Crisis Research Continued

Yes, last blog ever! At the beginning I thought I would focus on the whole town now I want to switch gears and write my paper on more of the VCSU side of things along with the city combined. The continued research has been easy to come buy since I live in the small town of Valley City. The first thing I conducted was to lay out a time line for Valley City. The river was anticipated to flood when we got hit with two back to back blizzards at the end of March. The first sandbagging efforts where held at sandbag central on March 23rd. The volunteer fire fighters and other units where dispatched to help sandbag all day. From then on the sandbaggin siren blew into April asking for help. It was predicted to get to 22 feet of water and the prediction was pretty much dead on. Clay dikes where built 24 feet to hold the 22 feet of water back. After these where built some had breeches buy the country club and the softball diamonds southwest of town. A few days after mandatory evacuations where put in place for the dissabled and elderly. I myself was evacuated from my partents house before getting ready to sit down for Easter Sunday dinner. A few days later on Aprtil 16th VCSU classes were cancled and put online for the remanding semester. Yippy! no more chemisty 5 days a week or ever again! The sewer system backed up a day later. People were urged to leave and portapotties were installed through out the town a day after that. A week and half later the water started to decline, already meeting its crest the tuesday before. Things have started to quite down now. During the rest of my research I found the major spokespeople who have dealt with this entire situation. Another thing I doing is telling the flood from my prespective. How, I thought it was handled and if things could have been done any better or differently.l

Valley City Flood

For my research paper I decided to focus on Valley City since I was born and raised there and have been through the flood from start to finish. I saw this flood culminating, oh right around the end of December when it relentlessly dumped the most snow I've seen since 1997 through Febuary. The two blizzards in the middle of March didn't help either. When you can't get anywhere to go ice fishing because your four wheel drive can't make on the ice or out to where the fish are biting you know your going to have a wet spring. Valley City defenitely got that.

Lets see how did I get my information about the flood first hand? Well there where many sources out there relaying information thats not hard to do in a small town. How I first found out that the flood was going to be bad was looking at fargo's case. I heard about that when I was spring breaking in Florida on The Weather Channel. Then realizing we lived in a valley on a town built next to a river I realized...Oh no, where gonna be the next Fargo except worse. After the first blizzard pandamonium was creeping in with sandbagger sirens, VCSU email anouncements, KOVC, the Times Record and that crappy valley new channel shouting all sorts of calls to fight the flood. These outlets all played a particular role in the crisis communication channeled throughout Valley City. The main spokesperson of course was the Mayor Mary Lee Neilson and many other spokespersons where out there for the Corp of Engineers and Valley City Public Works and others. These spokes people where heard through mostly KOVC, the newspaper and the public access channel.

In my research project all of the major crisis communications will be covered including who said them, how they where sent out, and why they were important. Also much of the catastrophies that plagued this poor town for several weeks will be looked into on how they where handled with the crisis communication side of things.