With hurricane season approaching, and the memory of what senior living communities experienced with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita still fresh on everyone’s minds here at the annual convention of the Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA) in San Diego, conference attendees took part in a session on crisis planning and management yesterday.  While many senior communities will never experience a hurricane, all communities face the possibility of smaller-scale, yet very serious, crises such as fires, storm destruction, missing residents, and more.  Studies show that as many as half of assisted living communities don’t have a formal crisis plan.  One company that does have a plan, and it’s among the best, is Merrill Gardens, the Seattle, Washington-based company that operates 67 communities.  Its corporate communications director, Loree Wagner, served on the panel for yesterday’s crisis session, and afterward, she talked with the Goldman Mature Market Report about the detailed crisis management booklet her company developed in 1997, just four years after the company’s founding.  According to Wagner, the booklet began as a crisis communications plan for dealing with the news media during an emergency.  It has evolved into an extensive document with very specific guidelines and actions for handling all aspects of crises from start to finish.  The booklet is updated every year.  One recent update was the addition of a section on communicating to families during a crisis.  Wagner says in studying the issue on a national level, it became clear that “in just about every situation where things go badly for senior living companies, a  key reason is that family members were not quickly and appropriately informed about the situation and they weren’t kept updated.”  Often, this misstep is unintentional; staff “simply forgets about calling the family because they’re so busy dealing with the crisis.”  Merrrill Gardens takes its crisis planning very seriously.  New general managers are trained on the booklet and are expected to train their staff on it.  The company even holds drills on such potential crises as missing residents, with resident volunteers helping with the role-playing.