Developing an Effective Emergency Communications Plan

Friday is our busy day of the week and happily so.  It’s our shopping day, but what if while we were out shopping there was a power loss?  I oftentimes leave older children at home.  Sometimes they babysit one or more of my ‘younger’ children.  If I’m out, some of my children are home, my husband is at work, my father is at his home, but my mom is with me, and my sister is at work.

If we all have our cell phones (and there wasn’t an EMP), we should be able to contact each other, but what if someone’s cell is out of battery or they forgot it at home.  What if we find out that this is more widespread than just our area in central Illinois?  What if we’ve had a cyber-attack on our grid and power could be out for the foreseeable future?  How do we communicate?

Unforeseen problems?

What if the person who forgot their cell phone doesn’t have much gas in their vehicle?  How are we ALL going to communicate with each other (because in case you didn’t add all that up, that’s a total of 5 adults, 2 older teenagers, and three children at a total of five different locations)?

We need a PLAN.  Just like other aspects of preparedness, being able to communicate during a crisis is something we need to think about beforehand.  Fortunately, with a little forethought, we can get a plan onto paper that will help each of us communicate with everyone else during an emergency.

In setting up this plan, we need to ask ourselves five different questions:  who is communicating, what items do you need to help you communicate, how should you communicate, what information should you communicate, where are you going to communicate in person?  We’ll take each of these in turn.

Who will be included in your communications?  

Is this emergency communications plan for just your immediate family or are you including extended family in the area.  This is something that should be decided now.  If you have extended family in the area, please actually discuss this with them whether or not you are afraid that you’ll hurt their feelings.  They may just take for granted that you are going to want to communicate with them, and you may take it for granted that you aren’t OR vice versa.

Make sure everyone is in agreement NOW – especially if you aren’t going to cooperate together on this plan. If you all do decide that everyone should be in communication, make sure that you work through the following steps together.   If there are fights over this now, it’s only going to be worse once you actually get into a situation where they want to communicate and coordinate with you.

What items do you need to help you communicate?

Knowledge

Do you have young children?  Make sure that they and everyone else in your house know how to call 911.

Write out a list of every family member in your communication group with their phone numbers.  Why?  Well, what happens if your cell phone is damaged during an emergency, but your co-worker has a cell phone and it’s working.  Do you have everyone’s phone number’s memorized?  In this day and age, you probably don’t.  I also suggest that if you own or rent a home that you also have all your utility phone numbers and account numbers listed on the same sheet of paper.  Doctors and pharmacy numbers should also be included in this list.

Helpful Apps

Also, make sure that everyone with a smartphone has at least one of the following apps activated.  FEMA, Red Cross, Emergency Alert or any similar app that will alert everyone when there is a possibility of danger.  This will allow you to communicate with people BEFORE a potential emergency erupts.

I would also suggest getting a police scanner app.  This was very helpful during the Ferguson Riots.   Twitter was immensely helpful as well to get up to the second information on what is happening where.  I used this app to find out where the action was going on in Ferguson so if I needed to leave my house, I knew which way to go to avoid getting caught in a crowd.

ICE

No, I’m not talking about frozen water or Immigration Customs Enforcement.  In this case, ICE stands for “In Case of Emergency.”  At least one emergency contact should be programmed into everyone’s phone.  It should literally read – “ICE” followed by the relation of the person who is listed followed by their name.  So maybe the contact information in your phone reads, “ICE Mom Bernice.”  Most first responders, know to look for “ICE” in your phone.

How should you communicate?  

There are several ways that you can communicate during and after an emergency.  Some of these may be out of service, but they are all worth mentioning.

Landline

Just because just about everyone has a cell phone now, don’t forget that a landline is another possible means of communication.  This may still be available even if the cell towers are down, and they don’t take electricity!

Cell Phone

Using text

No matter what kind of cell phone you have, a text is the best way to communicate during an emergency.

Calling

You can try to call people, but if everyone is trying to call people in the area, you may not be able to get through even if the cell towers haven’t been damaged.  This could be just because of the sheer volume of calls going in and out of the area.

Out of Area Contact

If you are unable to directly contact the people included in your communications plan during in an emergency, you should all have the same out of area contact.  What is an out of area contact?  It is a person that everyone participating in your emergency communications plan knows.  This person needs to be willing to take down information in the case of a crisis in your own area, and relay information to others from your group who call him or her during your own emergency.

So to put some flesh on this, my father-in-law knows everyone that would be included in our emergency communications plan and he is out of state.  If something were to happen and we couldn’t communicate with each other, each of us would call him to let him know (1) Where we are. (2) If we’re okay, and (3) If we can make it to our rendezvous point.

Why?

But why do we need an out of area contact if we can’t get through to someone in our own area? If the cell towers in the area need to support two people trying to call each other (as most people in the area will try to do) you BOTH need access to the cell towers which may be completely jammed.  But if just one of you will be using the cell tower capabilities in the area, you have a better chance of getting through because the person outside the area won’t be causing a drain on the cell towers in your area.

Facebook

Facebook has a feature that allows you to mark yourself safe during an emergency.  This is one way to let your family and friends in your group know that you are safe.

What information should you communicate?   

Whatever you need to communicate, keep it short and sweet.  Many people will need to be using the bandwidth from the cell towers, so keeping it short helps everyone else.

Let people know if you are or are not safe.  Let them know your current location and the route you plan to take to your destination.  Is there anything that may prohibit you from being able to meet up with them.  Is the emergency taking place between the two of you and will it be hard to get around it?

Where are you going to communicate in person?

You should have two predetermined places to meet in case you can’t get back to your house.

Why wouldn’t you be able to get back to your house?  When I got the phone call from my Mom during the Ferguson tornado, we weren’t in our home.  When we tried to get home that night, the police wouldn’t let us.  Really.  They wouldn’t let us enter our home.  They were concerned about looting if they let people into the cordoned off area.

So you don’t get stuck with a problem like this, one of the places that you decide to meet in case of an emergency should be at the edge of your subdivision or in a public place in your subdivision like a park, a library, or a school parking lot.

The other place that you determine to meet in case of an emergency should be on the edge of your town, but not necessarily near your subdivision.

Secondary questions to consider as your group

When waiting to meet up with people at your primary or secondary locations you need to determine several important factors within your group.

1.) How long should you wait at the primary meeting place before heading to the secondary meeting place?

2.)  How often should you call your out of area contact with information if there is no new information?

3.)  If you are heading to your secondary meeting place, but not everyone was at your primary meeting place, how will you let people with whom you cannot get in contact know?

4.)  Who is responsible for picking up children or people who do not drive?  What if one of the people who is supposed to pick up others isn’t answering phone calls?  Does someone else try to pick their people up?

What about you?

Have you taken some time to work through potential communications problems?  Do you have words of wisdom or just a really cool communications ‘trick’ to share?  We’d all benefit from your knowledge and experience.  Leave a comment below and let us know.

Together let’s Love, Learn, Practice, and Overcome

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