Communicating in an Emergency

Government and Industry can respond to emergencies in real time by using telephone alert systems. The effectiveness of these solutions requires sensitivity to the nature of communication in emotionally charged situations.

In an emergency, your ability to make a large volume of outbound calls to relevant constituents may be hindered by systems that haven’t been designed to communicate in real time – or communicate to people in highly emotionally charged situations.

Any solution for real-time communications should focus on the telephone, with capability to simultaneously send text messages to cell phones, pagers, and TDD devices for hearing impaired constituents.

The National Science and Technology Council, suggests emergency communications and warnings, whether verbal or written:

• Be less than two minutes; preferably less than one minute.
• Present discrete ideas in a bulleted fashion.
• Use non-technical language.
• Use appropriate text and pictures geared for the affected constituents.
• Provide an official basis for the emergency message.
• Provide most-important information first, including any standardized headlines.
• Describe the areas affected.
• Provide levels of uncertainty or probability of similar events occurring again.
• Provide a brief call-to-action statement for appropriate response.
• Describe where detailed follow-up information can be found.

Many federal agencies are promoting emergency telephone alert systems through various types of grants to communities that deploy them. FEMA (the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency) has coined the term ETAS (Emergency Telephone Alert System), and has formally recognized ETAS as an appropriate disaster notification technology.

Many communities are funding such systems through FEMA, the US Department of Justice and the US Department of Homeland Security.