Hurricane Sandy has wreaked havoc on all aspects of life in the North East. Everyone at CommCore is safe, although we all know someone with significant property damage.
One interesting measure of the storm and social media is how business-like and fact-based transportation companies – airlines, trains and buses — have been in their communications.
Virtually all carriers from United Airlines and US Airways, to Amtrak, and Greyhound Bolt Bus, have been more focused on communicating information on schedules, rebooking fees and practical details than on any broader issues. Most of the web sites have simple buttons on the home page, with a statement such as Service Alert, or Update: Sandy or Alert: Northeast Service Advisory.
In a typical service outage, CommCore often advises clients to communicate some aspect of care and concern for those impacted. However, presumably since this was a natural disaster and not a man-made accident where there was a fault to be pinned on the carrier, these kinds of statements were not deemed necessary. And since the disaster was so massive, the care and concern were almost an umbrella concern.
In contrast to the buttons on the carrier web sites, the utilities such as Con Edison and PSEG have their home page dominated by information about the storm and recovery.
We hope the recovery is swift and within reasonable costs.