Eight Days and One Letter

Just eight days ago, I wrote about the beginning of the recovery phase of #HurricaneHarvey, the “H” hurricane.  Today, I write about the “I” hurricane, the impending disaster known as #HurricaneIrma or just #Irma.

#Irma is the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever, at this point.  Coming right on the heels of #HurricaneHarvey, people are hopefully taking this seriously and evacuating as ordered, and as makes sense.

While the location of #Irma may be different, the preparedness tips (if you are not evacuating) are the same.

• Pack a go-bag. Remember to involve your children in preparedness. (https://www.ready.gov/kids/build-a-kit)
• Have sufficient prescription medications for at least a week.
• Collect your ID’s and important papers.  Secure them so they won’t get wet and put them in your go-bag.  Be sure your go-bag is located by where you plan to exit if you have to leave.
• If you have a private well, fill your bathtub(s) with water so you have some if power goes out.
• Freeze water in plastic bags. That will give you drinking water when it thaws and will keep your food longer in your freezer should the power go out for a lengthy period of time.
• Fill your cars with gas.
• If you have a gas driven chain saw, be sure you have sufficient gas and oil.
• Charge every device you have, and if you have those little chargers, be sure they are charged as well.
• Consolidate your battery stock in one place.
• Find all your flashlights and put them in strategic places around your house.
• Put away or tie down anything outside that could be a projectile with high winds.

Getting Key Information to your Devices:

Find your municipal or county Office of Emergency Management on Facebook or Twitter. Like the page on Facebook or follow it on Twitter.

To ensure you get messages from them first up on your Facebook timeline, under their cover photo, click “Following” (once you have liked the page). A window will open up where you can select how you get notifications. Under “In Your News Feed”, choose “See First”. After the storm has passed, you can change this back to a default setting. This works for any page you have liked on Facebook.

Did you know you can get tweets sent to your phone as text messages? To do so, send a text to 40404 and key in follow @[twitter handle you want to follow]. For example, to get FEMA tweets as text messages to your phone, send a text to 40404 that says follow @FEMA.

Bastrop County Recovery Begins

The eastern portion of Bastrop County TX was hard hit by #HurricaneHarvey and the recovery phase is just beginning.  That means volunteers, donations, food and lots of coordination.  Often, without well planned management of needs and supplies, second wave disasters set in.  Second wave disasters are those caused by well-meaning folks collecting furniture, clothing, bedding, food…. without thought to distribution channels or needs.

We’ve begun a targeted list of links for people to use to report damages and to funnel volunteers and donations where they are most needed. For links to Bastrop County Emergency Management and other information (river gauges, road closures, etc), see our prior post(s).

Important links as recovery begins:

1. Bastrop County hotline for residents and businesses to report #HurricaneHarvey damages: 512-303-4300 from 9am to 5pm.
   Report damage to your business or personal property immediately. This is critical so Bastrop County meets the threshold required to qualify for FEMA individual assistance.
2. Local Donations
   1. Bastrop Long Term Recovery Team.
      If you donate online, please enter “Lost Pines Republican Women” in the “If you have a special purpose for your donation, please let us know” field. Please also have an acknowledgement sent to LostPinesRW@gmail.com so we know about donations made in our name.
   2. Bastrop or Smithville Chambers of Commerce
      Accepting donations of gift cards (Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot, Mastercard, Visa, etc) or cash donations (online).
      
   3. Mission U-Too.
      These folks are already onsite serving meals to volunteers in Smithville. They are always there for our residents during disasters.
      
3. Volunteers
   1. Smithville: (Individuals) Contact April Daniel at the Smithville Chamber of Commerce
   2. Bastrop County: (Groups) Contact the Bastrop County Long Term Recovery Team or fill out the online volunteer form.
4. Homeowner and Renters Guide to Mold Cleanup After Disasters (CDC)
5. Guía del Propietario y Arrendatario Para la Limpieza de Moho Después de Desastres (CDC)
6. A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture and Your Home (EPA)

Bastrop County & #HurricaneHarvey

Rain gauges show portions of Bastrop County TX with up to 18″ of rain yesterday. More is due today. Shelter in place if you can. If not, the county has two shelters open now and a third opening this afternoon. Check the Bastrop County OEM page for the current status of shelters.

