Cyclone Gabrielle

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In this day and age, you would think that communicating would be easy, even if services were disrupted.
CB radio is great but few use it, despite it being capable of reaching overseas . 
I keep a handheld uhf radio in my survival kit. All our family have them and we all know what channel to reach each other on if shtf.
They don't have the same range as a CB, buy they are convenient to have  and lightweight, there are repeaters around the country too that extend the range, ive printed a list to keep on hand and there are also local groups who help each other with training on their use in emergency situations. I had to get mine programmed with the channels when I got it, but it was only like 30 dollars off aliexpress.

Most people now are unlikely to have a torch or a transistor radio as their communication is totally based around smartphones and computers. A great number of people have just received a rude awakening as to how vulnerable their 'normal' life is to a failure in electricity and broadband infrastructure. Expecting people to have a CB radio (with battery backup) as emergency communication is totally unrealistic. Most don't even possess, or even know about, a bug-out kit to sustain their requirements in the case of emergency evacuations.

The failure of modern electrical infrastructure is well described in books about EMP/Coronal Mass Ejections such as One Second After
 by Dr William R Forstchen or Unprepared by Gavin Shoebridge. Both portray the extent to what modern society is totally unprepared for the loss of modern technology which essentially rolls back everyday life to that which our ancestors had to live in 150 years ago before the arrival of refrigeration, electronic control systems and modern communications. Either book is worth reading if you have an interest in modern reliability on 'gadgets' and how different life becomes when they fail to work.