Social media was a key part of informing the community about the forecasts concerning the approach and ongoing severity of the rainfall, which were remarkable in their accuracy, they found. Social media was integral in organizing volunteering, FEMA assistance, resource distribution, cleanup and fundraising. It also played an important part in helping people understand road conditions and avoid danger while traveling. As Brandt and Turner-McGrievy work through the data, they’re identifying organizations that exhibited highly effective use of social media during the flooding. One of the most prominent is the S.C. Emergency Management Division, which not only spread valuable information as it was needed, but also helped refute misinformation (such as the erroneous notion that the Lake Murray dam was at risk) as it arose on social media channels. Looking at the disaster through a public health lens, the team is working to develop a guide to best practices along with documenting the social media response that accompanied last year’s disaster. An avid Twitter aficionado herself, Brandt (@BlondeScientist) wants the success she saw firsthand to propagate even further. “My husband and I worked with the My Carolina Alumni Association during the recovery, and we used Facebook and Twitter to guide donations and deliveries,” Brandt says. “We would find somebody who said, ‘We need water, or we need this here.’ And I would reply and say we would be happy to help you, can you direct message me a street address? And then we’d send a truck off with the supplies. “That wouldn’t have happened maybe even five years ago. But it’s definitely happening now, so let’s figure out how we can use it most effectively.”
CLOSING TOMORROW’S FLOODGATES Destruction from the flooding was exacerbated by numerous dam and levee breaches in Lexington and Richland counties. Hanif Chaudhry, a civil engineering professor and associate dean of the College of Engineering and Computing, is leading a team of researchers who aim to learn as much as they can from the dams that failed. The researchers didn’t have a moment to spare once the rain stopped falling. “It was very time-sensitive,” Chaudhry says. “When there is a failure, if they want to rebuild, they will start right away with construction. Or if the dam is gone, the flow of water will change the characteristics of the site. Or if some of the structure is left, it might present a hazard that the owner will move in quickly to remove.” Fortunately, Chaudhry and his engineering colleagues were already in the midst of two similar studies of dam breaches, including a $3 million project funded by the National Science Foundation. They had the manpower, training and laboratory equipment to quickly collect and analyze field samples. As part of the S.C. Floods Initiative funded by the university’s Office of the Vice President for Research, Chaudhry’s team visited 14 sites with major damage to earthen levees, nine of which involved total failures. Data collection included dimensional measurements and samples of the materials present in the remnants of the structures. The full analysis is still in progress, but the consequence of overwhelming the capacity of a dam’s spillway to
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