After going through the 2 worst floods in Valley City I figured I could easily compare the two and decide what they did then compared to what they are doing now and how much more effective it is or was. However, the more I sat and thought about the 1997 flood I realized I was younger than I maybe had realized at first and don’t remember that much other than riding around in the streets in my dad’s truck and the water hitting the running boards on it.
So I am sticking to the present flood and the community I am either going to do is VCSU or Valley City as a community. Identifying a spokesperson for VCSU was easy and kind of confusing for Valley City. Yes the Mayor was the primary one, however, I feel that when she was asked any question she pawned it off to someone else and it was always a different person. There could easily be credibility issues here as you never knew who was answering what question or their knowledge about that matter. If I choose to do my research on Valley City I will be researching more on who was answering those tough questions and what their credibility was.
I will be doing some informal interviewing with my family mostly about what channels of communication were most effective and what ones weren’t. With either community that I might choose to research I feel that my own family has a few members in each community and would be great sources of information for this. One that just works within the community, 3 that are within the VCSU community, one that’s in the VCHS community and then one that is younger and within the elementary school systems.
There are a few mediums that I am going to do research on such as the radio primarily and how effective and at times ineffective it was. Providing specific examples on matters such as no school, conserve water going down the drains, sandbag volunteers, and where sandbags could and couldn’t go, also about the contingency dikes. If I choose to go the route of Valley City my letter would most likely be to the Mayor since I feel she is the primary spokesperson and if I choose to go the VCSU route it will go to the president of the school as I feel he was the spokesperson for VCSU.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Sewer Crisis
Prevention and Communication I think are very important when dealing with a crisis. If you are aware that a potential crisis could happen before it does…Why would you not do all you can to prevent it? That’s the question I feel a lot of Valley City citizens may be asking not only each other but other community decision makers when it comes to the issue of the sewer systems. Then communicating these preventative measures and the seriousness that these measures carry is just as important as well.
The night before the sewer system broke, I was working at one of my jobs which is at a restaurant in town and was surprised to see that no sewer precautions were being taken. Now this was about the third day that the community was asked to conserve water as much as possible so they wouldn’t be putting all that water down the drains. They were asked not to take their ‘beauty’ showers, run your dishwashers, or washing machines. Yet we were doing dishes as normal and all other activities at work the same. I asked some fellow workers wondering why we weren’t doing things a bit different and they said there was no need yet. I was dumbfounded and wondered had they not heard the last couple of days and what the community officials were saying in regards to the sewer system and that it was running to the max.
To make this already known information of trying to reduce the amount of sewer in the drain of utmost importance, there could have been phone calls or people walking to each business stating it is mandatory to conserve, like they did with the residents door to door. Another good way to communicate this directly to the workers would to have had an employee meeting before each shift telling them to conserve as much as possible with what they were putting down the drain.
I don’t think that the sewer system failure could have been avoided completely due to the amount of river water flowing into the system but maybe the severity could have been lowered and the system wouldn’t have to be down for so long. Causing the business’s to be closed completely and residents forced to either evacuate or use porta-potties.
The communication after the crisis of the sewer system, however, was better. It almost takes something bad to happen for people to realize that what was going on was really important. The city got 1,000 porta-potties delivered to residents’ and businesses and the word on the radio of absolutely no water usage instead of just saying a need to cut down. Maybe the word ‘reduce’ wasn’t a strong enough word for residents to feel the need to cut back. We sure no know though :)
The night before the sewer system broke, I was working at one of my jobs which is at a restaurant in town and was surprised to see that no sewer precautions were being taken. Now this was about the third day that the community was asked to conserve water as much as possible so they wouldn’t be putting all that water down the drains. They were asked not to take their ‘beauty’ showers, run your dishwashers, or washing machines. Yet we were doing dishes as normal and all other activities at work the same. I asked some fellow workers wondering why we weren’t doing things a bit different and they said there was no need yet. I was dumbfounded and wondered had they not heard the last couple of days and what the community officials were saying in regards to the sewer system and that it was running to the max.
To make this already known information of trying to reduce the amount of sewer in the drain of utmost importance, there could have been phone calls or people walking to each business stating it is mandatory to conserve, like they did with the residents door to door. Another good way to communicate this directly to the workers would to have had an employee meeting before each shift telling them to conserve as much as possible with what they were putting down the drain.
I don’t think that the sewer system failure could have been avoided completely due to the amount of river water flowing into the system but maybe the severity could have been lowered and the system wouldn’t have to be down for so long. Causing the business’s to be closed completely and residents forced to either evacuate or use porta-potties.
The communication after the crisis of the sewer system, however, was better. It almost takes something bad to happen for people to realize that what was going on was really important. The city got 1,000 porta-potties delivered to residents’ and businesses and the word on the radio of absolutely no water usage instead of just saying a need to cut down. Maybe the word ‘reduce’ wasn’t a strong enough word for residents to feel the need to cut back. We sure no know though :)
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