This was published 15 years ago
Online social networks tapped for disaster relief
By Glenda Kwek
You are caught up in the path of Hurricane Ike or Gustav, the phone lines are down and the power is out. What do you do if you need help but you've only got your mobile phone and you can't seem to reach the emergency services?
Enter online social networking sites like Twitter, MySpace and Ning, where you can SMS for help or look for the latest information on disaster relief. These sites functioned like a bulletin board at a shelter, a loud hailer or a emergency broadcast system, and aimed to reach out to users when the hurricanes hit the US coast.
"The memory of Hurricane Katrina is still strong," said Christopher Carfi, whose organisation Cerado set up the Hurricane Gustav Mobile Resource Guide for mobile phones, iPhones and blogs. The guide provided mobile users with minute-by-minute updates, references on how to help and searchable listings on shelters, aid resources and evacuees.
"When Gustav threatened New Orleans in the same way, many individuals immediately scrambled to bring any available resources to bear that would help to eliminate the chaos and confusion that turned Katrina into the disaster it became," Carfi said.
Other social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook were also mobilised. Tapping into their existing user base, which numbers in the hundreds of millions in the US alone, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency used MySpace to link individual pages to the federal disaster alert system. Facebook users set up groups to share information about how people could help. Twitter, a micro-blogging service that uses instant messaging or SMS, was used by some to enquire about the status of their neighbourhood from those who did not evacuate or to ask for help in the cleaning up process.
The online classified site Craigslist was popular among those looking to buy and sell equipment, such as generators for those still without power in the disaster zones. Others offered free or paid accommodation for evacuees. Google Earth users could track the current paths of the hurricanes, while individual sites like hurricanes08.org pooled together these different services.
But the chaos that tends to ensue when a crisis occurs and the loss of basic telecommunication services and power means the information that these sites carried didn't always get into the disaster zones and reach end users there. Hurricane Ike also caused the largest internet outage in the US since 2003.
Damon Cortesi, who set up an SMS site GustavTracker with Marina Martin, found that his site and others were instead more useful for coordinating and distributing information.
"The proof is in GustavTracker itself - while it was very easy for me to get the word out to the social networks, actually getting the information to those in need of help was difficult to do. (Marina Martin) was calling shelters directly, but at that point it was too chaotic in the actual shelters to be able to convey anything useful."
Cortesi also said that while traditional relief organisations like the Red Cross tried to harness social networking to widen their reach, they failed to grasp how it works.
"The Red Cross has service called Safe and Well that actually has a Twitter account (@safeandwell) that can do some of what GustavTracker was set up to do. The last time this account updated was almost a year ago, however, and there is absolutely no mention of the Twitter account and its capabilities on the Red Cross site.
"I think if those actually in the relief areas were more in tune with social networks, how they worked and how best to utilise them, then they could be useful," he said.
"Building a site and having no relation or connection to the relief areas proved to be rather futile as it was nearly impossible to get the word out to the actual people that may have needed it."
Despite such teething problems, the social networking sites were useful in the aftermath of the hurricanes. They connected people who evacuated or stayed behind with their loved ones, and information was shared about rebuilding efforts and which services or stores were reopening after the storms.
They also empowered people who wanted to help out their fellow citizens caught up in the hurricanes.
"With some of the challenges that arose after Katrina, I think individuals were ready, willing and able to help themselves, and more importantly to help each other, this time around," Carfi said.
"People weren't going to sit back and wait for the Government to help them."