Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Verify the Veracity of Advice You Receive by Email — Even When It Comes from Trusted Sources

Bad infor­ma­tion flows around any­where, even within net­works of emer­gency man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als. Just yes­ter­day, there was an arti­cle cred­ited to Doug Coup fly­ing around the email sys­tem. It came to me from an indi­vid­ual in my branch, who got it from some­one at another branch with a lot of emer­gency response expe­ri­ence, who got it from some­one at the fed­eral level and also has exten­sive emer­gency man­age­ment expe­ri­ence. The entire chain of peo­ple who had touched and for­warded the email was credible.

Unfor­tu­nately, nobody had both­ered to ver­ify the facts and advice espoused by the article.

In the for­warded arti­cle, Doug Copp talks about his expe­ri­ence with the Amer­i­can Res­cue Team Inter­na­tional but does not note that it is a pri­vate com­pany and that his expe­ri­ence is pri­mar­ily in coun­tries abroad, such as in Mex­ico and Turkey. He advo­cate the “Tri­an­gle of Life” rather than the “Duck & Cover” advice that the Amer­i­can Red Cross and FEMA pro­mote in the United States. His jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is that in his expe­ri­ence, build­ings col­lapse and “pan­cake” on the objects within them. There­fore, duck­ing under cover means get­ting crushed under the fur­ni­ture in ques­tion, while those who lie down next to the objects have a chance to sur­vive in the tri­an­gu­lar gap cre­ated by the floor above break­ing on the object and cre­at­ing a tri­an­gu­lar “lean-to” kind of space for survival.

How­ever, after only 15 min­utes of light research, I found a few cred­i­ble sources that refute the Tri­an­gle of Life advice.

Snopes.com is a good source for ver­i­fy­ing a lot of the stuff that goes around by email. Though it is not an aca­d­e­mic or author­i­ta­tive site, the Snopes folks typ­i­cally do a good job of inves­ti­gat­ing and assess­ing the valid­ity of com­mon chain emails or viral mes­sages going around social net­works. Their assess­ment is that the jury is still out on the Tri­an­gle of Life, but that it leans towards being crap advice.

Earth­quake Solu­tions is another pri­vate com­pany, in this case a con­sult­ing com­pany help­ing clients assess risks and develop mit­i­ga­tion and response plans. They cite that in their expe­ri­ence in the United States, Copp’s advice is wrong and down­right dangerous.

How­ever, the most author­i­ta­tive source is the Amer­i­can Red Cross itself. Cit­ing num­bers and spe­cific data from their expe­ri­ence with earth­quake response, the Red Cross pro­vides solid rea­sons why the “Drop, Cover, Hold On” is still the best course of action in an earth­quake sit­u­a­tion. The key points in their response are:

• “Drop, cover, and hold on!” is a U.S.-based rec­om­men­da­tion based on U.S. Build­ing Codes and con­struc­tion standards.
• Engi­neer­ing researchers have demon­strated that very few build­ings col­lapse or “pan­cake” in the U.S. as they might do in other countries.
• Most injuries hap­pened as a result of the col­lapse of [a street sec­tion, or] from falls caused by peo­ple try­ing to get out of their homes, or seri­ous cuts and bro­ken bones when peo­ple ran, bare­footed, over bro­ken glass.
• The Amer­i­can Red Cross has not rec­om­mended use of a door­way for earth­quake pro­tec­tion for more than a decade. The prob­lem is that many door­ways are not built into the struc­tural integrity of a build­ing, and may not offer protection.
• [Try not] to move (that is, escape) dur­ing the shak­ing of an earth­quake. The more and the longer dis­tance that some­one tries to move, the more likely they are to become injured by falling or fly­ing debris, or by trip­ping, falling, or get­ting cut by dam­aged floors, walls, and items in the path of escape.

The Red Cross is not say­ing that iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial voids is wrong or inap­pro­pri­ate. What we are say­ing is that “Drop, Cover, and Hold On!” is NOT wrong — in the United States. The Amer­i­can Red Cross, being a U.S.-based orga­ni­za­tion, does not extend its rec­om­men­da­tions to apply in other coun­tries. What works here may not work else­where, so there is no dis­pute that the “void iden­ti­fi­ca­tion method” or the “Tri­an­gle of Life” may indeed be the best thing to teach in other coun­tries where the risk of build­ing col­lapse, even in mod­er­ate earth­quakes, is great.

I made the mis­take of for­ward­ing on the orig­i­nal Tri­an­gle of Life arti­cle to close friends because it seemed cred­i­ble and came from peo­ple whom I trust. I am glad that some­thing tick­led the back of my brain and prod­ded me to check up on the infor­ma­tion. After just a bit of cur­sory research, I found enough con­trary advice from other sources that I trust — most notably the Amer­i­can Red Cross response — that I had to quickly write back to my friends to tell them to dis­re­gard the prior infor­ma­tion I’d just sent to them. I was even care­ful to look for attempts to dis­credit Doug Copp’s the­ory by dis­cred­it­ing him alone, but this was not the case. His advice, at least in an Amer­i­can and Cana­dian con­text and based on prior expe­ri­ence and data from the field, is wrong and dangerous.

Even when infor­ma­tion comes from trusted sources, it is very much worth your while to do some per­sonal research to ver­ify it — par­tic­u­larly when it’s about sav­ing lives.