A primary concern for public managers in emergencies is to communicate important information to citizens, particularly if that information is intended to influence public behavior. The nature, methods, and frequency of public communication were all discussed in our interviews.

"We talked about the need for internal-external data coordination. One of the most telling aspects of this is that we are in a new world with the Web. People have much higher expectations from the government as to what information they can get and the speed that they can get it."

The concepts of hazard and risk are very difficult to communicate to the general public. The WTC situation illustrates this vividly. The attack itself, the subsequent anthrax incidents, and the lingering effects of the Towers’ collapse engendered fear and uncertainty that leaders needed to address. However, information regarding health and environmental risks was inadequate and caused considerable negative public reaction. Conflicts among the environmental and health agencies at the local and federal levels resulted in a dearth of information to the public about the possible short- and long-term health risks associated with the event. Federal policy makers directed expert staff to withhold or supply information in various formats without sufficient understanding of the science involved or of effective ways to communicate hazard information to a lay audience. As a consequence, little was communicated and public reaction turned to conspiracy theories and homegrown opinions about the health hazards. Beyond information associated with the WTC event, our interviews indicate that information to prepare the public for future emergency situations continues to be inadequate in content, specificity, and accessibility.

"The City didn't have a central hot line that was well publicized during that time. It now has a whole variety of help lines and its 311 strategy will consolidate them . . . it will be a new channel, the voice channel, the help line channel for citizens to use."

Call centers were used by several organizations to help meet the public need for information. Through them, callers could volunteer or donate to the recovery, ask questions, receive referrals to service programs, and generally get information without going physically to a remote or congested site. A little known example of this kind of service, converted from routine to emergency operation, was the role played by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. The Department normally operates a busy taxpayer assistance hot line in Albany during tax season. The hot line was activated immediately after 9/11 and more than 100 operators, already experienced in dealing with the public, were quickly trained and continually re-trained to eventually handle over 180,000 calls for information and assistance. Emergency information lines were also activated in New York City by various service organizations. As with the Tax Department call center in Albany, the Red Cross created a large call center to handle triage and client assistance a long distance away from the disaster site, in Virginia. This location provided a site that could be staffed quickly in an area unaffected by the immediate aftermath of the event. Since September 11, the City of New York has established a "311" help line as part of the Mayor’s efforts to improve public service and information dissemination. Such a facility can quickly be reoriented to provide timely emergency information.

"I know a lot of people were tracking progress by how much green was filtering down toward the red area and I think it was a real morale builder. On a daily basis we could change the map, shrink the red zone, put areas into operation and post this kind of map to the Web."

The "red zone" represented the quarantined area of the City where no one was allowed to enter except public safety and emergency workers. In the weeks following September 11, shrinking the perimeter of the red zone became a daily goal at the EOC because it represented an increasing level of recovery. Regularly updated maps and citizen-oriented status information about the diminishing size of the red zone and surrounding areas were posted on NYC.gov signaling the slow return to normalcy for City residents and businesses.

In contrast to the clarity and focus of information on NYC.gov, US EPA’s Web site presented an overwhelming volume of technical information about air quality presented in long tables, without context or interpretation that would help the public understand or act on it. Other organizations posted information of varying format, content, and utility for public consumption. The array of different Web sites presented a challenge in itself. Several respondents noted that there was (and still is) no universal Web site for current disaster information in the United States or in a particular locality. Citizens could not turn to one well-known, authoritative site as a comprehensive information source. To be sure, there was a great deal of information to be found on the Web, but the almost universal ease with which information is posted to the Web makes it exceedingly difficult for users to identify the most accurate, timely, or authoritative sources.

Some interviewees discussed the limitations of the Web as a passive form of communication that "pushes" information without necessarily knowing what the public wants to "pull" in the way of crisis information. When used thoughtfully, the Web can be an excellent medium for disseminating information. However, maximizing the potential of this medium requires careful planning before a crisis. According to one federal official, agencies should have "templates for what you would put on a Web site or in fact sheets or hard copy reports . . . done well in advance. And when you have the data, you have to have some good visualization of data and data trends set up in advance." In this way, much of the energy that was diverted to questions of subject matter and format could be applied instead to data management and analysis.

"[CBS] became the pool or the center point of distributing photographic and aerial data to all networks and to all broadcast and print and electronic media for the City ... during the first two weeks or so, [City officials] were focused on other issues and it was easy for us to obtain the images from them and transmit those to the people we knew to take the pressure of the press off them."

During the WTC crisis, people turned first to television and then to the print media for news. While a great deal of independent news gathering and reporting took place, much of the information provided by TV networks, newspapers, and magazines came from government sources. The demand for news and updated information from the EOC was enormous. If left unmanaged, this demand would have interfered with the work there. At the same time, government officials recognized how important it was to have accurate, consistent information streaming to the public through all usual communication channels. Consequently, an unusual alliance among the media and the EOC allowed authoritative information about the recovery and restoration of public services to be pooled and released through a variety of outlets. CBS News acted as a press pool for mapping information, allowing the emergency operations teams on Pier 92 to concentrate on data analysis and quality without the need to constantly brief multiple media outlets. Through the CBS pool, authoritative, accurate information was regularly released to the print and broadcast media for public advisories and all outlets carried the same information each day, avoiding confusion over which source of information was most current or accurate. Participants in this arrangement who were interviewed agreed that it contributed to efficiency, accuracy, and openness, and it could be a useful model for similar situations in the future.