Our View: Work together to get facts out during crises

Hi-Line folks lived through another major weather problem this weekend.

A terrible storm with high winds, rain and hail slammed the area, resulting in windows being broken, trees being uprooted, power lines being downed, roads being covered in ice and fears being raised.

Problems were compounded when the National Weather Service issued tornado warnings and urged people to head for their cellars for their own safety. This isn’t tornado country, and people were justly concerned.

As usual, emergency personnel did a fine job of providing services to those who needed it. Firefighters, police officers and the weather prognosticators did a great job, and we thank them.

But in talking to people that night, we may have failed in the communications efforts.

People were information-starved during the incident. They didn't know if it was safe to go outside. They were unaware of the weather forecast. They didn’t know if trees were down or streets were passable. They didn’t know if they should take cover.

We at the Havre Daily News have reviewed our policies for getting out information during crises like this and found our policies wanting.

We have a responsibility to get news out to people in such incidents. We have more than 5,300 followers on Facebook and nearly 1,800 Twitter followers. New Media Broadcasters also plays an important role for those who have car radios.

KNMC, KHEW in Rocky Boy and Yellowstone Public Radio were knocked off the air by the storm.

At the Havre Daily News, we have to try harder to get forecasts out when there are predictions of bad weather. We have to perform simple tasks like making sure that the batteries on our smartphones don’t die in the middle of a storm.

We have to realize that our job of getting facts out to information-starved people is vital to the community we serve. We didn't realize until Sunday how much people depended on our coverage Saturday night.

We need to tell people just what a tornado warning is and what they should do to protect themselves and their families. We need to send reporters out into the streets to see how we can best report on what’s happening.

Our planning for the next power outage will start now. We have no reason to believe, given our infrastructure, that there won’t be another massive power outage affecting most of our part of the Hi-Line before too long.

The National Weather Service did a good job getting information to the news media Saturday night. And NorthWestern Energy let us know soon that additional help was coming to the Hi-Line to help restore power. It was annoying, though, to find out that the media center was closed for the weekend so their employees could enjoy the weekend.

While the Havre police, we’re sure, did a great job of providing service to people in trouble Saturday night, they didn’t do so hot on providing much-needed information to the public.

From texts and email we were receiving from the public, we’re sure that people were very concerned and wanted information quickly.

A reporter was shooed out of the police station with the curt response that they were too busy to talk.

We’re sure they were busy doing important work, but part of their important work is keeping the public informed on what’s going on during such situations.

From the text messages and phone calls we were receiving, it was clear the public was very anxious to find out details about what was happening to their city.

Many police departments have an assigned public information officer who works with reporters and the general public to get information out to the populace.

Information is the antidote to many of the problems that arise during weather problems.

We hope the city will considering creating such a position to help ease concerns of the pubic during crises.