Crisis Comm 1

This spring is a great spring to be talking about crisis communication. There are several places that a person could talk about relating to this topic. In a normal semester, crisis communication happens but probably not as close to home for some people. Of course there is the disease outbreaks and the mice in the restaurants, but this spring many of our hometowns flooded and if it wasn’t our hometown everyone that is in the class had their college town flood.
My hometown of Jamestown, North Dakota flooded this spring and it is still flooded in many areas. Some people say it was the first year the “Glory Hole” had water reach it and some people say they have seen it one other time. For me it was the first time. Most years the water is almost 25 to 30 feet lower than the opening in the Glory Hole.
Besides the Glory Hole filling up, many of the residents of Jamestown have had sump pumps in their basements for months. With sump pumps being in high demand and supply being down, the radio was the main source of communication to let people know when stores received a truck of pumps.
Other sources of communication included internets sources, radio, newspapers, and television. Newsdakota.com was the major source from the internet that was available to residents. The major newspaper was The Jamestown Sun. The problem with the newspaper is that it only runs once a day. The television, radio and internet sources can update people immediately unlike the newspaper. Every time a person would turn the radio on, something about the flood or updates were being talked about. I am guessing that most people used either the internet or television to get the most information.
The spokesperson I would have to say was the mayor. She did depend on many other city officials to handle parts of each situation. Most of the time when a person would watch television, she was on their talking about the flood.