Consider checking in on Facebook’s Safety Check and sharing the link so others can do so as well: https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/hurricane-harvey-aug24-2017/home/. This is a good way for family and friends to know you are safe.

Sunday 5PM update (see presser on FB live): All of Bastrop County has received at least 10″ of rain, with gauges showing 20.3″ up to 24″ in Smithville. There are 120 county roads and highways barricaded. Do not move or go around barricades. This risks your life and those of the first responders who have to rescue you. There have been 8 arrests already for this and officials are serious about enforcing the law. All three shelters have space: Bastrop, Elgin & Smithville.

Tomorrow will begin damage assessment. Be sure to document any #HurricaneHarvey damage to your home or property. Take lots of pictures. Should there be individual FEMA assistance, photos before and after will be invaluable.

Sunday morning update: Judge Paul Pape asks that residents assume roads are closed and not venture out unless absolutely necessary. More rain is due. On Monday, all general services and administrative offices for Bastrop County, the City of Bastrop, and the City of Smithville are closed. All Bastrop County courts are closed. Bastrop, Elgin, McDade and Smithville ISD schools are closed on Monday.

Press conferences are streamed live on the Bastrop County OEM Facebook page.

Important Links:

1. Bastrop County OEM on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BastropCountyOEM/
2. Bastrop County OEM on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bastropcntyoem
3. Map of flooded roadways: https://atxfloods.com/
4. NWS Map of stream gauges: https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/index.php?wfo=ewx
5. LCRA Map of stream gauges, rainfall and more: https://hydromet.lcra.org/
6. Report an electrical outage to Bluebonnet: https://www.bluebonnetelectric.coop/Report-Outage or call 1-800-949-4414 (24×7)
7. Bluebonnet Outage Map: http://outage.bluebonnetelectric.coop:82/
8. Sign up for emergency notices by text, email or phone at WarnCentralTexas.org
9. FEMA information about being prepared: https://www.ready.gov/hurricanes
10. National Weather Service for San Antonio/Austin: http://www.weather.gov/ewx/
11. National Weather Service for San Antonio/Austin on Twitter: @NWSSanAntonio
    (desktop access without an account is Twitter.com/NWSSanAntonio
12. Bastrop County OEM website (alerts): http://www.co.bastrop.tx.us/page/co.alerts

#HurricaneHarvey

We want to provide you with some information about preparedness and where to get information about #HurricaneHarvey.  I live in Bastrop County, TX, just east of Austin. And, I was in the EOC during Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy.  These links and comments are based on those experiences, with a direct focus on Central Texas.

Important Links:

1. Sign up for emergency notices by text, email or phone at WarnCentralTexas.org
2. FEMA information about being prepared: https://www.ready.gov/hurricanes
3. National Weather Service for San Antonio/Austin: http://www.weather.gov/ewx/
4. National Weather Service for San Antonio/Austin on Twitter: @NWSSanAntonio
   (desktop access without an account is Twitter.com/NWSSanAntonio
5. Bastrop County OEM website (alerts): http://www.co.bastrop.tx.us/page/co.alerts
6. Bastrop County OEM on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BastropCountyOEM/
7. Bastrop County OEM on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bastropcntyoem
8. Map of stream gauges: https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/index.php?wfo=ewx
9. Map of flooded roadways:  https://atxfloods.com/

Preparedness Tips:

