Author: Amelia MuellerAmelia Mueller is the North Central Texas Emergency Communication District's communications coordinator. Her responsibilities include managing NCT911.org and its social media platforms, creating educational content, managing the public education program, and more.

A lot of things have changed in 2020 and though we never thought we’d go into Halloween concerned about masks (at least, not the kind of masks we usually associate with Halloween!) and social distancing, we’ve found ourselves wondering how to stay safe this Halloween. Luckily, most of the precautionary measures we’re already taking can still keep our families, loved ones, and ourselves safe. We’ve highlighted some ways your family can adapt these precautions to stay spooky safe on October 31!

Stick with Outdoor Events

Haunted houses may be a Halloween staple for you, but experts advise that staying outdoors where you can maintain at least six feet of distance between yourself and others is preferred. Unfortunately, most haunted houses don’t allow for this. But there are plenty of outdoor events to attend in North Texas that can help you stay safe this Halloween.  

• Corn Maze at Yesterland Farm

Where: Canton, Texas

Cost: $18.95 online or $24.95 at the gate. There are deals for group packages and super passes that you can review here.

Nothing says fall like a corn maze. Explore Yesterland Farm’s 3-acre maze as well as their 30 other activities and attractions. Their Spooktacular Nights begin October 2nd – October 31 and that’s when things get spooky! They encourage social distancing, offer hand-washing and sanitizing stations, and ask that guests wear face masks when social distancing is not possible.

• Mainstay Farm Park

Where: Cleburne, Texas

Cost: $19.95 for a weekend pass, but look online for special rates.

Called the Biggest Backyard in Texas, Mainstay Farm Park in Cleburne offers over 40 outdoor attractions on its grounds including a seasonal pumpkin patch, hayride, and more! With acres of activities spread throughout the farm, Mainstay requests visitors practice social distancing and other precautionary measures to protect their staff and guests.  

• Shadow Creek Pumpkin Farm

Where: Midlothian, Texas

Cost: $10 per person, free for 2 and under or 55 and older, and $8 for veterans or first responders.

A $10 pass will get you a whole day of corn mazes, hay rides, pumpkin games, and more! The 10 acre park has a lot of fall festivities for every age group. The farm has adopted the “care+” mentality in response to COVID-19 and commits to providing hand sanitizing/washing stations, making sanitizing common areas a top priority, encouraging social distancing and mask wearing, and other precautions. 

• Autumn at the Arboretum

Where: Dallas, Texas

Cost: $12.00 – $17.00

If you’ve never experienced Autumn at the Arboretum, this is your chance! Every year the Dallas Arboretum highlights the “art of the pumpkin” with a festive display of more than 90,000 pumpkins, gourds, and squash. It’s a great photo opportunity for the Instagrammer in all of us! To avoid overcrowding, guests book a reservation for a four-hour time slot and masks are required for those aged five and up.    

Follow the Guidelines of Your Community

Communities have been affected by COVID-19 in different ways, so to stay safe this Halloween make sure you adapt to what works in your area. If you’re not sure what that means, you can visit Halloween 2020, which provides a map created by the Harvard Global Health Institute to help families identify what kinds of activities may be safe for their area based on COVID-19 risk levels. 

Keeping Following Standard Precautions 

We’ve all followed the recommendations from the CDC like washing our hands regularly, social distancing, and wearing a mask when distancing isn’t possible. By following these suggestions, you can keep your Halloween safe. You may have to make some changes to your usual traditions, like a costume parade around the neighborhood instead of trick or treating, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a spooky safe Halloween!   

In 2018, President Trump signed the national Suicide Hotline Improvement Act into law. The purpose of the act was to research and identify if the creation of a 3-digit number for the National Suicidal Prevention Lifeline would be worth the time, effort, and cost. In August of 2019, the FCC released their findings in a report and on Thursday, July 16, they unanimously voted to finalize 988 as the three-digit number for the suicide lifeline and will require phone carriers to begin this process by summer 2022. Until 988 is established, callers should continue to use the crisis center’s 10-digit number: 1-800-273-8255. What does a 3-digit suicide lifeline number mean for 911?

