COMM360

Separate reports in last week’s NYT underscore the importance of planning ahead to respond to — and help prevent — potential crisis situations.

The first report concerned the Long Island Power Authority’s struggles to restore service in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The article builds a compelling case for how the lack of pre-crisis preparation can affect post-crisis recovery efforts; an excerpt:

… the Long Island Power Authority has repeatedly failed to plan for extreme weather, despite extensive warnings by government investigators and outside monitors. In fact, before Hurricane Sandy, the authority was significantly behind on perhaps the most basic step to prepare for storms — trimming trees that can bring down power lines.

Customers have been exasperated not only by a lack of power, but also by the authority’s inability to communicate basic information. Long Islanders have recounted tales of phones unanswered at authority offices, of wildly inaccurate service maps and of broken promises to dispatch repair crews.

Another set of reports — regarding BP and the 2010 Gulf oil spill — demonstrated just how costly the lack of crisis-prevention measures can be.

One article noted that, per the U.S. government, it was “BP’s negligence in sealing an exploratory well” that was responsible for the Deepwater Horizon explosion. A related report tallied up the money BP has had to spend as a result: more than $36 billion so far and counting.

Together, these reports raise the question of how much more economical it might have been had BP invested the necessary money up front to properly seal the exploratory well and thereby (presumably) prevent the explosion and resulting devastation.