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