Gwyn Thomas, head of regional communications, Dŵr Cymru Visit the CharityComms website to view slides from past events, see what events we have coming up and to check out what else we do: www.charitycomms.org.uk

1. Storm Emma
The ‘Freeze -Thaw’ Crisis
Gwyn Thomas, Head of Regional Communications

2. About us
- 3 million customers across
Wales, Herefordshire & parts of
Deeside
- 27,000km of water mains
- 30,000km of sewers
- 800+ sewage treatment works
- 63 water treatment works
- £26 billion asset replacement value
-Contribute around £1 billion a year
to the Welsh economy
-Range of affordability tariffs
Not for profit – unique in sector!

4. Conditions
• Four days of sub-zero temperatures
followed by red warning
• -12°c recorded in Wales
• Wales bore the brunt of the Met Office
‘Red Warning’ for snow and high
winds
• Deep and drifting snow
• Further snowfall and poor conditions a
week later

5. Conditions
• Very challenging road transport conditions
• M4 and other major routes shut by police
• Minor roads still closed one week later
• Snow in the south / high winds north
• Mains power outages: moved to generators

6. Impact
• Large number of frozen
pipe calls on customers’
properties
• All 63 water treatment
works at maximum
output
• 20% increase in demand
equal to sustained
maximum summer
output
• Over 200+ Bursts a day
following the thaw
(normally 75 a day)

7. Impact
• Media frenzy – they love a
weather story!
• Stakeholder scrutiny
• Seven fold increase in calls
(26,000 compared to 3,700
over usual six day period)
• 12 fold increase in social
media conversations – 12,000
compared to 1,000
• Three times usual website hits

8. Pro-active communication
• 12 bilingual update videos: Website, Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube
• Self-help films: prevent a burst, what to do if you have a
burst
• Geo-targeted Facebook alerts to affected areas
• Radio and TV interviews led by directors – BBC, ITV,
S4C, national and local radio
• 91,000 text message alerts to customers
• Stakeholders – regular updates to DWI, CC Water, Ofwat,
Members, AMs, MPs, Cllrs, local resilience forums

9. Social Media
12 bilingual update videos: Website,
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
• Facebook
• 40 posts – videos, updates,
advice videos
• 2.1million impressions
• 1.35 million people reached
• 106,000 engagements:
comments, shares, likes
• 42,000 video views
• Twitter – 900,000 impressions

10. Customers: post incident
• Personal letters already on their way to the
6k ‘worst affected’ customers – with
automatic £75 compensation for all
customers who lost supply for > 12 hours.
• Assessing Community Fund opportunities
in affected areas
• Business customers: process in place for
compensation and pro-active call-backs
started 12 March
• Face to face meetings with key
stakeholders being scheduled: AMs, MPs,
Local Authorities, NFU.

11. Lessons learnt
• Plan, plan and ……plan!
• Be heard – you / we are the comms experts
• Own the facts – don’t rely on others!
• Joined up internal / external comms
• Wider company scrutiny – get your house in order!
• Trained spokespeople
• Resource plan
• Keep the messaging local

12. Lessons Learnt
• Don’t announce before you know
– risk getting facts wrong
• Move the story on
• Don’t forget stakeholders
• Don’t ignore colleagues
• Don’t forget about the customer –
we’re about people not pipes!

13. “Companies that do not actively practice,
study and plan for crisis communications – as
well, of course, crisis management – are
doomed to fail when a crisis befalls them.”
Steve Fink

14. Diolch