Emerson Responds to Water Break

In reflection of the whole Boston water break these past couple of days, I was looking at how Emerson responded in terms of crisis communication. I think they responded very well. Sunday morning I woke up to an e-mail from Emerson about the issue and what they were doing to make it easier for students living on campus. They had clean, boiled water in the dining halls until a certain time at night that students go get to. They had bottles of water being delivered to the school, they were not serving anything in the dining hall that first needed to be cleaned by water and they were informing students of what they needed to do: how long they needed to boil water for before using it. I even woke up this morning with an e-mail from Emerson informing me that the boil water order had been lifted. I heard this from Emerson before even reading the paper, I didn't even see it in the paper until this afternoon. Therefore I think in terms of crisis communication, a college responding to a city crisis and communicating information to it's students, Emerson responded really well.

Red Line Fire

On Thursday night, the MBTA had to shut down service on the Red Line due to old wiring near the Downtown Crossing station. According to reports, a few feet away from the station platform, a fire started when 30-year-old wiring sparked a blaze. Smoke spread from Park Street all the way to the Boylston T-stop (where I happened to be standing)!

Fortunately, the T was up and running again by 5 a.m. on Friday. However, the quick fix of capping the damaged wires will only be efficient for so long. This blaze comes at a time where MBTA officials are already in a financial bind. The Boston Globe spoke with Bryan Kane, the financial analyst for the MBTA. He stated that the MBTA does not have enough funds at this moment to ensure that more problems do not happen in the future. Clearly, Downtown Crossing is not the only concern for the transportation system, but it is just one more thing that they want to fix but simply cannot fund.

As far as the public that uses the T, we are in a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation. Many of us do not want to be one of the 19 sent to the hospital for smoke inhalation on Thursday night. However, many of us do not have a car in this city, either. We worry about using the trains in situations like these, but we simply do not have another choice. Here's hoping Massachusetts and the MBTA figure out a way to fund these problems soon. I, for one, would prefer a safer, more reliable public transportation system.