twitter into the mix. Twitter is your crisis response, your incident response social media platform. You can funnel all of the information onto that one channel because it's not an ideal situation to manage a crisis in the middle of all of your promotional videos and posts and photos. Keep Twitter for news. You only need one channel in a crisis because that's where the press is. They're already sitting in Twitter anyway. Twitter is where media is made, stories are reported and discussed. And at the time of this recording, a few days after the derailment, there still aren't any answers as to why the DE happened. Maybe by the time this is published, we'll have more information, more light will be shed on exactly why the derailment happened. But for now, right now, at this time of the recording, the story is contained in large part due to Amtrak's media relations efforts. Now, the transportation industry, it's well versed in incidents and accidents. The airlines, highways, trains, railways, cruise lines, that's where I worked as the head of communications. These industries, they're not winging it. Okay? Big corporate, no one's winging anything. There's a guide, that's when I worked at fema, it was called nims. It's a national incident management system and it offers guides for all levels. So whether it's government, non governmental organizations, private sectors, if they work together in their response in the recovery to an incident. So there's embedded plans there, there's also ics, and that's the incident command system. And ICS provides guidance for how to organize an organization's assets to respond to an incident. So I explain this by way of sharing how many plans that people already follow. But a lot of these plans are not being followed for organizations that don't have a lot of resources. They may be a small business, immediate size business, an association, they don't have a plan that they can directly follow, a well used one that people are well versed in doing. But here is your indestructible PR tip, because my point, these big agencies, big corporate, big business, they have big plans. But if you are managing a smaller company or organization, you can still respond like 1. Use your owned media to share all the information you can about the incident. And then on your shared sites, your social media is where you'll share all that information. And to contain the chaos, you're going to keep updating that information over and over again. And then eventually the story will be contained, the crisis will be over. And because you've managed it, and you managed it well in a small contained place, you're going to be able to get out of it. And everyone who needs the answers will have them. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you again here next week. Bye for now.