• If you have a private well, fill your bathtub(s) with water so you have some if power goes out.
• Freeze water in plastic bags.  That will give you drinking water when it thaws and will keep your food longer in your freezer should the power go out for a lengthy period of time.
• Fill your cars with gas.
• If you have a gas driven chain saw, be sure you have sufficient gas and oil.
• Charge every device you have, and if you have those little chargers, be sure they are charged as well.
• Consolidate your battery stock in one place.
• Find all your flashlights and put them in strategic places around your house.
• Put away or tie down anything outside that could be a projectile with high winds.
• Have sufficient prescription medications for at least a week.
• Pack a go-bag. Remember to involve your children in preparedness. (https://www.ready.gov/kids/build-a-kit)

Getting Key Information to your Devices:

If you live in a county other than Bastrop County, find your county Office of Emergency Management on Facebook or Twitter.  Like the page on Facebook or follow it on Twitter.

To ensure you get messages from them first up on your Facebook timeline, under their cover photo, click “Following” (once you have liked the page).  A window will open up where you can select how you get notifications.  Under “In Your News Feed”, choose “See First”.  After the storm has passed, you can change this back to a default setting.  This works for any page you have liked on Facebook.

Did you know you can get tweets sent to your phone as text messages?  To do so, send a text to 40404 and key in follow @[twitter handle you want to follow].  For example, to get Bastrop County OEM tweets as text messages to your phone, send a text to 40404 that says follow @BastropCntyOEM

REMEMBER: Turn Around.  Don’t Drown.  

It only takes six inches of water to cause tires to lose traction and slide a car off the road. Don’t chance it.

Be safe out there. If your neighborhood is ordered to evacuate, do so.  Don’t take chances.

APCO 2017

On Tuesday, Rebecca Williams and I are presenting “Whole Community Digital Communications Planning” and “The Proper Tool is Everything: Affordable Social Media Tools” at #APCO2017. These are critically important topics for any local government. 

It’s no longer a question of whether your jurisdiction will face a crisis. It’s a question of when. All will face a crisis at some point. Waiting for that crisis to figure out who will post and how they’ll post is NOT a plan.  If you are suddenly assigned the task of monitoring and posting to social media, our sessions will give you the guidance you need to successfully manage this task.

Citizens need information during a crisis and today the majority reach for mobile devices and social media. Governments need to be there 24×7 during an event. Events don’t sleep and neither do worried citizens. Information sharing is key to keeping citizens calm. Social media is a perfect mechanism to answer questions. It also helps keep 9-1-1 lines open for true, life threatening emergencies.

Going to #APCO2017? We hope you’ll attend our sessions to learn about effective planning and execution of your whole community digital communication plan.

It’s what we do

About an hour ago, as I was getting ready to hem my skirt and my husband’s pants for my daughter’s wedding six days from now, my phone rang.  It was Rebecca.  McDonald County and Newton County in southern Missouri were flooding badly. She was almost out of cell battery and was without power.  Genevieve was as well.  Since I’m an admin on the pages, could I monitor news and posts, and share appropriately.  I dropped what I was doing and said “Sure”.  It’s what we do.

Even though I live near Austin TX, I became McDonaldCountyInfo‘s local contact and poster.  I scanned NOAA for the latest information, checked all the websites and social media I knew about for that area.  Luckily, we had just submitted a review of web and social media for a four county area that included these two counties to the HSTCC under a FEMA grant.

The chart of which towns had which online presence was invaluable in saving time to find them online.  The sad thing is that websites and Facebook pages have no current information on them.  They have the same content they had a week ago.  In some cases, their last post was a year ago.

Rebecca and I will continue to see out information and post it on McDonaldCountyInfo’s page, a citizen maintained page, since official websites, Facebook pages and even Nixle are not being used to give citizens up-to-date status information.  –Carol Spencer

Remembering Sandy

In researching information for a grant we’re writing, I had the opportunity to review articles and documentation from the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.  Just two days later, the one that sticks out in my mind is the “winners and losers” in the communications arena and why.

When presenting, I often have referred to the “perception is reality” idea and the fact that people will judge whether the response was well done or an #epicfail based on what they knew throughout the event.  But never was it more clear than in re-reading this article.

