Communication is the key component in building any team or organization. It is also vital to building our communities.

That becomes vitally more important in times of crisis or emergency. And recent water line breaks in Ironton and Coal Grove show that this is something where our entire county can improve.

In Ironton, a water line break over the holiday weekend prompted a boil water advisory for the north end of town.

But most residents kept chugging away.

In Coal Grove, the situation was similar, although the fact these problems had been off and on for a few days residents were a bit more prepared.

But in both cases many citizens didn’t know for hours. In Ironton’s case, many residents were in the proverbial dark for more than a day.

We urge our elected officials to look at this as a learning experience and implement policies and procedures that will ensure that as many citizens as possible will be notified.

This should a comprehensive plan for contacting all Tri-State media. It would also be wise for municipal officials to compile contact information for non-business hours and holidays.

Not everyone reads the newspapers. Not everyone watches the same TV channels. Not everyone listens to the radio.

So it is important that efforts are made to reach as many people as possible.

To that end, we hope leaders look at technology as an avenue toward this result.

It wouldn’t take much for city leaders to create e-mail lists, text alerts, Web site updates and other ways of using technology to stay connected.

Communication will be the difference when it comes to bringing our communities together.