The 2018 report found that suicide rates have increased by 30% in the past two years, particularly in at-risk groups like veterans and the LGBTQ community. The FCC consulted multiple subject matter expert groups, including the North American Numbering Council (NANC), the Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA).

Currently, the SAMHSA funds the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is made up of 163 crisis centers across the country. Texas has 5 crisis centers and in the first 4 months of 2019 those centers received 64,361 calls. (If you’d like to see the call stats for your state, you can download the report here).

In the end, the report supported the creation of a 3-digit suicide hotline stating that it would “likely make it easier for Americans in crisis to access potentially life-saving resources” and determined that 988 would act as the new number, which brought about the announcement on July 16. That leaves the same question in every telecommunicator’s mind: Can life-saving resources not be obtained through the 911 program?

The importance of 911’s role in the topic of suicide in the United States was noted. The NANC stated utilizing a 3-digit number for the suicide line may “alleviate the pressure on 911 call takers and allow the caller to obtain assistance for other non-suicide related services in addition to mental health referrals.”

The SAMHSA also hope that “the [National Suicide Prevention] Lifeline could be more effective in preventing suicides and providing crisis intervention if it were accessible via a simple, easy-to-remember, 3-digit code.” Though 911 telecommunicators are trained on handling suicidal callers and other mental health concerns, Lifeline callers are trained specifically in Applied Suicide Intervention Skills and may be able to offer more specific services to suicidal callers.

The lifeline operators are also trained to deescalate the situation and attempt to work with the caller to brainstorm ways they can calm themselves down or otherwise provide additional help or resources for their mental state without contacting emergency services. However, the lifeline does acknowledge that when an “imminent risk” presents itself to the operator, they are trained to reach out to emergency services. Because lifeline calls are not geo located, operators use the caller’s area code and prefix to determine the correct PSAP to contact. These calls typically arrive through the PSAP’s 10-digit line. If someone contacts the lifeline through its online chat feature, location information is determined via the IP address, which can be determined by contacting the internet provider.

The lifeline pays for access to a PSAP database to identify the correct agency to contact for a caller in imminent risk, says Director of Clinical Best Practices Shye Lewis.

Most 911 professionals would agree that the creation of the 3-digit suicide hotline number will not eliminate suicidal calls in the PSAP. It’s important that telecommunicators continue to be trained properly on handling suicidal callers, but creating a 3-digit number for the suicide prevention lifeline may destigmatize mental health and allow more lives to be saved.

The national suicide prevention lifeline encourages local PSAPs to build a strong relationship with their local lifeline center to assist in future call transfers. You can find your closest crisis center here.

Sources

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-359095A1.pdf

https://www.sprc.org/resources-programs/state-lifeline-reports

https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.nena.org/resource/resmgr/Standards/NENA-STA-001.1.1-2013_Suicid.pdf

Every 9-1-1 telecommunicator knows that communication is an important part of any crisis. The coronavirus pandemic has made that clearer than ever, especially when considering the number of rumors and false reports circulating the web. How does an agency ensure it is delivering concise, accurate, and timely information to its relevant audiences? It’s important to start with a plan.

To develop your crisis communications plan (CCP), ask yourself these five questions.

What could go wrong?

The goal for a crisis communications plan is to be proactive rather than reactive. Too many agencies and organizations end up responding to a crisis without any kind of preplanning. But by asking yourself what could go wrong, you can begin to build the foundation of your crisis communications plan around the potential emergencies you may face.

What crisis events could affect the goals and objectives of your organization? Potential events might include:

• A natural disaster such as a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, etc.
• A pandemic or epidemic
• A public relations scandal involving a prominent member of your staff
• A technology failure
• An internal crisis, such as confrontation between employees, dissatisfied staff members, boycotts, strikes, union discrepancies, etc.
• And so many more

Which of the above would impact the goals of your agency? Most likely all of them could, but some may be more likely to occur than others. Start your crisis communications plan by focusing on those crises. After a basic plan is developed, you may want to start including the unlikely scenarios into your plan over time. A few months ago, a pandemic was an unlikely crisis event, but those who included it in their communications plan are glad they did.