Mayor Bloomberg (NY) and Governor Cuomo (NY) were given D grades.  Why?  Mayor Bloomberg did not immediately cancel the NYC Marathon, providing a complete disconnect between the reality on the ground for so many who were homeless and without food compared to racers and organizers who filled hotels and ate lavishly.  Governor Cuomo bloviated that he would hold utility companies accountable for the timeliness of restoring power, but the public didn’t perceive that he was doing anything to make that happen.  A few tweets or Facebook postings about meetings, actions, and results wherever they occured could have changed that perception (which became a reality).

While weather forecasters spent weeks telling residents the magnitude of the storm, it seemed to catch political leaders and disaster services off-guard.  Municipalities that hosted their own websites lost the capability of communicating via that channel when their buildings were flooded or power went out and generating capacity ran dry.  Those who used “the big boys” like Facebook, Twitter, Google and major hosting sites in another part of the country were able to keep lines of communcation open.

A lesson indeed, but one that is haunting as nearly four years later, many local governments are still resistent to using social media as a communications vehicle.  Many are not taking advantage of free web tools to get even one web page up with contact information and a Facebook feed.  It truly isn’t a matter of “if”, but “when” something will happen.  Will your jurisdiction be prepared?

Synthesizing Important Info to Fit a Poster

I’ve never put together a poster presentation. I’ve always presented at sessions, with PPT slides as my guide. So, when my proposal to present “The Double-Edged Sword of the Social Network” was accepted as a poster presentation, not a session presentation, I was a bit disappointed. It is, however, an interesting effort to take a session and turn it into a poster.

I’ve had to go through the presentation and synthesize the message. Today, I recieved an email asking me to provide the WCDM Conference folks with a few pieces of information so they can market the various poster presentation. Another opportunity to really hone in on the point of the presentation… errr… poster.

So, you already know the title: “The Double-Edged Sword of the Social Network”, but what does that mean? The subtitle is more enlightening: “Policies, Publishers and Purchasing Impacts”. How about “Don’t Jump in the Social Media Waters Without these Lifesaving Tools”?

This poster will cover internal policies, commenting policies, gov’t purchasing impacts and impediments, records retention issues and more. Now, how to fit all that really important info on one 4′ x 3′ poster board.

Eight Slides? Really?

I typically start my presentations by joking about how long I can talk… and on the topic of emergency communications using digital and social media, I could talk for days.  So, imagine how hard it was to put together a few slides for a 45 minutes session, during which I’m one of four (yes, four) panelists.  By my calculation, leaving 10 minutes for questions, that leaves me about 8.5 minutes. And, of course, that assumes no other speaker goes over 8.5 minutes.  Any chance that might happen?

In my allotted time at the 2016 NJ GMIS TEC Conference, I plan to cover

• The Whole Community Approach to a Communications Plan
• Engaging Your Community
• Proposed “Actions” from Sustainable Jersey
  • Emergency Communications Planning
  • Vulnerable Population Identification in Emergencies
• Thinking and Acting Regionally
• Not Reinventing the Wheel
• Connecting with Others in this Arena

The presentation is online at SlideShare.net/ChazNJ/emergency-communications.

We are “Weather-Ready Nation Ambassadors”™

Disaster Info Team and Stormzero LLC have been accepted as NOAA Weather-Ready Nation Ambassadors.  What is this program and what does this mean?

According to NOAA, “The Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador™ initiative is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) effort to formally recognize NOAA partners who are improving the nation’s readiness, responsiveness, and overall resilience against extreme weather, water, and climate events.”

The Disaster Info Team and Stormzero LLC have partnered together, and are focused on using the whole-community approach to leverage all available resources in the event of an anticipated or unanticipated event.  Their Disaster Info Model is a proven social media technique involving official emergency management channels, along with first responder, second responder, business and citizens, with information vetted for accuracy and timeliness.