THE RIPPLE EFFECT 

The costs and consequences extend far beyond one tragic incident. 

When a tragic incident happens, the costs that get counted are the visible ones: response, investigation, litigation, settlements, reputation, trauma, and others. The costs are real; they are soaring and they are well documented. What rarely gets counted is everything the incident sets in motion afterward, the ripple effect rings that keep expanding outward and long after the immediate event is over, often for years, including people who were never at the scene at all. 

THE RINGS THAT KEEP EXPANDING 

  • The immediate victims and their families. Not only those directly harmed, but everyone connected to them, spouses, children, parents, siblings, exes, often impacted for the rest of their lives. 
  • Extended family, far away. A family member learning by phone that their children or loved ones were killed a thousand miles away. 
  • Coworkers, classmates, and neighbors. People who knew the victims, and people who never did. “I feel like our entire community is devastated, even people that never knew any of them,” as one neighbor put it after a recent tragedy. 
  • First Responders and investigators. The officers, medics, and investigators who are impacted at the scene may also carry it home, and often for the rest of their careers. 
  • The broader community’s sense of safety. Trust erodes with every incident that had pre-incident warning signs that were never collected, connected, assessed, and acted on. That erosion shows up later, in reluctance to report in the future, in distrust of leaders and institutions, in the outrage, and in the repeating cycle of incidents. 

THE RIPPLES THAT CAN IMPACT THE NEXT INCIDENT(S) 

Secondary trauma, sometimes called vicarious trauma, is a well-documented psychological effect on people who witness or are closely connected to violence, even without being directly harmed themselves. It doesn’t stay contained to the people it first touches. Public health researchers have documented suicide contagion for decades, well enough that the CDC and major news organizations maintain specific reporting guidelines to reduce the risk of one publicized death contributing to another. The ripple effect is not just emotional language. In some cases, it is the literal mechanism that may lead to the next at-risk individual and the next tragic incident. 

WHAT GETS COUNTED, AND WHAT DOESN’T

Settlements get counted. Legal fees get counted. Response and recovery costs get counted. What almost never appears on any ledger: years of counseling for a surviving family, coworker turnover and lost productivity long after the story leaves the news, the mental health strain on an entire community, and the next person, somewhere in that widening ripple, who becomes at risk themselves because of what they witnessed or what they lost.

Pre-incident Prevention was never only about stopping one incident. 

It’s about stopping the chain reaction that follows it. 

Learn more: www.Awareity.com/blog 

Rick Shaw  |  Subject Matter Expert, Pre-Incident Prevention  |  First Preventers Framework™ 

Rick.Shaw@Awareity.com  |  www.Awareity.com