we should combine whatever system with weather alerts
Comment on Water Boil Advisory
spongebue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Honest question, what method of alerting would you have suggested? Looks like they tried 4 different things at once - none perfect, but I’m not sure any would be
Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 1 day ago
TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
A competent state would go door to door, not make those affected constantly seek out this type of information. It is a basic public healtg failure.
spongebue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
My water district has 55,000 customers, many of whom won’t answer their doors thinking it’s a solicitor. Even if they did, you could have dozens of people going door to door and it would still take forever
TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
You drive door to door leaving flyers. Small crowds of teenagers and college students do this for political campaigns. Why do you think municipal or county staff can’t drive, knock on doors, or drop flyers? You can easily do 100-200 houses per hour if it’s just flyers and no converdationd. You can do the whole thing in a day with 50 people.
It feels like you’d think the US Postal Service is an outlandish fairy tale. “They do what!? Drop of letters and packages to every address? That would take years!”
Fondots@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Ok, where do you get those 50 people?
Do you have 50 people sitting around on-call 24/7/365 just in case they need to go knock on everyone’s door?
Are you taking them off of other jobs to go do this? If this happens at 3AM on a holiday weekend, there’s probably a pretty good reason those other people are already on the clock, like maybe fixing whatever issue is causing the advisory.
Are we relying on volunteers? How are we going to get ahold of them to let them know, let alone guarantee that they’re actually going to show up.
We gonna mobilize the national guard to do it? How long is that gonna take to get going?
Maybe we’ll just press-gang the first 50 people we can get our hands on to do it. What could possibly go wrong?
But let’s say getting the people is a solved problem. How are they getting around? Not every area is easily walkable. Do we have 50 municipal cars on standby for them to use? Are we going to have additional people driving them around to the needed areas in vans? Are they using their personal vehicles and will need to be compensated for gas and mileage (not to mention probably an insurance nightmare for those people using personal vehicles for non-personal use)
spongebue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You can drive from neighborhood to neighborhood, but when you go door to door it’s almost certainly on foot. My parents live in an older neighborhood with mailboxes at the front doors, and unless we had a package they never had the truck on our street. It was always parked a block away while the carrier went on foot going from door to door.
And no, I don’t think the water company would have an army of 50 people ready to do an organized canvas of the town (unlike the Postal Service, which has a roster of dedicated mail carriers)
BussyCat@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Phone is really the only one of those that’s helpful. It’s not really considered common practice to regularly check your water companies website or Facebook and for something as important as a water boil advisory it should be sent out at least through email in addition to phone
MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Everyone has email, and text is also a good option.
ThePantser@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Email, text, neighbors app, nextdoor. There is even the rave alerts that many cities use. No reason why a notice can’t be blasted on all channels in emergencies.
RebekahWSD@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Personally I’d like to sign up for email alerts. I’m not the person who pays the water bill, so I won’t get the phone alerts. But I’m still living here, so it would be nice to still get those somehow.
wildncrazyguy138@fedia.io 1 day ago
I would have preferred it in the form of a limerick, but that’s why I listen to NPR.
Smeagol666@crazypeople.online 1 day ago
If you live near Pawtucket,
Do not drink from the communal bucket.
The local water stinks,
So I only drinks,
Bottled water or vodka, so fuck it.
GrabtharsHammer@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This comment sounds like Carl Kasell.
FerretyFever0@fedia.io 1 day ago
The town crier and carrier pigeons, as well as the Nextdoor app. Idk who uses Nextdoor, but 30 other people could've known.
apftwb@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Town Crier
chloroken@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Around my place when they were digging up the neighborhoods water lines they literally left a note on your door.
glitch1985@lemmy.world 1 day ago
They leave two here. One saying there is a boil advisory and another after the tests come back saying it’s safe.
lemmyman@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Boil water advisories are often immediate - like a check valve has failed unexpectedly and there is, this very instant, a risk if sewage in your tap water.
Hard to mobilize a city-wide door-to-door campaign with such urgency.
As a secondary option, sure. But it’s not always like a planned-for-months water main replacement.
spongebue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Around a neighborhood is one thing. An entire town could be a hell of a lift, not to mention that there are still problems with notes on doors (I usually go in and out through my garage; the front door is rarely used)
Nighed@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Junk mail manages it? I imagine it’s not hard to say to the postal service, here are 5000 flyers, please give everyone one.
spongebue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s even easier to respond with
“sorry, it’s a Sunday on a holiday weekend”
“Our carriers are halfway done with their route for the day, we’re not paying them overtime to go back”
“Our sorting system is already done and the trucks are loaded up”
“I haven’t checked my mail for a few days” (as the recipient of that flyer)
Dozzi92@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
This sounds like an emergency situation, a broken main, versus someone digging. These get discovered when Joe schmo turns his water on and it’s brown, no pressure, or someone driving down the street encounters a flood on a sunny day. They contact the water company, and the water company then identifies the problem. Time is continuing to pass as this all occurs.
Water utility calls every account holder affected by the outage. They post online. They notify the town and the town posts on their website. Dunno what this “system no one knows about” is, but around me there’s a service called Nixle that I use, and you’ll get text messages about things, including water main breaks and boil water advisories.