Risk Communication and Public Education in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on the 10th Anniversary of the ‘Black Friday’ Tornado

Abstract

In July 1997, on the 10th anniversary of the great 'Black Friday' Tornado, city officials of Edmonton, the print and broadcast media, agencies dealing in emergency management, and the national weather organisation recounted stories of the 1987, F5 tornado that struck Edmonton on a holiday weekend. The information campaign also presented environmental and educational information regarding a range of protective measures that should be adopted in the event of another tornado strike. A unique opportunity arose to study the effects of the 1997 risk communication campaign, and to assess the extent to which a random sample from the population of Edmonton heard, understood, believed, confirmed, and responded to the low-key, non-urgent, environmental and educational warning messages. These behaviours comprise the General Hazards Risk Communication Model that guided this study, as developed by Mileti, Sorensen, Haas, Blanchard-Boehm and others. We found the following explanatory variables to be statistically significant in predicting whether our survey respondents adopted protective measures towards future occurrences of tornadoes following the information campaign: (1) levels of perceived vulnerability to future occurrences; (2) past experiences with the 1987 tornado event; (3) presentation of new environmental and educational information in the 1997 campaign; and, (4) levels of formal education.

Tornado warning dissemination and response at a university campus

“…Education level may play a role as it has in other studies (e.g., Blanchard-Boehm and Cook 2004;De Man and Simpson-Housley 1987), although the education level of the university community is somewhat higher that the general population. Having a high school diploma has been shown to make one more likely to take shelter during a tornado (Schmidlin et al 2009;Balluz et al 2000) or to prepare for future events (Blanchard-Boehm and Cook 2004). Also, of prime importance is whether people heard and understood the warnings (Doswell et al 1999).…”

Development of an online hazards atlas to improve disaster awareness

“…Thus, there is a need for focused educational materials designed to improve public awareness so that individuals can make more intelligent decisions about preparing for, surviving and recovering from hazards when they occur. Blanchard-Boehm and Cook (2004) have indicated that in order to motivate hazard preparedness and mitigation, we need resources that can communicate clearly to individuals with little to no personal experience with specific hazards. Even for individuals with personal experience, the reiteration of information about the risks of hazards is important.…”

Source Credibility and Psychological Well-Being among Residents Lived at Flood Prone Areas

“…Overload of information also created doubtful about the quality of information (Bates et al, 2006). In this situation, source credibility are very important aspect in disaster because residents lived at live at flood prone areas needs to evaluate information received by them (Blanchard-Boehm & Cook, 2004). In flood disaster context, the spokesperson should be credible enough to persuade people to receive flood disaster preparedness messages (Thomson & Ito, 2012).…”

“…Previous studies also shows that the credibility of the source has substantial impact on the receivers of the message. Source credibility is important in marketing to influence and persuade consumers (Blanchard-Boehm & Cook, 2004).…”

“…The element in risk communication is source credibility, channel and the information flood warning (Mayhorn & McLaughin, 2014). Source credibility of the spokesperson that can help people living in flood-prone areas to maintain psychological well-being of their health and well-being of the family himself (Blanchard-Boehm & Cook, 2004;Thomson & Ito, 2012). Source credibility of the spokesperson is also affecting the attitudes, goals, persuade, and influence the behavior of recipients of the message (Kurita, Nakamura, Kodama & Colombage, 2006).…”