 Working to make our communities more prepared for disasters, Cal OES convened public information officers from across the state in Sacramento for a Crisis Communications Academy. You get to get your message out. One of the main things I want communicators to come away with not only the technical capacity of doing the job as emergency communicators but also having the skills and the confidence to be able to charge forward so when they're in moments of crisis or emergency communication they can react. The event provided hands-on training to more than 100 communicators. So the question is why is this academy important and I would argue it's important for three reasons. I love the number three. Number one is we want to know the most recent research on how we establish trust. Number two we want to know the most recent research and practice of how we overcome anxiety stress and number three we want to be on top of the research that indicates what are the changes we have to make in our communications in a crisis situation. These unique skills help public information officers provide the life-saving messaging to their local communities during emergency or natural disaster. I've really learned about the industry standards around emergency communications. That's something that I have now in my toolkit to bring back to the city of Long Beach. I haven't worked in any emergency communications before but now with this training I'm able to come back and be prepared, prepare my team, prepare my department in my city on how to handle an emergency whether it's an earthquake or a wildfire or even drought. Cal OES is proud to foster the next generation of crisis communicators. Relationships are so important in disasters and by working closely with our local government counterparts from all across the state at this training we're actually able to build capacity for not if but when a disaster happens locally so we're actively training local government public information officers working with them on the basics the building blocks of how we communicate during disaster with the ultimate goal being to be how do we better serve the public and keep them safe during a time of crisis. To see more from us visit news.cal OES.ca.gov and follow us on all our social media platforms.