What needs to be done?

This question is less about action items and more about determining who needs to be involved during a crisis. By identifying necessary steps, you will determine who needs to be included on your crisis communications response team. Every action deemed essential to providing effective communications should be assigned to a staff member and that action should include at least two back up staff members should that person be unable to perform the task.

Who needs to know?

Before distributing any communications materials it is necessary to identify your audiences. There are some obvious ones like your local and, if applicable, national media or your citizens, but what about other stakeholders?

When developing the NCT9-1-1 CCP, we divided our audience members into two categories: internal and external. External audiences are those outside of your organization such as citizens and media members while internal are relevant stakeholders such as city or county leadership, your staff members, adjacent agencies, etc.

To identify your audiences, start by listing everyone who may be impacted by a potential crisis. Some will be obvious but dig a little deeper to identify those who may slip through the cracks. Take into consideration every possible angle to ensure no one gets left out, otherwise you may be scrambling to explain their omission later.

What are you going to say?

NCT9-1-1 developed a messaging matrix with pre-written statements for a variety of audience types that are ready to go. Some revisions may be necessary, but a starting off point takes away some of the pressure that comes from creating messaging from scratch in the moment.

During a crisis you’ll release two key types of messaging: an initial statement and updates. The initial statement acknowledges the existence of a crisis and lets your audiences know that you are aware and taking action, even if that action is as simple as waiting for answers from those involved. Your initial statement should go out as soon as possible, but give yourself enough time to craft something that is honest and truthful. It should contain a short summary of the scenario and what actions your affected audiences need to take, if any.

The initial statement should address as many of the six “Ws” as possible:

• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• Why
• And How (not weapons, unless relevant of course)

It should also include a link or information of where future updates about the crisis can be found (on your website, social media channels, etc.) and when you plan on providing the next update.

Updates are regular statements provided after the initial statement that detail developments about the scenario. These will vary in length depending on the amount of new information you have and should be used to address any rumors or any of the six “Ws” that you were unable to address in the initial statement. We provide updates to a crisis event every hour until the crisis is resolved, even if our update is only to say that the situation has not changed.

You may also want to provide materials near the end of the crisis, such as a press release or a press statement, or offer analytical reports detailing what happened and your mitigation plans for your internal audiences.

How will you tell people?

How to distribute your messaging is more complicated than you might think. A lot of agencies post a screenshot of a press release on their Facebook page and call it a day. However, if you want to be in control of the message and the reputation of your agency, it’s important to actively distribute updates and statements.

That’s not to say social media isn’t a valuable tool. In fact, it is probably your most valuable distribution method. We suggest hosting your messaging on your website and using tools like social media, emails, and press release platforms to distribute that information. This way, all of your statements and updates will be in one place, which makes it easier to follow what’s going on.

Every time you make an update, you should also post that update on social media with a link to your webpage. Include timestamps to keep things organized and have the most relevant information at the top of the page.

Though social media will be the primary way you communicate with your external audiences, email will probably be how internal audiences are notified. You can include the link to your webpage with every internal email so it’s easier for these audiences to keep track of developments.

What can you improve on?

Once the crisis is over it’s important to look back and reflect on opportunities to improve on. When collecting data for our After-Action Report, NCT9-1-1 looks at the following parameters to determine if we were successful or not in getting our message across.

• Page views on webpage hosting statements and updates, including average time spent on the page and traffic sources. Traffic sources are how views navigated to our page, the most common being social media, email, or search engines.
• Overall reach of social media posts as well as the number of engagements, retweets, and reshares.
• Number of emails sent, number of recipients, the open rate of each email by percentage and the bounce rates of each email. Not all email platforms offer these types of analytics, but at the very least keep track of how many people were sent your emails.
• The number of traditional media reports of the crisis, including the number of different networks and a short summary of the key talking points. We also keep track of the number of media requests as well.

Your crisis communications plan is a living document and with every crisis scenario your agency goes through, it will grow and develop with new best practices. Remember that it is impossible to predict everything and one of the most valuable skills a communicator can have during this kind of an event is adaptability.