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IBTS spoke with Public Information Officer for the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management Buddy Rogers about his experiences navigating communications with the public and stakeholders before, during and after natural disasters. Kentucky has been increasingly subject to natural disasters in recent years, with 18 major disaster declarations made in the past 10 years.

Below Rogers provides tips and advice for how other state emergency management agencies can improve their natural disaster public communications.

Build a relationship with the National Weather Service (NWS) office(s) that serves your state.

• Keep in contact with them even when severe weather is not on the horizon.
• Integrate them into your plans before, during and after a disaster; invite them to your training exercises, into your EOC and incorporate their messaging into your own. 

Create a hashtag associated with your agency.

• “We have a generic accepted hashtag, #kyWX, that we encourage people to use whenever they post about weather – whether it’s about a sunny day or a tornado,” says Rogers. “It increases our situational awareness, and we can then reach back out to the counties to share the information that we’ve found.”

Keep a constant social media presence.

• “Every agency should strive to become the official correct source of information before, during and after a crisis,” Rogers says. Post accurate information and useful tips and reminders even when there’s no disaster so residents automatically look to your agency as the trusted source for information during a severe weather event.

Pre-designate a single person to monitor social media.

• “During the middle of response to a weather event I always have a person monitoring social media – we call it ‘mining social media,’” Rogers says. “They mine for key words and hashtags.”

Create a simple Joint Information Center (JIC) user guide that anyone can use.

• In addition to a complete JIC plan, Rogers keeps a simple JIC user guide posted on a bulletin board in the JIC room itself. “Someone from any other agency can use the guide to quickly walk through simple steps on how the JIC operates and its goals and missions.”

Use public awareness campaigns to overcome apathy and “brand” your agency.

• “Public awareness campaigns get the public educational material and make them aware of what the risks are,” Rogers says. “We’re giving them an opportunity to take action on their own and we’re also branding our agency.”
• As a starting point, Rogers recommends using Ready.gov’s Seasonal Preparedness Messaging Calendar and pre-scripted free social media and digital toolkits.

Send public service announcements out on public educational television networks.

• Consider holding an annual severe weather call-in show to build public awareness about your agency and to give residents an opportunity to ask questions.  

Provide county officials with step-by-step FEMA application instructions.

• “One of the keys to successful recovery is providing local elected officials with enough ‘how-to’ information so they can gather and document damage to submit to us more successfully,” Rogers explains. Prepare guides before a disaster hits so they can be quickly disseminated to counties.
• As an example, see the document outlining the FEMA process that Rogers’ distributed to local governments after flooding in July 2016 swept through the state.