Keeping it current

An emergency page is read many times by the same people. They come back every hour to see if the road is open, the water is safe or the shelter has room. If they cannot tell whether anything changed, they call, and they stop trusting the page.

Every update gets a timestamp

Put the time and full date of the latest update directly under the headline:

Updated 3:40 p.m. Tuesday, October 6, 2026.

Write the time as residents read it: hours and minutes, a.m. or p.m., and noon or midnight in words. The National Institute of Standards and Technology calls 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. ambiguous. Never write "today" or "this afternoon" on a page people will read tomorrow.

Newest on top, history below

Structure the page in two parts:

The current situation, rewritten at each update so it is always true on its own. A resident arriving for the first time reads only this.

Earlier updates, below, each with its timestamp, newest first. This is the record of what you said and when.

Do not make residents read a timeline from the bottom to work out the current state. Do not delete earlier updates either. People acted on them, and you will need the record afterward.

Say what changed

Start each update with one line that says what is new:

What changed: Elm Street reopened at 3:30 p.m. Oak Avenue is still closed.

If you corrected an earlier fact, say so in the update ("Correction: the shelter is at the middle school, not the high school, as we said at 1 p.m."). A silent edit leaves people who read the first version with the wrong fact and no reason to look again.

Promise the next update, then keep the promise

End the current situation with when you will update next:

We will update this page by 6 p.m.

Then do it, even if nothing changed:

Updated 6 p.m. No change. Crews are still working on the main. Next update by 9 p.m.

A kept schedule tells residents they can stop calling and check back. Choose an interval you can keep. Every two or three hours is common for a slow event, more often for a fast one. Your information lead decides.

Keep every channel saying the same thing

During an emergency your institution may speak through the website, social media, a phone alert service, a recorded phone line, press releases and local media. They must match.

• Make the emergency page the source. Other channels copy its words and link to it.
• When the page changes, send the new text to whoever runs each other channel.
• Keep a short list of channels and who updates each, and check it at every update.

If social media says the shelter is open and the website says it is full, residents will believe whichever is worse, and both channels lose.

Hand-offs

Long events outlast one person's shift. Write a short hand-off note at each change: what is posted, what is promised and when, which channels are active and who the information lead is now. The next person should not have to read the whole page to know what you promised.