In a January 27th 2011 article by Newsday Reporter Erin Geismar, Southold Group Eyes Social Media Disaster Plan, Supervisor Scott Russell responded to our plea by saying he sees Facebook as a way to communicate with residents on a day-to-day basis, but it will not be his emergency management team’s priority.
Emergency management at its core is about saving life and limb, Russell said.
A print copy of the full article is here, courtesy of Newsday: http://www.southoldvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Newsday.com-Southold-social-media-crisis.pdf
If you’re not communicating with your constituents using Social Networks, the perception is that you’re not doing anything.
Back in August, the American Red Cross hosted an Emergeny Social Data Summit, to discuss the future of social data response and increase disaster response collaboration amongst aid agencies, government agencies, corporations, technologists, and citizen groups.
Social media has radically changed how people communicate, including their calls for help. Now, people Tweet, add a Facebook status or text about a natural disaster. Emergency and disaster response organizations are working to develop a process to address this and harness the communication power of new media. This American Red Cross blog chronicles that effort, beginning with the Emergency Social Data Summit at http://emergencysocialdata.posterous.com/
Our research suggests the public is increasingly relying on social and mobile tools in their daily lives and therefore also during emergencies. Specifically, we found that the public expects response organizations to take action on incoming social information about disasters. We also wrote a white paper, The Case for Integrating Crisis Response with Social Media, which outlined the history and current state of affairs around the public using social technologies to request help from themselves or friends and family during a crisis.
The American Red Cross White Paper making the case for integrating Crisis Response with Social Media is here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/35737608/White-Paper-The-Case-for-Integrating-Crisis-Response-With-Social-Media
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Mike Ellis, from Emergency Communications Network tweeted Saturday 29th:
EmergCommNetwrk Mike Ellis from ECN
EmergCommNetwrk Mike Ellis from ECN
Mike’s company, http://www.emergencycommunications.net/ has developed affordable notification services capable of reaching millions of citizens in minutes. The Suffolk County Department of Fire Rescue and Emergency Services recently contracted with ECN to license its CodeRED high-speed notification system, to contact us in the event of an actual or impending emergency. It’s a great system and if you haven’t been getting these alerts, sign up here now: https://cne.coderedweb.com/Default.aspx?groupid=%2baCHAGsI63WWVa6aL1efKg%3d%3d.
If you’re going to pick one person to follow on this topic, read former firefighter, now FEMA Director Craig Fugate. He’s active on Twitter @CraigatFEMA (yes, he writes his own tweets), and he started FEMA’s first blog a little over 6 weeks ago, which is a way for us to communicate directly with FEMA. You can find that at blog.fema.gov and Craig’s Corner is here: http://blog.fema.gov/search/label/Craig’s%20Corner . Don’t miss the link to the article and podcast at Wired magazine here: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/storyboard-fema-craig-fugate/ which speaks to how to get information to the public using the tools they are using on Social Networks. They’re trying to do a better job of using mobile networks, where they’re seeing greater resilience during disasters from the cell networks. The public is a resource, and people are going to be stabilizing themselves until the cavalry arrives, and it’s moving so fast, FEMA often finds themselves moving outside government to the volunteer sector. This is a fundamental change in government philosophy, so it’s no longer a government centric approach. There are all kinds of other resources and government is not the total answer, it’s only part of the answer and now includes what others bring in from the outside for all hazard planning.
SoutholdVOICE is the first in our community to make a start:
- We created a slide presentation “Let’s Get #SMEMsmart”
- We created a Twitter Account @SoutholdVOICE
- We created a Facebook Page
- We have started adding Emergency Resource links to our website at the Resources tab
- We have added Twitter page at our website with feeds from local, regional, national responders, as well as mainstream media.
We’ll be using more Social media apps as time goes on, to make it easier to create and distribute content and discuss the things we care about and help us get the job done. Social media includes text, audio, video, images, podcasts, and other multimedia communications. Apps can be picked quickly off the shelf and up and running in some cases in less than 15 minutes. It’s easy for us to take and implement what we need and gradually grow our operation – one baby step at a time.
Let’s make a start, let’s get #SMEMsmart
I am also taking this opportunity to apologize to members for a previous password protected post referencing the Newsday article, which was a draft not intended for public distribution, but went out on our Feedburner feed in error.
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