YOUR ELi: If There's Another Disaster, Now We'll Be There

Image: Direct messaging to coordinate restoration efforts last year during the outage

Remember the power outage that began one year ago today? It was a major reason why in the spring of 2014 I decided to found ELi as a 501c3 nonprofit organization that would serve the people of East Lansing through the labor of embedded citizen reporters.

During the outage, local commercial news outlets were able to cover a portion of what was going on. But the most effective reporting—the kind of reporting that got you the information and help you really needed if, like my family, you were without power for a week or more—that came from citizens using social media to share information.

Two leaders emerged on that front, on Facebook and Twitter: Dan Ryan in Lansing who ran the Twitter feed called @BWLOutage, and Jeff Pratt in East Lansing who ran @ELansBWLOutage. These guys worked practically non-stop to collect and distribute information about outages, crew locations, and emergency needs (including the needs of line workers from out of town who had expected to only be here a couple of days). About a week into life with out power at our house, I started working with them and Bob Perialas of BWL as well as Chief Juli Liebler of ELPD and Randy Carn of Elite Electrical in an effort to get people all over the area reconnected, and to keep them as warm and safe as possible while they waited for reconnect. (Staying busy kept me from going crazy.)

The investigations that occurred after the outage (including my own, directed at the experience of East Lansing) described failures of communication as having greatly exacerbated the disaster. BWL’s own communication systems were seriously broken, yes—but also lacking was a news and information service dedicated to East Lansing. I wanted to make sure that if East Lansing ever faced a crisis like this again, we had a news system in place to provide immediate assistance with on-the-ground emergency communications.

Now that we have ELi, I’m going into the New Year feeling like we in East Lansing are in a much safer position—one where we have a way to share information about emergency services, government action, and citizen protests. (By the way, the protest at Glencairn School that finally led to more crews? That was conceived by the man who is now ELi’s Nature reporter—my partner Aron Sousa—but it was Ryan and Jeff who helped get word out so that more than 100 people came.)

ELi is a way we can take care of ourselves, and take care of each other.

Of course, part of taking care of ourselves so that we can take care of each other is pacing so that we don’t burn out. And that’s why ELi is going on break for the holidays! We’ve had a great start this year, and we appreciate everyone who has participated by sending in tips, reporting for us, and donating financially to keep ELi going.

Take this opportunity of our little break to poke around the site. Find something you love? Let folks know by sharing it on Facebook or Twitter. Discover something you don’t understand? Contact us to ask. Know of something that your neighbors should know about? Write it up and send it in. Love the whole project? Then consider donating $10, $20, or more. Every little bit helps, and it’s tax deductible.

The ELi team sends you and yours best wishes for a warm and bright New Year.

ELi is a reader-supported, nonprofit, noncommercial news source for the people of East Lansing. If you want us to keep bringing you news like this, contribute now! Donate online or donate by check. Your contributions are tax deductible!