Disaster Recovery Journal - Spring 2001 Issue- From the Perspective of Ed Devlin

Did you ever want to know how an incident escalates to a crisis? As business continuity planners, we should always want our company to avoid a crisis.
Well last week, I watched a tragic incident being handled poorly and become a crisis. On Feb. 2, a 5-year-old boy was crushed to death in a Philadelphia elementary school while waiting in line for lunch. A 300-pound lunch table that was stacked in an upright position fell on Jonathan Cozzolino. It was a tragic accident.
If the Philadelphia Public School system “had taken charge quickly” by offering a sincere apology and by making a statement to all parents indicating how they were going to “fix the problem,” they could have avoided the crisis. They should have “gathered the facts” quickly and “told their story” to the parents and the media. How did they handle it? They provided very little information for five days, most of which was deemed to be “elusive.” At a Home and School Association meeting on February 8, six days after the accident, parents who have children in the school wanted to know how could this have happened? According to a Philadelphia newspaper, “The school principal gave the same ‘elusive answers’ other school officials were giving. Up to that point in time, school system officials response to questions from parents and the media, was that an investigation was under way, and all questions would be answered when it was complete.” Since the accident occurred 6 days before the meeting was held, parents probably expected that some answers would be forthcoming. The fact that they were still getting ‘elusive’ answers only caused them to get angrier.
Allowing days to go by without providing some indication that the school system was in charge of the situation and had it “under control” allowed time for rumors to start. While some of the rumors are probably unfounded, they must all now be addressed. Rumors such as: “The table was broken.” (Why was it still in the lunch room?); that a note attached to the table indicated it was supposed to have been moved 10 days ago.” (Why wasn’t it?); that there was a warning issued a year ago by the Consumer Protection Agency and the manufacturer about the danger of storing the tables in an upright position. Now all their rumors must be answered.
If the representatives of the school system had managed the crisis, this would have been a story about a tragic accident that took the life of a young boy. Everyone could have grieved, Jonathan’s family, the children in his class, all the parents who have children in the school, even the people who work for the school system.
Now the story is not about the little boy, it is about the way the school system handled the tragedy. It was not only the refusal to provide information, it was the cold, unattached way in which the incident was approached. You would have thought the school system would have learned from the SEPTA experience in December 1999. That was another example of an organization approaching a crisis with a bad attitude, an attitude that said, jury awards in lawsuits against government entities in Pennsylvania is capped at $250,000.
In the SEPTA incident, Shareif Hall, a four-year-old boy, was riding the escalator at a subway station with his mother and older brother. His sneaker snagged at the top of the escalator when the top step dropped away. His mother, Deneen, screamed for help as the escalator chewed her youngest child’s foot off.
How did SEPTA handle this incident? First, when Deneen Hall filed a lawsuit against SEPTA, the transportation authority responded with a counter-suit, blaming the mother for her son’s injuries. SEPTA sued Hall despite the existence of a report documenting that the escalator was unsafe, and despite the lack of evidence that Hall was in any way responsible for what occurred. (By the way, the trial showed that the counter-suit wasn’t personal against Hall. It was part of a policy in which SEPTA routinely counter-sued parents who filed lawsuits after their children were hurt while using the transit system, according to testimony by SEPTA’s top lawyer.)
Second, when requests for information were made in May 1997 by Thomas Kline, the Hall family’s lawyer, SEPTA provided only 44 pages of documents. When the judge in the trial, forced SEPTA employees to find all the documents that pertained to the case, SEPTA employees came to court the next day carrying newly released documents in envelopes, file folders, and large briefcases. The judge called the documents, 18 files that covered a table in her courtroom, “just overwhelming.”
SEPTA used a variety of excuses to explain why the documents were not provided until December 1999, 2-1/2 years after being requested. Some employees said they did not know the documents existed. Others have said they did not know they needed to be released. One of the documents showed “SEPTA had actual knowledge of the deteriorating escalators two and a half years before Shareif Hall’s accident.” Another document, written 19 days before Shareif’s accident, said that escalator in question, needed immediate repairs or it would not be safe to operate.
The judge called SEPTA’s failure to turn over the documents an obstruction of justice. She found SEPTA in contempt of court and fined SEPTA $1 million for not giving information about its escalator maintenance and accident investigations to attorneys representing the boy. Further the judge explained to the jury that they could find SEPTA violated Shareif’s civil rights, if it acted with “deliberate indifference” about a “state-created danger” that affected the boy’s “bodily integrity or freedom from bodily pain or assault.” The civil rights claim lifts the state cap on the verdict.
Now back to the current crisis, the Philadelphia School incident. Why do I feel they allowed this accident to escalate to a crisis? On Friday evening, February 9, it was announced on the 6 p.m. news that a lawsuit was being filed against the Philadelphia School system. The lawyer that was representing Jonathan’s mother was Thomas Kline. Yes, the same Thomas Kline that took SEPTA to task for the handling of the Shareif Hall incident. The same lawyer that convinced a jury to find SEPTA guilty of an infraction of Shareif’s civil rights. That jury’s decision was for $51 million. An out-of-court settlement was later settled by the Hall family and SEPTA for $7.5 million.
After Mr. Kline investigates the Philadelphia School system’s operations, I wonder what the jury will give to Jonathan’s family? That’s why I feel the school system created a “crisis.”

Ed Devlin, CBCP, has provided business recovery planning consulting services since 1973 when he co-founded Devlin Associates. Since then, Mr. Devlin has assisted over 300 companies in the writing of their BRP’s and has made over 800 seminars and presentations worldwide.

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