After deciding to do the town as a whole the research process began. In talking to many people of the town of Valley City they agreed with me that the TV and Radio (KQDJ and KOVC) and were by far the best sources of crisis communication that they could rely on. Others that were in fact good were facebook, Cell phones, emails, and sirens. People said when they heard sirens going off with in minutes they could turn the radio station or the TV on and see that the town was in strong need of sandbaggers. My self and others I talked to said that the morning news conferences that officials held were also very informative. One channel thad would broadcast these all day were the Valley City Replay Channel, in case the actual live one was missed. The main city officials that were responsible for communication started from Valley Cities Mayor Mary Lee Nielson. During these media conferences questions were asked to her and then she would direct the questions to other officials if they could better answer them. These Officials included Public Works Representative Jeff Differdy, Corp. of Engineer BaldHill Dam Manager Rich Schueneman, and Police Chief Dean Ross. These were probably the main officials that took place in making sure there was effective communication. Some other major ones were School Officials. VCSU's Dr. Steven Shirley did a fantastic job of keeping students and faculty informed to the situation at hand. He did this primaritly by using VCSU email. Many other people in this town are not going to get credit for serving as important pawns in the crisis communication. Some examples would be all the different leaders of the sand bag crews. Many were just volunteers and some were community firemen among other people as well.
I will be writing this to Mayor Mary Lee Neilsen and do hope to continue research so I can maybe find other ways in which the communication could be improved, although this will be hard to do because I think it was a complete success due to the fact that THE TOWN IS SAVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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The communication done throughout Valley City was impressive, I thought. So many ways to get information out to the public made this disaster very informative. All the officials seem to very cooperative with giving any information you ask them as well. Atleast to the best of their ability without straying away from the situation. There will definetely be a lot of input on this crisis in the future to come.
ReplyDeleteI kind of wrote about the same issues. The cities most effective form of communication was the local radio stations. They did get the word out right away when something would happen such as a siren blowing. They communicated to the community that they needed help. I also agree that the Mayor was the primary spokesperson but that she did hand off the questions to someone that probably knew more about their specific area of work. Although the town is saved, I think that there could be some improving for the next crisis VC may come across.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I guess it is kind of important that the town was saved haha. I am doing a lot of the same research because I have the same topic and I think that the communication was really good over this whole ordeal. I always knew if they needed sandbaggers or if they needed us to evacuate. Most of the communication I recieved was from the school. Without them I don't know how informed I would be.
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