In April 2014, in central Italy’s Umbria region, severe rains, seasonal spring melts, and lack of river upkeep caused the Tiber river’s annual flood to devastate the entire central region with dangerously high water levels. For four days, the hundreds of thousands of residents and farmers in central Italy’s Umbria region were displaced and required immediate national emergency assistance.
To connect with the region’s growing online demographic, Radio Perusia, the first web radio run by the National Civil Protection, used Hootsuite to disseminate emergency and news updates from multiple sources across their social channels.
Download this success story to learn how the italian emergency radio station used social media to:
- Keep civilians safe, calm, and well informed
- Become a trusted source of local and national emergency news in Italy
- Share 116 emergency updates on Twitter over the 4-day flood
- Listen and engage with some of the 10,000 people who shared emergency updates on their personal social channels
- Find influential people to interview live and encourage them to amplify messaging
The problem in Italy is that information is not very well organized and distributed uniformly,” says Fortarrigo Piccolomini, a volunteer with Civil Protection and co-manager of Radio Perusia. “With Hootsuite, we can collect information for all listeners and distribute it clearly and quickly.
