Crisis Blog 3

After doing more research on the flood in Valley City, here are some of the things that I found. Email was the best way to get information out to the students and faculty when there was something important going on with the flood. I thought that Dr. Steven Shirley did an excellent job on letting the students know about the flood. The texts that they sent to students when the e-mail was down were very effective. They were ineffective though for the people who were not signed up to receive them. Next year they should make it mandatory that every student or faculty member should have to be signed up to receive the messages just in case something bad would happen again. The radio was the most accurate way of communication to the public rather than the TV. People on the radio were telling the public what the siren was going off for and on the TV they never really said anything what the siren was for. For the TV they only had updates and information on certain channels and most of the people usually do not watch those certain channels. Most of the people I talked to received more information on the internet using Facebook, Twitter, or the VCSU safety blog on the website. Since VCSU is a technology campus, most students use their computers to look up information rather than watch TV to get it. Another useful website for people was http://valleycity.govoffice.com/. This website also had up to date information that needed to get to people. The word of mouth also got information across to people. This might not have been the most effective way to get information across but it did work at times. When the e-mail wasn’t working and for the people who didn’t have the emergency texting with the college, these people said that they heard what was happening from other people who already new.

For my crisis communication project, I am going to do it on VCSU and Valley City just because I was there to experience it and I don’t know a whole lot about what the other communities did. The mayor Mary Lee Nielson was the main spokesperson during the flood. I could tell that she was the spokesperson because you would never here information coming from someone else. Always Mary Lee Nielson was on TV or the radio telling the people in Valley City what was going on. Most of the communication was done by using the TV and radio for people in Valley City. At VCSU, they sent out many emails that helped keep me updated. Some of this information could have been ineffective to some people. Some people do not watch a lot of TV so then they wouldn’t get the information from that and the same goes with the radio. One way I received some information was Facebook. Every time something was happening, many people would use that as their status. These are just some of the things that were used for communication during the flood but I’m sure they used other ways too so I will continue my research to find out more information.