5 crisis comms tips from the Boston PD

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Cheryl Fiandaca—the Boston Police Department’s public information bureau chief—was at the mall with her niece April 15 when her phone started going nuts.

It kept ringing but dropping every call. Finally she learned that two bombs had gone off at the Boston Marathon, in which her sister happened to be running.

Thus began a crisis of the sort no communicator wants to handle. Three people were dead, and more than 260 were injured, some severely maimed.

But the tragedy offers lessons for communicators seeking to navigate the storm of a crisis, Fiandaca says in a Ragan Training video, ” Communicating during the Boston bombings: How Boston PD schooled us on social media.”