Communication Is Essential In A Crisis
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Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
Typically, I would save the observational life lesson I’ve learned over the course of the week for the last paragraph of my column as a way to bring all the thoughts together and wrap it up into something semi-coherent. But, this time, I’m putting it right at the beginning so that the first-paragraph-only readers can see it, too. The biggest take away for me this week is the make-or-break importance of communication!
In terms of communication, the Water Valley Electric Commission blew it out of the water…or ice, as the case may be. In fact, I’m thinking that they could write the handbook on how to effectively communicate with a small town in crisis after a bona fide natural disaster. At times, it seemed that the morning, lunchtime, afternoon and evening online updates about our electricity restoration efforts were as important as the restoration itself. Water Villains needed assurance, timelines, progress reports and hope for a better day tomorrow. And, boy, we got it.
Making clear, predictable and consistent communication with citizens a main priority is what I want in leadership. It’s also enough to keep a lot of people patient. I don’t need much to stay relatively pacified. I don’t need to go to the meetings where I won’t be helpful or to ask a bunch of questions on a subject about which I’m blissfully uneducated. But I do want to know what is being done to get power back on and where to take extra blankets for the people who are still cold. Not only did the near-constant communication help with keeping spirits up, but it helped in organizing volunteer efforts, which turned out to be vital. The communication from the Yalobusha County Sheriff’s Department on Facebook has been terrific in organizing resources and manpower for our county citizens who are still without power.
Communication like we got during this storm doesn’t underestimate the regular citizen. Like, tell me what’s up! I can handle it! I can probably even understand it — even the hard-to-understand things. For instance, we’ve all been schooled in the workings of electrical systems now. I never in my life thought I would know so much about sub-stations or those little cap things that go on top of the light pole or three-line poles connecting to the two-line poles, etc. I would clearly make a terrible line-lady, but at least I can grasp enough to very generally know what’s happening and know to get out of the lineman’s way so he can do his job for us.
However, I would still like to know why a squirrel can run back and forth down a power line all day but then blow itself up in a transformer and take half the town with it. Brandon Presley, we’ll need a Facebook Live to explain that.
In the recent past, did I publicly make fun of the aesthetics and placement of the Electric Commission’s electric car chargers by saying that, in their pre-water-themed stickers state, they looked like refrigerators crossed with mammogram machines? Maybe. Did the ill-placed car chargers wind up being absolutely worth it if the trade off was this level of effective management out of having an Electric Commission in the first place? Yep! I love the car chargers now.
