ComPlan: Who do you communicate with?

The first step in creating a Communications Plan (ComPlan) is to find out who you need to communicate with. For the next week or so, make a list of everyone significant that you communicate with. Not just the people, but also the agencies, businesses, even important web pages.

The intent is to know where to focus you energies. If there is a very important web page that you must access, then you will need to put more emphasis on the internet. So here is a sample list with generic name. You want specifics, along with phone numbers, URL's, frequencies or whatever. This is important. Here are some suggestions. Keep adding to the list ....forever.

Family

Immediate local family.

Family at school or other distant location.

Extended family.

Parents

Grand Parents

Siblings

Relatives.

Friends

Local

Remote

Businesses

Electrical Provider.

Water Provider.

Fuel (heating oil).

Community

Government

Police

Fire

Municipal Administration

            School

Emergency Alert System

NOAA Weather Alert(SAME)

Neighbors

Organizations

Clubs

Workplace:

Religious Groups

Service Groups

Medical Facilities.

Emergency Services.

Family Physician.

Pharmacy

DDS

Veterinarian.

Ophthalmologist

Other medical specialists.

And on and on and on.......

This is more complicated than it appears. I think you will be surprised at the large number of contacts and the variety of technologies that you use.

Perhaps communications will only be possible when you leave the affected area during a supply run. But when you make the run, you need to have the information with you and it needs to be current and in a usable form. You won't be able to depend on getting it off of a SD card or smart phone. But we will discuss that later.

For now, begin making the list. Record not only the who, but the how as well. This is what we need to somehow duplicate after a disaster.

Try to list the contacts in groups by technology used and then put a importance rank alongside. Like 1 is high priority and 5 lowest. Whatever works for you. The intent is to make it easier to decide where to put your effort and resources.

We will come back to this much later. However we need to put it all in a framework. So we will give you a starter on Communication Conditions, then a lot about equipment. Then some techniques and training examples and a lot more before we return to firm up both the ComPlan and ComCon issues.

Next: ComCon Defined.

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