Crisis Communication

Metrolink It’s funny how an incident can quickly hit the media with a sudden twist of events. The Lehman Brothers fiasco is a prime example, with the mortgage crisis the economy is currently facing and them having to face bankruptcy for what seems to be the third time, it is just impossible to predict where to actually jump in to control and diminish the situation. Metrolink is another crisis that faces that same problem. This crisis is not at all on the same scale as the Lehman Bros. situations, but it does have its similarities. Both situations ended with a number of people suffering and there were ways of preventing the situations, but it was realized to late. On a scale from one to ten, I believe that the severity of this crisis is a seven. I ranked it more than a five because people were injured, placed in critical condition or died. Also, with a situation like this, one person is bound to get the blame from Metrolink and those that suffered are bound to sue Metrolink for their lack of responsibility. This situation was an honest mistake and did not show an ounce of malice on the company’s part. If so, I would have rated this to be much more severe. We have discussed several types of crisis in class, Metrolink falls under the “Human Breakdown” crisis. As the investigation progressed, the entire accident was blamed on the operator, Robert M. Sanchez, because he was sending text messages while operating the train. This was obviously a way to make the families that lost a loved one in the accident feel better about knowing who or what was the reason of the accident, it also made the public feel content about it as well. It also took some heat off of Metrolink by placing the blame on one individual. Metrolink even went as far as to ban text messaging to those that are operating a train; this was another way of alerting the public that everything was under control, even though this was a regulation that already should have been put in place.