I see triage as relevant in an emergency context – “we have to triage the wounded soldiers to take care of the critically injured ones first”. In other words, it is immediate and critical.

Damage control is a longer term, atmospheric type of effort. It also happens after the event – it’s not an emergency response. As in “we have to do damage control after the CEO was arrested for raping his secretary”.

I see “sequencing by severity” in business as well as combat casualty situations but nothing about damage control.
-Thanks to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th. ed. for help in answering this.

So would you ever triage an angry customer? I guess that was the sense of “damage controlling one thing” I was thinking of.

I think technically triage is used for medical situations, and prioritize would be used for non-medical.

I don’t think of triage in terms of damage control, what damage are your referring to? Like CYA sort of damage control?

@gorillapaws One would only triage angry customers if there were multiple customers in need of help over critical issues that were of different types. Think of an airline customer service desk when five flights get cancelled because of weather.

Triage is about prioritizing according to the severity, so it has to involve more than one disaster.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/triage