Limerick City and County Council saw a huge surge in the number of people accessing Limerick.ie and our Twitter feed @LimerickCouncil during Storm Ophelia.
From 15-17 October the @LimerickCouncil Twitter account had 994,600 impressions (the number of times users saw our tweets on Twitter).
Of this figure more than 866,000 of those were on Monday 16th October, the day Storm Ophelia hit.
The @LimerickCouncil tweeted 96 times that day. This did not including the posts we retweeted from other accounts such as Met Eireann, ESB, Department of Housing etc.
This was our top tweet had 113,877 impressions, 212 likes, 95 retweets
https://twitter.com/LimerickCouncil/status/919853684686839808
The second most popular tweet was our post regarding homeless services:
https://twitter.com/LimerickCouncil/status/919919870120259585 with 40,035 impressions, 42 retweets, 17 likes
Limerick.ie saw traffic more than double during Storm Ophelia.
Website traffic began to increase from 12noon with particular peaks at 2pm and 7pm.
Comparing Monday 16 October 2017 to the previous Monday 9 October 2017
- Page Views: 22,682 vs 10,499 (+116.04%)
- Users: 10,398 vs 4,368 (+138.05%)
- Unique Page Views: 20,101 vs 9,091 (+121.11%)
Nine of the Top Ten Pages viewed throughout Limerick.ie on Monday 16 October were related specifically to Storm Ophelia.
Five Media Releases were sent out at regular intervals between 9am and 7pm on Monday to local and national media highlighting the latest up-to-date information and reinforcing the key messages about staying safe and remaining indoors.
Senior council personnel including Chief Executive Conn Murray and Chief Fire Officer Michael Ryan, along with the heads of the other Primary Response Agencies (Bernard Gloster, HSE Mid West and Chief Superintendent David Sheahan, An Garda Síochána) appeared on local and national television and radio to give the latest situation and reassuring the Limerick public that the situation was being monitored.
Head of Marketing and Communications with Limerick City and County Council Laura Ryan said: “Getting the various messages out to members of the public before, during and after Storm Ophelia was our key priority.”
“Council staff were on hand to deal with every situation presented to them during Storm Ophelia.”
“We now live in an age where information and news is almost instantaneous, and it was important that Limerick City and County Council was able to inform our citizens of the most up-to date information during the storm.”
“It is important that the public sees that Limerick City and County Council is a trusted and immediate source of information when it comes to situations like Storm Ophelia. We have learned a lot from the experience and will be looking at ways to improve our services.”
In addition to the information channels, Limerick Fire and Rescue Service received 16 calls between 6am and 6pm on Monday. They were mobilised on three occasions.
Limerick City and County Council Customer Services remained open until 8pm on Monday and between 9am and 8pm they received 308 phone calls (Customer Service would normally take 750 – 800 calls per day)
Of these calls 189 resulted in cases being created and logged. The majority of the cases logged were for trees down/ branches down/ debris.