Blog: Crisis communication suffers during natural disasters
California, with its serial atmospheric rivers, is grappling with an unfolding natural disaster. Over the longer term, there are many ways to reduce or mitigate risks from storms like these, including promoting good land use planning and zoning to avoid hazards, building infrastructure to better handle storms, and ramping up efforts to address the greater vulnerabilities of many low-income communities. But in the moment, one of the most important risk mitigation strategies involves communication. Communication is the lynchpin of disaster preparedness and response. This includes raising awareness about a storm’s potential consequences, encouraging safe behavior, and enabling all-important communication during and immediately after the storm.