Overview
At 2:15 p.m. on Feb. 7, 2007, a massive fire started at the CHEMCENTRAL plant in Kansas City, Mo. The explosion forced the evacuation of the surrounding residential areas, schools and businesses. We were retained as the communications agency the evening of Feb. 7 and began work on managing the crisis, which had already received significant of media attention.

Strategies and Tactics
CHEMCENTRAL is one of the world’s leading distributors of industrial chemicals and its top priority was business continuity. Our primary goal was to help them suffer no revenue loss as a result of the fire. To achieve this goal, we depended on partnerships with federal, state and local authorities such as police and fire departments, Missouri DNR, and the EPA. strategies and tactics designed to achieve our goal included:

• Online Communications – Within 24 hours of beginning our work, we created a CHEMCENTRAL Update Web site, www.chemcentral-update.com.
• Employee and Customer Communications – We established an employee phone hotline, organized an employee meeting and created customer communications.
• Community Relations – We immediately reached out to the community. Tactics included a community response phone line, organizing community meetings, briefings with local leaders, hand delivering letters in the affected neighborhood, placing a full-page ad in the local newspapers and letters to affected schools.
• Media Relations – We managed key message development and proactive media contact, provided media training for executives, reaction and statements to inquiries, and ongoing media monitoring services.

Results
CHEMCENTRAL suffered no revenue loss as a result of the fire. Within hours, local authorities had been contacted, and employees and customers knew what was happening and had a point of contact for questions. Soon after, affected residents, businesses and schools had the most current information. The media presented an accurate representation of the fire and CHEMCENTRAL. Lastly, the update Web site provided a central information source for all those affected.