Winning at Twitter
Twitter can be a difficult form of communication to learn, let alone master. The Boston Police Department showed us all how to use it best in an emergency during the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing.
Cheryl Fiandaca joined the police department as bureau chief of public information just 10 months before the incident. She had to draw on her background as a lawyer and a television journalist for 16 years when she and her team of information officers, two sworn police officers and three civilians, found themselves in such an extreme situation.
Shortly after the explosions occurred Fiandaca got a call from the police commissioner. He gave her the go-ahead to start tweeting updates, which she promptly did – remotely from the shopping mall she was in.
From that point forward, the public information team was staffed 24 hours a day. The team was briefed by commanders up to five times a day and followed restrictions on what they were and were not allowed to say. Thanks to a well-trained team, they could be trusted to compose the right kinds of messages without officials needing to review and approve.
Not only did the public information team keep the public informed, they also did their best to defend against dangerous misinformation.
With major media outlets reporting incorrect information and putting officers in jeopardy by broadcasting their activities, the team turned to Twitter to get them to back down.
#MediaAlert: WARNING – Do Not Compromise Officer Safety/Tactics by Broadcasting Live Video of Officers While Approaching Search Locations
— Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 19, 2013
Thankfully the tone and speed of coverage changed dramatically after that point.
As if to emphasize the important role that Twitter has assumed in news reporting, the first official announcement from any agency on the conclusion of the manhunt for the Boston Marathon suspects was via Boston PD’s tweets:
CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody.
— Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 20, 2013
The most important part of the Boston PD’s social media engagement was that it had already been established, utilized and nurtured. Their preparation in laying the groundwork for an open line of communication with the public paid off when they really needed it.
Read More:
http://mashable.com/2013/04/22/boston-police-social-media/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/26/boston-police-twitter-marathon_n_3157472.html
Smart Survival Tips
It’s easy to ignore survival tips when it feels like you have heard them all before. Fortunately Popular Mechanics has some truly useful and unique survival advice. Many of the articles stress that it is possible to “thrive – not just survive” in an emergency situation.
In How to Stock Your Disaster Pantry, the article provides links to help calculate real-world daily calorie needs so you can better gauge how much food will be needed per day.
In How to Survive Absolutely Anything, the article gives supremely useful tips for last-minute preparations with severe weather approaching. Highlights include:
- Fill up every available basin with water
- Plug in every rechargeable device you own to top off the batteries
- Enhance your First Aid kit with items like duct tape and superglue
Instead of battling the crowds for limited supplies left on local store shelves, the author suggests taking advantage of speedy delivery from websites like Amazon to deliver much needed goods in the days leading up to a storm.
In 11 Things to do Before (and After) an Earthquake Strikes, the article details how to make an instant porta-potty with a trash bag and cat litter.
Read more: http://www.popularmechanics.com/archive/outdoors/survival/tips/0/10
Search and Rescue Gone to the Dogs
It seems obvious now that pretty much any disaster situation can use the aid of search and rescue dogs. It’s amazing to learn just how rare those highly trained dogs used to be. It’s even more impressive to learn how one woman’s quest to improve the training and availability of those dogs has transformed the industry.
Buzz Feed has a great article about Wilma Melville, the woman responsible for creating the nation’s first centralized search and rescue dog training center.
Wilma Melville was one of the civilian handlers for FEMA’s Search-and-Rescue (SAR) dog teams in 1995. For her first major deployment, she was dispatched with her dog Murphy to the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City after it had been blown up. When Melville arrived she expected to be among the most inexperienced handlers there, but when she realized she was not it alarmed her greatly.
Melville had witnessed task forces combing the Oklahoma site with untrained dogs on leashes. She noted that some of the other civilian handlers didn’t understand the complex physics of a building collapse well enough to deploy their dogs in the most likely places to find survivors.
Melville returned home determined that something needed to be done to foster better training and funding. At the time there were only about 15 FEMA Advanced Certified teams like Melville and Murphy in the entire country.
She founded the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation (SDF), which has pioneered evaluation and training techniques to meet the country’s ever-growing need for SAR dogs.
There are now 263 FEMA-certified search and rescue dogs in the United States, ready to respond in minutes to disasters around the nation and the globe. Of those 263 dogs, 43 were trained by SDF.
Melville has big plans for the SDF as it grows. Its new 125-acre training grounds are expected to contain a 40-dog kennel, a half-destroyed suburban neighborhood with houses and all, derailed train cars, an indoor “disaster dome” training facility that can simulate winter weather, classrooms with video links for training dogs around the world, and more.
Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/joeflood/the-expendables-inside-americas-elite-search-and-rescue-dog
