Enough of the FB Games (Guest Post-Bruce Danielson)

First of all, I, Bruce Danielson, do not belong to the website Facebook, so don’t go looking for me there because I do not partake in their invasive intrusion in privacy.

Second, don’t send me Facebook links because I cannot click on them to see what you are excited about.

Third, don’t expect me to go to Facebook if the world is coming to an end, because it is not the place I will be able to see it.

If you, like me, do not live in the Facebook or do not live in the pretend world of social media, the city of Sioux Falls Facebook page copy attached here, is a usual screen “non-friends” will get. It begs the question, if you do not let Facebook own your life, you will not be allowed to survive?

Our town recently spent $67,000 updating the city information system some call a website. The city spends millions of dollars per year on emergency services including items referred to as police, fire and ems. Our town also has a board that meets monthly to discuss something called emergency management and another board called REMSA to preparing for needed ambulances to actually show up where needed when called. It does not take much to remember the phantom 980 ambulances sent to defraud the taxpayers and insurance providers to know how far our administrations will go to hide the truth of competence.

Meanwhile back to story, many of these expensive services failed to perform on Tuesday night September 10, 2019.

What did the city “leaders” do? Blame the citizens for not being prepared to meet their version of God.

Our town of Sioux Falls experienced three tornados that night. Thankfully no one was seriously injured or killed. We again were lucky. I was up working on a project late that night when my house began to shake and the roof was pounded by the rain. Like I said, most of us were lucky. Certain parts of town were not so lucky and were put in more danger by our administrations lack of planning and miserable lack of candor in admitting their screwups.

Our Sioux Falls city government seems to think if they use their millennial social media accounts to announce danger to their “friends” or “followers” their special groups will be fine. To hell with the rest of the heathens seems to be their governing creed.

The administration seems to not believe in disaster planning, sirens or coordinated messaging. The administration leadership and members of the RS5 believe the public should be silenced like the emergency sirens were that Tuesday night.

Spooky Facebook social media broadcasts to only their “friends” do not make the cut in all homes during an emergency, but sirens have in the past and still do. The monthly first Friday at 11:00am siren tests are heard inside most houses and businesses with closed windows. The sirens have a specially designed waving siren sound was designed to play in all weather over most sound pitches. To say the sirens would not have made a difference is a lie or a far-fetched excuse with no merit.

If this town actually did regional emergency planning, like done in the region 30 years ago, the administration might have found out there are eight (8) switches to flip to activate the emergency sirens instead of a single main control. The lack of planning also shows in their plan to destroy our emergency shelter built in 1962. The design of the Arena was to allow it survive with thousands of people inside before and after a tornadic type event. During the recent Task Force discussions the members were frustrated by how much it would cost to tear it down because it was built to emergency management standards. So now we are going to tear it down because it is not pretty enough for our current delicate tastes.

Remember the use of the Fargo dome to fill sandbags in freezing weather when no place else could do it? This is was emergency planning in protecting thousands of people and property. Fargo did it right, why can’t we?

Remember the Sioux City disaster planning that made survival possible after the United flight 232 crash? It was actual emergency exercises and planning that brought in the thousands of people necessary to help the survivors. Sioux City did it right, why can’t we? Oh yea, we play Facebook games on our phones.

According to our town’s “leaders” Facebook social media accounts are needed to survive disasters. We really have a bunch of loonies running our town’s administration. No planning, just city “leadership” playing Facebook games with their phones. FACEBOOK SHOULD NEVER BE USED AS THE PRIMARY METHOD OF INFORMING THE CITIZENS OF ANYTHING! Is this clear enough?

Administration officials are blaming others for their lack of information delivered to the people. An information vacuum is caused by lack of planning. The administrations poor messaging shows they do not want to be leaders. I, with many others, ask them to get to work, quit blaming others for their screwups, quit replaying the election of 2018, quit using our poor lives to play 2020 election games and start hiring people with experience. If you can’t figure out how to lead, just get out of the way, hide in your offices or just help us all out by resigning.

Editor’s Note: This all reminds me of a docu-movie I watched about the campaign that secured the Brexit disaster. The campaign that won was spreading false information and half-truths all over FB. In fact there are serious investigations going on to this day of their campaign practices. Folks, FB is NOT the place to go to get official information about ANYTHING. Often when I read a story on FB that looks plausible, I search other sites to see if it is true.