Twenty-four emergencies

Text: an original contemporary community-commentary-style practice extract.

During one month, our block's online repair board recorded twenty-seven reports. Twenty-four had been marked CRITICAL by residents. The list placed 'cupboard handle loose' beside 'water spreading across the top landing' and 'lift doors not closing'. The same red strip made all three appear equally immediate.

The first time I saw it, I telephoned the caretaker before opening the report. The problem was a name plate that had fallen from a door. By the tenth red warning, I left the report unopened until that afternoon. This did not mean that a missing name plate or a loose handle was unimportant to the person reporting it. Importance, however, is not the same as urgency, and the board had stopped helping us decide what needed attention first.

Then a resident reported a smell of smoke in the laundry room. That report carried the same red label and was opened within four minutes. This might seem to prove that the warning still worked. Yet the record cannot tell us whether the caretaker responded to the red strip or to the words 'smell of smoke', which appeared in the message preview.

The residents' committee introduced three choices: routine, soon and immediate. Over the following two weeks, eighteen reports were submitted. Only two were marked immediate, and both were read before the other sixteen. The trial was brief, and residents knew that the new system was being reviewed, so its results should not be treated as final proof.

Even so, the comparison suggests that urgent language is most useful when people have reasons not to use it. A warning does not become stronger each time it is repeated. It remains useful by being reserved for the occasions that justify it.