Risk Communication and Public Education in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on the 10th Anniversary of the ‘Black Friday’ Tornado

Abstract

In July 1997, on the 10th anniversary of the great ‘Black Friday’ Tornado, city officials of Edmonton, the print and broadcast media, agencies dealing in emergency management, and the national weather organisation recounted stories of the 1987, F5 tornado that struck Edmonton on a holiday weekend. The information campaign also presented environmental and educational information regarding a range of protective measures that should be adopted in the event of another tornado strike. A unique opportunity arose to study the effects of the 1997 risk communication campaign, and to assess the extent to which a random sample from the population of Edmonton heard, understood, believed, confirmed, and responded to the low-key, non-urgent, environmental and educational warning messages. These behaviours comprise the General Hazards Risk Communication Model that guided this study, as developed by Mileti, Sorensen, Haas, Blanchard-Boehm and others. We found the following explanatory variables to be statistically significant in predicting whether our survey respondents adopted protective measures towards future occurrences of tornadoes following the information campaign: (1) levels of perceived vulnerability to future occurrences; (2) past experiences with the 1987 tornado event; (3) presentation of new environmental and educational information in the 1997 campaign; and, (4) levels of formal education.