LADWP proudly tweets a link to a story (below) that claims that it handled crisis communication perfectly during the windstorm last January. It even takes a dig at So Cal Edison for not doing the same.
So, as a DWP customer, let’s set the record straight:
- DWP’s Twitter updates and communications were a joke. In Northeast LA, we watched in darkness for three days as the number of homes without power in the agency’s update increased. There was almost zero presence in our neighborhood. Our normally not-so-effective city councilman actually had to call the agency and yell at them to get them out here.
- OK, so the agency was busy and doing the best it could. But why the dig at Edison? As far as I saw, DWP didn’t distribute fresh water; Edison did. DWP didn’t offer shelters and blankets; Edison did. I heard Edison people at least three times on local radio, once giving very concise explanations as to why these repairs took so long, explaining how the electrical grid works. DWP? Maybe it happened, but on that weekend, with little else to do but look at my phone for windstorm related news, I didn’t see it.
- And hey, best of all…the supposedly objective article saying how great LA DWP was, and how sucky Edison was…the author is a software vendor who happens to be the supplier of DWP’s emergency response system!
This is classic DWP. The agency really needs to review what went wrong in the wind response, as well as what went right; instead, it log-rolls with a vendor, pats itself on the back, and pretends that it was brilliant in the crisis.
Here’s the original tweet:
Here’s the article (read it.)
The authors bio…
And his client page…
Isn’t transparency the key to effective public relations? Both LA DWP and the author aren’t being totally up front here….
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman 
