Minden Gets the Word Out

September is National Preparedness Month. Each year National Preparedness Month is recognized to promote family and community disaster and emergency planning. Each year FEMA puts out a themed campaign during National Preparedness Month to bring attention to the need to prepare for potential disasters.

Many underestimate the role of good communication in post-disaster recovery. The town of Minden did not dismiss its importance when disaster struck this past spring.

A Fateful Day

Though April 26th started off well, weather forecasters knew the atmosphere was ripe with the potential for severe storms. As the afternoon came around, storms started lighting off. Many of them with the right mix of variables to produce tornadoes. In fact a total of 17 tornadoes impacted Iowa that day.

Unfortunately, one of those 17 tornadoes bore down on Minden, a town of 600 in Western Iowa. The community lies roughly 30 miles northeast of the Omaha Council Bluffs Metro Area, making Minden a commuting community with a low cost of living.

The EF-3 tornado tore through town from the south. It ripped through Main Street, tearing the roof off of Tim’s Service. It then continued northeast, essentially along Main Street/Tamarack Ave, into the residential areas with ferocity.

Left in the storm’s wake was a tangled mess of debris. Pottawattamie County Emergency Management estimated that at least 180 homes were damaged that day in the county which Minden resides. Of those, 40% were considered destroyed. Most of those destroyed homes were in Minden that day. Unfortunately, the storm event also caused a number of injuries and one death on that fateful date as well.

Reaching Out

Knowing of Minden’s small size and assumingly limited staff, I wanted to help their town’s management out. As I knew communication was key after such an event, I felt that was where I could be of most help to the town. Two days after the event I noted that the town’s website was unchanged. No information to assist recovery was provided. In a relatively short period of time, I compiled the following information:

• Links to the Minden Fire and Rescue Facebook page and the City of Minden Facebook page
• Where to go for donations
• Location and contact information of the closest Red Cross Center
• Website link to the Pottawattamie County Emergency Management Agency and the location of their mobile service center.
• Information about debris disposal
• Information about who to contact for building permits

I was hopeful that the City would enact some of my proposed additions to their website. But alas, they never did. What they did do, however, was much better.

How Minden Got the Word Out

Instead of updating their website, the town’s leaders took to social media. Anymore, it is a much more apt way of getting time-sensitive information out than a website update. Rather than digging up a city’s website for the most recent information, it is much easier to follow a city’s Facebook page or Twitter feed, where notifications of new posts can quickly be pushed to your phone. Also, updating a community’s webpage can be quite daunting for many small communities that don’t have dedicated communications staff with the knowledge necessary to conduct such changes. Many small towns rely on an outside website developer to maintain their web page. This can be quite problematic when the speed of updates is of high importance.

Minden Fire & Rescue was the first to start posting. Amongst the initial posts were where to find food and assistance. They also provided the location of the Pottawattamie County Multi-Agency Resource Center and the shower trailer.

The City of Minden’s Facebook page fired up in early May providing regular posts about city services, permits, donor organizations, and available grants. Post office information, FEMA updates, fundraisers and a variety of other information flowed through Minden’s Facebook page.

Check these two Facebook pages out now, so your community knows what information needs to be provided to residents in a time of need.