It’s tough to be the official spokesperson when a crisis strikes an organization.  Emotions always run very high when something really bad happens. That was never more evident than in the case of Denise Tyrrell who was the spokesperson for the Metrolink commuter rail system in Southern California.  On the afternoon of September 12, 2008 Metrolink Train 111 collided head-on with a Union Pacific freight train near Chatsworth, California after apparently blowing through a red stop signal on the track.   25 people died and 135 were injured in one of the most horrific commuter train accidents in recent memory.  Battle-tested firefighters who have seen all matter of death and destruction were brought to tears as they described the rescue effort to reporters.  Within 24 hours of the incident, the emotions of the tragedy brought Metrolink to make one of the most common mistakes in crisis management: Metrolink jumped the gun by assessing blame.

In the immediate aftermath of any crisis there is considerable confusion about what happened and why.  Typically, the news media in any such event will seek to quickly establish cause or blame.  In the case of Metrolink 111 all the obvious questions came to the surface: With today’s technology, how could this fatal mistake have been made?  What were the engineers of the two trains doing at the time of the accident?  (As it turns out the Metrolink engineer was apparently sending text messages around the time of the crash.)  Was there some sort of mechanical breakdown?  Was it a human failing that caused this accident?  Or could it be a combination of factors led to this terrible outcome?  In the case of the Metrolink incident, it will be up to the National Transportation Safety Board to make that determination.  The NTSB is the indisputable expert at investigating airplane and train accidents.  They are experts at both determining cause and at handling the media blitz that often accompanies a catastrophe of this dimension.  I know this from my first hand experience as a reporter covering the crash of Northwest Airline Flight #255 in Detroit on August 16th of 1987.  156 lives were lost.  In the Detroit crash and in most other cases it takes months to make a final determination of cause.  What makes the Metrolink example so atypical is that the rail agency’s spokesperson Denise Tyrrell told the media less than 24 hours after the collision that the commuter train engineer Robert Sanchez was at fault.

Reports around this decision to lay blame indicate that Tyrrell made her statement with the permission of agency CEO David Sollow.  Sollow acknowledges this, but has since said it was a mistake.  The statements Tyrrell made to the media ultimately led to her resignation after she was criticized by at least one Metrolink board member and later the NTSB.  Tyrrell believes that she made the correct decision telling the L.A. Times that rebuilding the public trust requires being honest and upfront about what had occurred.  The problem here is that Tyrrell’s conclusion does not serve the public good.  The public deserves the careful and thoughtful consideration of all of the facts to make a scientific conclusion about the cause of the incident.  Further, that determination is the responsibility of the NTSB, not the spokesperson of the agency that has just had this tragedy hit her organization.  Saying anything about an exact cause in the first 24 to 48 hours does not serve the public good.

While Tyrrell’s conclusion about the cause of the incident may in fact be correct, there have been many instances where the facts revealed in the investigation will show that what seems to be obvious is not.  The NTSB has the expertise to produce a credible report in due time. Former NTSB investigator Barry Sweedler told the L.A. Times “You think you have a smoking gun,” he said, “then you get information that contradicts that the next day.”

So why did Denise Tyrrell shoot from the lip rather than following the widely established protocol of letting the NTSB do its job?  Pure emotion is the answer.  And while she took some of this criticism to be sexist, anyone who’s lived through a crisis involving the loss of life knows that male or female, it is easy to let the emotions of the moment dictate your response.  In the end, that is not helpful.  Tyrrell was choking back the tears at the news conference that she held the day after the accident.  It was at that news conference that she blamed the Metrolink engineer.  It is better to present a spokesperson that has better control of their emotions.  Tyrrell had seen too much of the devastation and become too invested in the tragedy to be effective as a spokesperson.  Just as important, any good crisis plan will counsel you to not jump to conclusions.  It is better to let the investigation run its course.  And while you can put all the appropriate steps in to a well thought out crisis plan, the one thing that is more difficult to plan for is the time when emotions negate all the proven thinking that is a part of a plan.