Philadelphia’s water contamination was a test of the city’s response to a crisis. It failed.

Protecting sources of drinking water, in our case the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers, is crucial to the health and safety of our citizens. To do so, the city of Philadelphia must take a combination of preventive measures, including protecting our watershed, preventing pollution, controlling runoff, regular water quality monitoring, and emergency planning.

This weekend we witnessed the abject failure of the last — but highly crucial — part of its responsibility.

At 11:25 on Sunday morning, The Inquirer tweeted an article that was published moments earlier, in which officials from the Kenney administration said they could not be sure if after 2 p.m. — a little more than two hours later — Philadelphia’s drinking water would be free of contaminants from a Bucks County spill that happened on Friday evening. This was the first time that I and many other residents heard this news. And we heard it from the paper, in an article behind a paywall. (The Inquirer’s coverage of the story is now accessible to all.) Not from the city itself.

With zero direct communication to citizens from the city of Philadelphia, many of us were left angry, scared, and unsure of what to do to protect ourselves and our neighbors.

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Of course, those who were able flocked to stores, where shelves instantly emptied of bottled water. There was no prioritization of people who are elderly, disabled, or otherwise unable to immediately go to the store when the alert went out. And no assistance to people who can’t afford bottled water, or have increased medical needs, such as people who are pregnant or babies who drink formula, which must be mixed with water.

The city’s failure to execute a proper emergency procedure has compromised our citizens’ safety and further eroded public trust.

The following are some of the key steps of emergency planning for drinking water and all the ways in which they were bungled by the city.

The emergency plan should outline the procedures for notifying relevant authorities and the public in the event of an emergency. This includes identifying the person or team responsible for making the notification, the methods of communication, and the content of the message. If Philadelphia had a citywide emergency plan in place, it did not go smoothly.

Hearing that the city’s water supply might be contaminated was a crisis, and residents had almost zero early communication from the Office of Emergency Management, Mayor Jim Kenney, or City Council. It made us all wonder: Where are our most important political officials on the weekends? Did they even care about us? Did we even matter?

“Did they even care about us? Did we even matter?”

The plan should outline procedures for communicating with the public about the emergency and the actions being taken to address it. This may include issuing boil-water advisories or other public health alerts, as well as providing information about the availability of alternative water sources.

At one point, a public safety alert — like an Amber Alert — was sent across radio, phones, and television. The Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability, led by Deputy Managing Director Mike Carroll, issued the guidance for restaurants that they would be fine through the afternoon rush, but nothing else, leaving business owners scrambling to make difficult decisions on their own.

A true emergency plan would have identified alternative sources of water that can be used if the primary water source is contaminated. This, too, was a failure, as the city simply told residents that “they may wish not to drink or cook with tap water,” with no other guidance, leaving us with no option besides buying bottled water. In America’s poorest big city, that is simply not OK. We were left to rely on private citizens who went above and beyond to supply vulnerable members of their community.

No city should announce the possibility of contaminated water without also providing a clear plan on how it will supply the essential resource to its residents.

I drink the city’s tap water. I rely on our Water Department to ensure that our water is safe every day. The quickly changing deadlines from 2 p.m. on Sunday to 11:59 p.m. on Monday (to now 11:59 p.m. Wednesday) did not instill confidence in our testing and monitoring system. An event like this erodes years of trust among residents who want — and need — to use their tap water.

Emergency plans for drinking water are designed to ensure that the public has access to safe and clean water, even in the event of an emergency or contamination event. The Kenney administration was not prepared to do so.

Philadelphia’s next mayor must do a better job.

Dena Ferrara Driscoll is a public goods advocate and mother of two who lives in South Philadelphia. She drinks 96 ounces of Philly tap water each day.