Like many public affairs professionals I participate in regional disaster drills. In one of these exercises it became painfully aware to all of the public communications staff on duty that we were going to fail. The disaster was so intensive that it factored in power outages and the loss of communication tools. Much of what happened during Hurricane Katrina occurred during our excercise.
In a post last year [Days After Katrina, An Epiphany: We Can Use Text Messages ], I relayed the story of Valerie Willard, Community Relations Director for the Louisiana Supreme Court, who learned days into the Katrina disaster that the only way to communicate was through text messaging.
During the excercise I participated in, we considered using helicopters to shout messages down into the crowds when we lost all radio, television and Internet. If the cell towers had not lost power, we might have used SMS or text messaging.
People seek reassurance in a crisis and finding ways to reach people quickly and without much effort is important during a disaster or emergency. Are there other ways to communicate when all channels are gone? How do you reach people to announce meeting places, shelter or help? Rapid SMS services, such as Twitter, may fill the gap. I would be interested in hearing more communication ideas for reaching people in a crisis.
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If this were on offline discussion, we could go on for hours.
In my job, we’re prepared to go even more primitive than you described.
And nice re-design – I like the new look!