KIM ADAMS, an employee of the city's 3-1-1 call center, spent five days and five nights at work through Hurricane Sandy, and although she was more than ready for the weekend by the time the storm moved out, she wasn't complaining.
"It was not bad," said Adams, who handles social media and knowledge-based support for 3-1-1 and was one of dozens of 3-1-1 employees who worked 'round-the-clock during Sandy's wrath. "We are charged with making sure the public gets the right information."
On a normal day, Adams said, she usually sends about 100 tweets from the @Philly311 account. During the height of the storm, she "probably sent 1,000 posts" to Twitter and Facebook, she said.
During the storm, the city's @Philly311 Twitter account, manned by Adams and a handful of other staffers, gained about 2,000 followers.
From Saturday through the storm's aftermath Tuesday, the city received 39,776 calls to its 3-1-1 nonemergency line. On a normal day, the city receives about 9,000 3-1-1 calls.
In addition to those calls, the city's new "Philly311" mobile app, launched in September, got a real-life test. Officials reported that 462 requests were made via the app from Sunday through Tuesday - and on Monday, at the height of the storm, "Philly311" became the 33rd-most-downloaded app in the App Store, city officials said. A map of app requests submitted during the storm shows that residents across the city, in almost every neighborhood, used the app.
"This is one more step we didn't have before, a tool we didn't have three months ago," Deputy Managing Director and chief customer-service officer Rosetta Lue, who oversees 3-1-1, said of the mobile app.
"The Philly311 app really broadened our multichannel-communications outreach efforts with Hurricane Sandy," she added.
Last Monday, as Sandy battered the region, the city added a new "fallen tree" category to the mobile app. By Tuesday, there were 180 requests citywide submitted via the mobile app for fallen trees. A new "Hurricane FAQ" page was also integrated into the app before the storm, officials said, and received nearly 2,800 visits Monday and Tuesday.
Contact Morgan Zalot at zalotm@phillynews.com or 215-854-5928. Follow her on Twitter @morganzalot. Read her blog at PhillyConfidential.com.
