The website, called 2010 Nashville Flood Information, aggregated information from FEMA as well as state and local recovery resources. It started as a typical emergency communications tool for the university and grew into a disaster recovery tool for university employees and the Nashville community. “Initially we were looking at getting information up about the flood and how it was affecting the campus,” said Melanie Moran, director of Web communications for Vanderbilt University. “But very quickly it became a resource for our many employees that were severely impacted by the flood in their homes.”
In addition to being a place to post information, the website hosted a survey emergency managers used to direct their efforts. “As we were creating responses we did an assessment of our employees' needs,” said Robin Steaban, administrator of operations and nursing for the Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute, who led the coordination of response efforts. “As we were identifying sort of buckets of need or areas of need and creating responses, we would put them out on the website.”
From that the university was able to e-mail survey respondents directing them to check the website for newly available resources. A student-organized swap meet where faculty and staff could get needed supplies, including clothing and household items, was one of the first services to result from the survey.
The website also hosted the Vanderbilt Helping Vanderbilt message board where staff and faculty could ask for and receive volunteer assistance with tasks like removing damaged drywall. Steaban said the message board provided some benefits, with the greatest source of support coming from people within employees’ own departments. “There were a few people who I think didn’t have a connection and used that site,” she said, “but more importantly I think was the local help that people experienced because of their local team efforts.”
A link to the university’s flood assistance fund where donors could make contributions to help faculty and staff was also available on the site.
According to a blog post by university Web developer Lacy Tite, the site had 18,600 unique page views on the launch day and by midday May 5 had nearly 71,000 page views. By then developers had transitioned the site to a WordPress blog, which made it easier to update, Tite wrote.
