Communicating Emergency Preparedness: Strategies for Creating a Disaster Resilient Public was written by Damon P. Coppola and Erin K. Maloney. This book provides public safety and emergency management practitioners at local and national levels with the background and tools needed to plan, design and carry out public disaster preparedness efforts. It serves as an academic resource and a how-to guide.

The authors are not new to this field. Coppola, an emergency management consultant, has provided planning and technical consulting at the local, state, national and international levels to such organizations as FEMA, The World Bank, The Human Society and Marriott International. He’s also the author of several FEMA/Emergency Management Institute (EMI) courses and publications, including Hazards Risk Management and NIMS and Incident Management Systems. Maloney, a research assistant and instructor in Michigan State University’s Department of Communications, focuses primarily on health communication, media and research methods and consults on grassroots communications projects.

Although written with an emergency management focus,Communicating Emergency Preparedness provides public relations and communications information that can be easily used in any field of public safety or public service. It begins by discussing successful public education campaigns that many of us are familiar with—Click It or Ticket, Just Say No and even Stop, Drop and Roll. How did these campaigns become so popular and so successful? The authors break down these campaigns and explain how you and your agency can take the lessons learned from these and smaller projects to create your own programs. This includes step-by-step processes for many programs and their individual components, such as a step-by-step process for developing a comprehensive public warning system. There’s even a section on fundraising for these projects, which is especially useful in the current economic situation.

I found the section dealing with communication with the public as part of a larger overall preparedness plan especially interesting. Educating the public in advance of a disaster reduces stress and workload during the disaster for every public safety facet. An educated public knows how to prepare themselves and their families for emergencies.Example:People educated on how to prepare for a hurricane by stockpiling supplies, knowing evacuation plans and having a full tank of gas in their cars require less responder intervention than those who do none of these things. Uneducated— and therefore unprepared—people will need to be rescued more often, require supplies and be greater risks to themselves and responders.

At 233 pages, this book is a quick and easy read that is well organized and jam packed with resources and references for further research. The book provides sidebars with tips for success and information, such as Web addresses and links. Each chapter ends with a list of additional publications and sources for more information. At the end of the book, there are roughly 20 pages of case studies, sample public education plans and an Appendix that lists organizations, Web sites and links to downloadable guides on public education and communicating with the public.

Communicating Emergency Preparedness would be a beneficial addition to any public safety professional’s library, but especially for senior-level individuals tasked with some level of preparedness or public education.

Bob Smith is APCO International’s director of Strategic Development. 

Originally published in Public Safety Communications, 76(1):49, January 2010.