Grenfell: Black Swan, Grey Swan or White Swan event? You decide
Sometimes crises are described as ‘black swans’. In a blog published in the summer to commemorate the five-year anniversary of the Grenfell Tower disaster, Chris Tucker asked whether the disaster could be classified as a ‘black swan’ event, but I’m not so sure.
So what is a ‘black swan’ event? The term was originally coined by financier Nassim Taleb in his extremely successful book ‘The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable’ and is defined as “a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: it is unpredictable; it carries a severe impact and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable than it was.”
The term is frequently used in crisis communications and has been used to describe other major events including the September 11 attacks, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the rise of the internet.
In her blog, Chris points to a more recent ‘black swan’ event, the German Wings flight in 2015 in which “the pilot, who we now know was suffering from mental health issues, decided to take his own life by flying the plane with all 150 passengers on board into a mountain. Such an event, if it was thought about at all, was not really prepared for perhaps on account of it being thought to be too awful to imagine”. This was an unpredictable, highly improbable event yet such is the human need to explain such extraordinary events, many column inches were subsequently dedicated to the pilot’s mental state in the days leading up to the incident to assess whether any warning signs had been missed.
Pick your swan
You might well ask why crisis theory describes events as black, grey and white swans. The answer depends on 1) the probability of the event occurring and 2) the perception of the risk involved. Risk is complex and people’s perceptions of risk even more so. Whereas ‘black swan’ events are outliers, which lie outside the realm of ordinary expectations, grey and white swan events comprise circumstances which are relatively more probable, relatively more likely, and relatively more foreseeable, as set out below:
1. Black swan
Highly improbable
· Unpredictable
· Massive impact
· After the fact, explained to appear less random and more predictable
2. Grey swan
High probability
· Predictable
· Impact can easily cascade
· After the fact, shifts focus to errors in judgment or some other human form of causation
3. White swan
High certainty
· Certainty
· Impact easily estimated
· After the fact explanation shifts the focus to errors in judgment or some other form of causation
Whether or not an event is a ‘black swan’ or a ‘grey swan’ or even a white one, depends on what is known and understood by the observer. It is a subjective test. As Taleb observed, what may be a black swan surprise for a turkey is not a black swan surprise to its butcher.
What about Grenfell?
For those of us with no connection to Grenfell, its residents, or to Kensington and Chelsea council, or to any of the contractors and suppliers involved with servicing the tower block, the disaster that unfolded on 14 June 2017 came as a complete surprise. Time and time again, the question was asked – in central London in the 21st century, how could a tower block catch fire, appear to literally melt, and claim 72 lives in the process? It seemed unfathomable, catastrophic, wildly unpredictable and hard to imagine that anyone with any knowledge of any possible risk factors could have allowed them to go unmitigated.
A huge amount of information has emerged since the disaster, particularly during the public enquiry. This has shown a sequence of events, failings and oversights which indicate that the Grenfell fire was less random and more predictable than might have been previously thought. To that extent it was truly a ‘black swan’ event.
And yet the evidence also reveals that some of Grenfell’s former residents at least were aware of many of the risks. In November 2016, eight months before the fire, a blog written by Edward Daffarn, a 16th-floor resident, warned: “Only an incident that results in serious loss of life of residents will allow the external scrutiny to occur that will shine a light on the practices that characterise the malign governance of this non-functioning organisation.”
The blog had been running for several years, raising concerns about the building’s refurbishment and warning of a potentially disastrous fire. In 2013 Grenfell Tower’s landlord (the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation) blocked residents access to the blog because they deemed it to be “scaremongering and potentially frightening to the residents” https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/27/grenfell-tower-landlord-blocked-staff-access-to-residents-blog
Consequently from a residents’ perspective, we might conclude that disaster was a ‘white swan’ event, in other words likely to happen or with a high degree of certainty, with an impact that could be easily guessed.
A ‘grey swan’ event
Perhaps the real answer is somewhere in the middle. The Grenfell disaster was the outcome of cumulative failures by multiple parties over a long period of time, during which many opportunities were missed to remedy multiple issues including a lack of evacuation protocols, ineffective communications, defective cladding, defective smoke systems, use of combustible materials, poor workmanship, and during which there was plenty of time to address residents’ concerns. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55349395
To this extent, and to those involved, the Grenfell fire was a disaster which could easily have been predicted, was indeed highly probable, and which was brought on by multiple failures of judgment and other human causes. On that basis, the Grenfell disaster is arguably more akin to a ‘grey swan’ event.
But what do you think?