Texas County Holds Social Media Disaster Drill

Harris County, TX, hasn’t dealt with a large-scale emergency since Hurricane Ike in 2008 says Francisco Sanchez, public information officer at the Harris County Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management.

Much has changed since then, especially the landscape of social media.

“Facebook was starting to emerge at that point, but there was not a whole lot of interaction from different government organizations on social media yet,” says Sanchez.

To update first responders and the community on how to use social media in the event of a disaster situation, Harris County held a social media disaster exercise at the end of July.

The exercise simulated a hurricane coming through Harris County, and the timeframe went from 120 hours before landfall to 20 hours after landfall. The program gave the nearly 50 people from 15 county agencies a platform that simulated Facebook, Twitter and a customized version of Harris County’s website.

“One of the main questions we wanted to answer in the scenario was how should we work together and behave when people want accurate information easily accessible and as fast as possible,” Sanchez says.

One change that could likely come from the simulation is putting policies in writing that dictate across the board how those responsibilities should be divided and which organization is responsible for what.

Sanchez says they wanted the exercise to be as county-specific as possible, but they also wanted it to be realistic. To this effect, they brought in some organizations that were not part of the county, such as the National Weather Service and TranStar.

During different parts of the exercise, more information would become available. Sometimes situations would change with the hurricane. At times, reports would say the hurricane would be coming right for Harris County. At other times, reports would say the hurricane was going to miss them completely.

The exercise was done offline so no information was accidentally disseminated to the public.

“We wanted the exercise to still have a real feel and simulate a real-world environment,” says Sanchez.

One area they wanted to focus more on was recovery. Most scenarios focus on what happens when the hurricane hits, but Sanchez says they wanted this simulation to be different and more encompassing.

The exercise also tried to focus on communication, so the scenarios were planned so a large amount of public interaction and cross-organization communication was required, Sanchez says.

Sanchez says the after-action report is still being drafted, but some key lessons were obvious. One issue they encountered was that although there was collaboration on social media, they could not assume that’s the only place collaboration would happen. Information could also be disseminated other ways.

The other main issue they encountered in the scenario was division of responsibilities.

“On a day like today where not much is happening, everyone has set roles and responsibilities,” says Sanchez. “During a disaster, that changes. Sometimes those roles and responsibilities overlap, and we need to look at how we handle that and make a plan to divide it up.”

Sanchez says social media has a huge value in emergency response because it can be used to give necessary information directly to the public. They have used it for smaller scale emergencies such as ice storms, wildfires in 2011 and the recent Texas floods, but wanted to make sure people know how to use it correctly in case of a larger event.

Previous to the exercise, Sanchez says opportunities were provided to learn about social media and how it works during a disaster so the exercise would run as smoothly as possible.

“We have a pretty large county, and some organizations have been using social media longer than others,” Sanchez says. “We wanted to have a chance to educate as many organizations as we could.”

Some training was also given on the program used to simulate the social media platforms.

Sanchez says social media will remain an important part of emergency procedures.

“It’s a critical platform,” Sanchez says. “It’s gone from something people use to get some timely information to being a reliable platform to get people information immediately.