The number of incoming phone calls to PIO staff seemed unrealistically low to some PIO participants, but this was part of the exercise design to focus attention on internal information coordination. Southwest Washington Medical Center, Southwest Washington Health District, and the Educational Service District #112 all had stated a desire to have their representatives coordinate public information with the ECC PIOs. The positive interactions that resulted seem to indicate that at least with the cooperating agencies, joint information releases and a single point of contact within the ECC worked well to provide consistent coordinated messages to the media and to the public.

The surprise drop-in by a TV camera crew requesting interviewees was managed extremely smoothly by the PIO in charge. During exercise design it was thought that the PIOs would be too busy to manage the unannounced media presence and would simply politely schedule them for a briefing later. The PIOs exceeded expectations and pulled together a thorough media briefing for the requesting crew without any lapse in phone coverage or news release production. They did this in spite of it occurring during a time-sensitive, high-stress moment in the exercise, and while utilizing new PIOs with no ECC experience.

News release content varied. Some news releases did not contain as much information as possible from the other agencies present in the room, but no formal JIC was established and this was not an expectation of the exercise design team.  In at least one instance, incorrect information was sent and then had to be corrected due to not checking the facts with the affected agency first. It was noted, however that as the public information working relationships developed in the ECC, the later releases began encompassing more information from all agencies and were highly accurate.  The inclusion of fact sheets were helpful. Some information included was vague or disjointed (road closures), although this was the fault of exercise design in not anticipating the level of detail required by the PIOs. Some releases, although accurate in communicating a fact, included information that was minor and possibly distracting from major points.   Overall, though, the news releases contained excellent summary information, and represented a very good effort at sifting and condensing  the massive amounts of information.

Most ECC staff, except for the PIO and ECC management/section chief level, did not ever see a news release.  It is not current procedure to distribute them to all staff.  It was noted, however, that the news release was probably the best summary of information for all staff had they received a copy.

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