This is the second entry in a three-part series on what it’s like being deployed as a crisis incident public information officer. The first entry covered the preparatory phase of incident response operations, and this one covers what it’s like once on-scene at a particular incident. Public information officer Thomas McKenzie and crew immediately reported […]
Tag Archives: Joint Information Center
This is the first entry in a three-part series on what it’s like being deployed as a crisis incident public information officer. This entry covers the preparatory phase of incident response operations. When I met up for coffee with my friend and colleague Thomas McKenzie a few weeks ago, his black backpack had a wavy, […]
I recently spoke at a two-day all-hazard crisis incident response seminar in Berkeley, Calif., titled, “Thriving in the First 96 Hours.” Among other activities, I took part in a leadership panel to field questions about crisis communications. This post, and others, is adapted from my short responses to questions on the topic asked before and during […]
At times, a simple incident – whether it be small or large – can become complex quickly, and require more from professional communicators than is the norm for mitigating disaster through their work with the community and media. What makes an incident complex? An increasing magnitude of the incident or larger scope of area and […]
My friends over at the U.S. Coast Guard’s Public Information Assist Team – the service’s deployable crisis communications experts – have alerted me to two things in the last few weeks – one, that the service has published a new pocket guide for incident public information officers (PIO) and, two, that they began distributing (and […]
The Crisis Communicator 