Thursday, April 30, 2009

Lisbon - Flood 2009

I have decided to do my crisis paper on my hometown of Lisbon, ND and their flood fight. I was unable to help fight the flood because I was in Valley City. Then, when we were evacuated I went to my ranch which is 20 minutes from Lisbon and went right to work helping my dad with the cattle. I kept Lisbon in my thoughts and hoped they made it out in one piece and for the most part they have fought the flood excellently. In the next couple of weeks I will be researching the exact things Lisbon and its officials did to make the city safe and how they communicated with those who lived in the danger zone and surrounding areas.

I am excited to find out everything the city did to inform the community. All the lines of communication they went through. I went to the high school prom grand march to watch and at the end they talked about how the students were a huge impact during the flood fight there just like in every other community fighting the flood. The gym gave a standing ovation to the prom goers and it was really touching. You could feel how much the community has bonded together in this time of need. Lisbon has always had a small town family feel to it and this crisis just brought the family a little closer together.

I have started looking at articles that were printed in the Ransom County Gazette. I plan on interviewing some people that live in Lisbon as well. I am going to get an idea of how they felt the information that was given to them was distributed. In my research I will see what good things Lisbon did during crisis and see if there are any things that the city could have done to make their communication better.

4 comments:

  1. The flooding this year has been outrageous. My hometown also suffered from flooding, although not as severe as in Lisbon or Fargo or Valley City. I feel for all of those who lost a home, business, or anything to the rage and relentlessness of Mother Nature. I helped as much as I could where I could so that everyone else could help where they could as well.

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  2. It will be interesting to see how much information you and I will be able to gather about our respective small towns. Lucky for you, Lisbon was covered in another newspaper; while Harwood’s local newspaper is the Fargo Forum or the West Fargo Pioneer.

    I chose Harwood for perhaps some of the same reasons you chose Lisbon. It is not only the great communication that was conducted throughout this ordeal. It was also the great sense of community that was strengthened and shown to the world when times got really tough.

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  3. I think that it would be very interesting to see how a small town, like Lisbon, was ablt to fight the flood. Although communication might have been a little easier, because there are only so many people to commununicate to. But with the limited people it's amazing how they were all able to get together to fight the flood

    Good luck with your research and have fun!

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  4. I think it is awesome how almost all of the cities and towns around here that were flooding were actually able to save most of what they had. All of the volunteers that helped sandbag and haul dirt and sand are definitely in need of some thanks. Without all of the volunteers there is no way that any of the cities would have been able to save what they did. The hardest part now I think is that all of these cities and towns around the area will need volunteers again to help take down all of the dikes. It will take much longer I presume because there won't be half as many volunteers this time around.

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