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Panic Attacks!
Panic has attacked Connecticut.
Now, Connecticut tries to attack panic
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Business New Haven
10/29/2001
By: Mitchell Young
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From one end of Connecticut to the other, the war on terrorism has come home. From the headquarters of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in Hartford to the 19th floor of the Knights of Columbus Tower in downtown New Haven to a bagel shop in Andover, terror struck.
Unlike the unknown assailants that infected a Florida tabloid newsroom and mailed anthrax-carrying packages to the New York Post, NBC, ABC, CBS and the U.S. Capitol, in Connecticut the assailants were all of us. Not that we received or sent any anthrax - but we joined the many in transmitting fear.
On October 11, Joseph Faryniarz, a 22-year DEP employee, did more than his part in undermining public confidence when he told supervisors he found a yellowish white powder on his desk with the misspelled label “Anthax.”
In a matter of minutes, a state agency charged with responding to hazardous spills and bioterrorism was itself evacuated, kicking off Connecticut's first week of anthrax scares.
Faryniarz knew that the material was a harmless substance as he sat by and watched the DEP being evacuated. He continued to lie to federal officials under direct questioning and eventually implicated two innocent coworkers. Only after failing a polygraph test did he finally confess that he had known the powder and note were a hoax.
Charged in U.S. District Court in Hartford for lying to a federal agent, Faryniarz is on paid administrative leave. According to published reports, a federal grand jury is investigating the incident and additional arrests are possible.
Anthrax scares also arrived in cities and towns across the state, including: Andover, Bridgeport, Colchester, East Hartford, Fairfield, Glastonbury, Groton, Hartford, Milford, New Haven, Newtown, Shelton, Stratford, Terryville, Trumbull, Vernon, Watertown, West Haven, Willimantic and Windsor Locks. New Haven has accounted for more than 20 anthrax-scare reports and Trumbull 11.
Gov. John G. Rowland has urged people to remain calm and called for common sense - “to think about whether the terrorists would attack the Stop & Shop in Naugatuck.”
But common sense was in short supply, and by October 17 the DEP had responded to 140 Anthrax “scares,” while the state's Department of Public Health was logging 50 to 60 calls per day.
Widely circulated reports of anthrax-infected letters finding their way from Malaysia to a Microsoft subsidiary in Arizona, to New York Gov. George Pataki's Manhattan office and from Atlanta to a Nigerian businessman have all been proven false.
In Connecticut, “suspicious packages,” hoaxes and apprehensiveness about countless powdery substances generated dozens of responses by state Haz-Mat teams and health inspectors, who were compelled to perform both field and laboratory tests of the unknown substances.
These scares were generated by everything from sugar in a bagel shop, to bird droppings on a driveway, powdered detergent in a laundromat and to dust on an elderly couple's car that passed by a construction site.
Also infected were defense-related sites at Electric Boat in Groton, where nine employees were tested because one recalled receiving an envelope with a powdery substance several weeks earlier. Hamilton Sundstrand, a division of United Technologies, closed a cafeteria in its Windsor Locks headquarters after a “suspicious” envelope was found there.
DEP commissioner Arthur Rocque said costs to respond would reach into the millions of dollars.
Across the landscape, state officials and businesses reacted: In the shoreline town of Madison (where one would be hard-pressed to identify a worthy terrorist target), First Selectman David LaFemina, describes some measured steps his normally serene town is taking.
“The town of Madison is responding to the local threat of terrorism by educating its citizens and town employees,” LaFemina explains. “Brochures explaining the facts about anthrax are available to the community and procedures have been established to deal with suspicious mail and packages in all municipal departments.”
New Haven, which logged more than 20 scares during “anthrax week,” has reacted as well, says James Foy of the city's Office of Public Information.
“The city of New Haven is not at liberty to discuss any specific changes that the police department has implemented, fearing a compromise in effectiveness, but [police] have increased visibility, especially in the harbor area,” Foy says. “The fire department has taken more of a 'reaction' approach than a preventative role; the department is staying prepared by keeping its firefighters informed and its equipment ready.”
Adds Foy: “The city will continue to emphasize the importance of the public remaining calm and using common sense. Since there have been no confirmed cases of bioterrorism in Connecticut, the public should continue with their daily activities while simply being aware of any suspicious activity.”
To date, no anthrax has shown up in the general populace anywhere in the nation, mainly limited to five major media outlets, the U.S. Capitol and the postal workers that presumably handled mailed packages to the former.
As we've heard from countless public authorities over the past two weeks, although it is potentially deadly, anthrax is not contagious. “The emotions that go with it are, however,” says Sigal G. Barsade, associate professor of organizational behavior at Yale University's School of Management.
Barsade's research examines the influence of emotions on work behavior in small and mid-size organizations. We asked her to describe “emotional contagion,” how it works, and what can be done to combat what appears to have overtaken many.
“Emotional contagion is the process in which people influence one another's emotions and behaviors,” Barsade explains. “Emotional contagion has both conscious and subconscious components, so you do not necessarily know that you have 'caught' someone else's emotions.”
Ironically, public officials telling us to “calm down” may themselves help spread hysteria when the style of their delivery does not “communicate” their intended message.
Acquiring “emotional intelligence” and its ability to identify, understand and influence our own and other's emotions may become the most essential tool in addressing the psychological effects of potential terrorism.
Understanding that emotional contagion exists in the first place is part of the solution. Explains Barsade, “One way for people to deal with [contagious emotions] is to understand that they are being emotionally influenced by all these sources, and we have a tendency to pick up other people's emotions.”
Barsade explains how individuals pick up the emotional cues that in large part determine what information we absorb and how we feel about it.
“It occurs in a variety of non-verbal channels rather than content,” she says, “from facial expression and auditory tone as well as body language.”
False or exaggerated reports and a near-addictive dependence on cable news channels with their news tickers, split screens, screaming attack headlines, frantic press conferences and terrorism experts describing ever more horrendous scenarios have been cited widely as a source in helping to spread panic.
Barsade doesn't blame the media for the public's sense of fear, citing the very real dangers of terrorist attacks. She does add, however, “Social information is very powerful. The outlets that are giving us our social information, media and government, both cognitive and affective [emotion], is the basis for what we feel.”
Barsade's explanation of the rules of effective organizational communication provide a standard that can be used by business communicators, the media and certainly public officials in the present crisis.
“Companies need to be conscious of the fact that when they communicate anything to their employees, they aren't only giving out cognitive information and facts. The way the information is delivered affects the way people think and feel. And that is going to spread from person to person.”
The best news about addressing public apprehension may be found in a group-emotion study by Barsade. Subjects participated in different groups in which an actor was employed as the “infectious” person in a group setting. Barsade found that one sort of emotion was more “contagious” than others.
That emotion? “Calmness and serenity,” Barsade says.
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