BLOG 5: Creating Community Resilience using Communication
One of the ways to increase community resilience through communication is for town and city managers to properly distribute resources to those people and neighborhoods that need them the most. During crisis, the less economically affluent areas get overlooked and they do not get certain resources they need. For example, the flood walls protecting New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina were vastly unprepared to handle even a medium hurricane, and many of these flood wall zones were in poor neighborhoods. If communities work together with community managers to negotiate a fair distribution of funds, more protection and safety will be had by all groups of people, regardless of economic standing.
Another way to increase resilience is for the needy community members to step up and showcase their needs to community managers and emergency organizations. If community members can communicate how much they need resources for a crisis situation and demand the best of a communities resources, they will be more likely to get the crisis resources they need to stay safe and prepared.
Emergency organizations and community members must also establish prior organizational relationships to gain better working relationships. If a crisis does occur, and emergency organizations and the community have programs set up between themselves to work together in raising crisis awareness, they will be able to respond to a crisis with more ease and respect. For example, many local national weather service offices create volunteer weather spotter programs for those in the community who want to get involved in storm spotting to help the rest of their community stay safe during severe weather situations.
Communities can create post-crisis programs to sustain support networks. Community members who establish networks after a crisis to help other members involved in the crisis to have a way to rebuild and recover. These community members can share their stories with those around them to establish a forum to vent their emotions after a crisis. For example, after the tornadoes in Tuscaloosa and Joplin, Facebook groups were set up among victims to share their stories of survival, share missing family or item information, and gain information about recovery efforts.
Finally, emergency organizations and community officials must come together to plan ahead for any crisis that may occur. They also must plan for the lack of information and uncertainty that typically characterizes as crisis situation. Communities must remain flexible for any crisis situation that occurs and hope for the best, but plan for the worse. When Hurricane Gustav hit New Orleans in 2008, 3 years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was much more prepared. They had reinforced and repaired many of their levees, they immediately evacuated people away from the city, declared a state of emergency, and planned for the worse. The storm was not as bad as Katrina but it showed the preparedness that New Orleans had in the aftermath of Katrina.
Being able to communicate awareness in the face of a crisis is vital during a crisis. Using social media like Facebook, Twitter, and a text messaging system will allow for speedy communication from mediums that more and more people are using everyday. Like what is being done to here at Mizzou with the instant text messaging and e-mail notification system, communicating a concise message quickly is key in the face of a crisis situation. Also, due to the speed of communication messages, those who see the messages first can get the messages out to those who may have not seen the information yet or do not have the means for those types of messages to be readily available.