Q&A with Nancy Castles: Public Relations Director at Los Angeles World Airports (LAX) Last in a series.

Robert Gagnier: Can you shed a light on the Theme Building, the structure that comes to mind when people from all over the world think of LAX?

Nancy Castles: The Theme building has a great overall history, but most of the recent restaurants inside were not that successful probablly because of tightened security measures at LAX. After 9-1-1 it became harder for people to come and eat there as a destination restaurant, which really hurt it. The Theme Building; created in the 1960's, was designed to mirror the jet age with an outer space angle. In fact; many people will say that when you look at some of the buildings in the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, they kind of look like the LAX Theme building. The upstairs restaurant property piece is currently vacant, but there will soon be a request for concepts and proposals to operate and take that space. On the lower ground level; however, there is a city deli restaurant that is open from 6am to 3pm that is a cafeteria style eatery.

RG: What is the status of the observation deck on top of the Theme Building?

NC: The observation deck was reopened after 9-1-1 back in 2010 and was pretty popular on the weekends before traffic increased. It is located on the rooftop of the Theme building and is currently open only on the second Saturday and Sunday of every month from 9am to 5pm. It used to be open every weekend before we saw such a tremendous drop off in visitors to the observation deck. However, we remain committed to keeping it open one weekend a month. We have seen that most people; unless they have a significant amount of time to kill, aren't interested in leaving the terminals, only to have to turn around and go back through TSA and clear security in order to catch their flights. We actually had times where a total of ten people for an entire weekend had shown up! But in order to open it for 2010; we needed to position a sworn airport police officer at the lobby in order to check personal items and bags before people went up the elevator and up to the observation deck. And so there is a cost to keeping the observation deck open and with the attendance drop so significant, it didn't justify having a full time officer in place.

RG: What role does social media play in your job?

NC: Social media is the immediate and direct communications to reaching specific audiences. But in terms of how it affects my job it is a double edge sword. When we want to get information out there we will use our own social media sites to promote the new and varying developments in LAX, from traffic conditions and other vital information that we want our audience to know about. But it can work against you as well; just look at the recent August 28 multiple terminal evacuation indent. Social media played a less than effective role because people who up to that point had just heard rumors started tweeting us information as if it was real and as though they had all of the facts.

They didn't identify which terminals they were in; and so others who are now getting this information began to assume that it was happening in their terminal. And so now; you get this sequence of events where we go from there is police activity, to investigate a person who is wearing all black and is perhaps brandishing a sword. Now that turns into some people with guns; to people who are now shooting in the terminals, and since people did not know which terminal this incident was taking place in, they assumed it was in their terminal,and start to panic!

The negative results of this was these types of false alarms unfortunately can cause stampedes, which can end up hurting people. And guess what? That night we did end up having the fire department and paramedics come out to treat four people who were injured, with three going to the hospital. Now all were minor injuries, but they still had to be tended to due to other people basically jumping and running over them. This is very serious, so we really want to caution people when it comes to social media. It is a great communications tool; its direct, and tells your friends and families where you are and that's great. But people need to also take some responsibility for the content they are putting out there. Just as its important that as public information officers we put out information that is timely, accurate, and verified. Social media often times skips that process. Then you have the case where those in traditional media; who monitor social media, sometimes go on what they see as an individual reporting an incident, instead of verifying the information, are now using an individual who happens to be posting or tweeting on social media as the source themselves!

While we acknowledge the advantages and gains to be had from social media, at the same time we don't want people using those platforms or 9-1-1 calls to their amusement and or for their own entertainment purposes. Making false reports is a crime; and while I am not sure whether or not there are laws in the books that pertain to false alarms that stem from social media, I would imagine that if they don't currently exist they will soon.