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February 16, 2009

Victorian Bushfires, ABC & Twitter

Ananda mentioned I had been re-tweeting a lot information on the Victorian Bushfires, I posted ~600 messages to Twitter in the first 3 days. (YouTube Video -  Twitter in Plain English).

How and why I started to do this was similar to how I followed  the Mumbai attacks and Inauguration of Barack Obama using Twitter as I posted here.  Yet this disaster was happening in our backyard here in Victoria and I simply wanted to help get information out to anyone that sought after updates and  help in a way that I knew I could do quickly and efficiently and that was with Twitter.

I had been following @774Melbourne and @CFA_Updates on Twitter for a while and once the magnitude of this disaster truly started to unfold I asked @774Melbourne what I could do to help and a simple reply "Send us any links to News, Photos & Videos from ABC websites" and thus I began posting updates directly to @774Melbourne and ‘re-tweeting’ these so that any of the existing followers I had following me on Twitter and Facebook would see these and be able to start following the #bushfires updates and then have accurate information sources that they in turn could refer on to their family and friends.

As I started following #bushfires search on Twitter more and more Victorians, Australians and ex-pats overseas using Twitter began asking for information and updates and we could as a community point them to the #bushfires search, following  @774Melbourne, @CFA_Updates, tune into ABC Local Radio, ABC internet audio streams, ABC News updates and any other sites such as the ABC Bushfire Community and ABC News Bushfire Emergency websites.

Personally the hardest time I had was replying to Joe Coleman's tweet “heard that 95% homes in Flowerdale destroyed. can anyone confirm?” and  seeing the updated information about Flowerdale sending the  reply  “@joefish99 Flowerdale on Google CFA Map 5 Dead http://twurl.nl/hvuffc” is something I don't want to ever have to send to someone again, at the same time it was good to be able to provide this information where otherwise this information was not readily available or easily found at the time. Two days later I read with joy Joe's update, “been in to Flowerdale fire area today. Aprox 60% houses in Riverside Cres standing. V.happy for my Dad.” removed much of the angst I felt from sending my original reply.

That is only one of so many horrific things that has made my heart drop with sadness, shed tears and read with joy on Twitter or listening to ABC 774 Melbourne since the worst bushfires in Australian history broke out 'Black Saturday - 7th February 2009'. Each of us will have our own moments that will last in our minds for many years to come. Many people have died, lost loved ones, friends, homes or  businesses and we are all one thinking of everyone affected by this disaster.

The CFA Volunteers are amazing (CFA Bushfire Hotline 1800-240-667 & CFA YouTube & Thank Our Firefighters) as are all the other fire fighting volunteers that have come from interstate, New Zealand and United States to give us a hand and of course the DSE are hard at work out there as are the SES along with RSPCA and every single volunteer from every other organisation I have not mentioned, Thank You.

Charles wrote a post a few years back on the Razor blog at The Age which no longer exists and I cannot find it in any internet archive or cache about what else can be done to improve communications during emergencies and Twitter is one such tool the internet can offer to bridge this communications gap such as sending out “774melbourne: ABC Gippsland Transmitter burned by fires tune into 531AM , 828AM, 104.7FM, 105.5FM or 90.7FM for local updates” can be of great value if this could be delivered from Twitter by SMS to your mobile phone if your landline is down or when you next get in range of a mobile tower to deliver the message, sadly this is no longer available for Australian users of Twitter. The nationwide fire-alert system has been delayed by interstate and federal bickering and privacy laws. Nicholas Gruen wrote a column for The Age “Anyway, four hours after asking the CFA, Google was permitted to take its data feed and become a firefighter. But the CFA feed only covered private lands. The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) provides similar information on public lands. According to Google’s Nobel, DSE hadn’t established a data feed and explicitly refused Google permission to access DSE’s internal data. And so it couldn’t be presented on Google Maps.” Fair enough that the DSE don’t currently have a public data feed that can be exposed to third parties at this point in time and didn’t want to let Google into the DSE’s internal data, but by having the ability to have a single map with both private (CFA) and public (DSE) fire data mapped would be beneficial to all Victorians instead of having to check two websites for updates if fire is in your area, so I hope the DSE once things settle down a bit for them can get a public data feed up and running as soon as possible.

Twitter won’t replace any of our traditional media sources but it can seriously supplement them as an information source.

Donations to Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal via the web site or calling 1800-811-700 (International callers +61 3 9328 3716 or +61 8 9225 8880) or to Donate Blood. The Salvation Army web site or 13-72-58. Bushfire Public Accommodation: 1800 006 468. Friends & Family Hotline: 1800 727 077 (Intl. +61 3 9328 3716)

I would like to post a few thanks to some Twitter users who tirelessly have kept the updates flowing, @wolfcat & @deanog (You know what you guys have done) and @retrogrrl, @aniraangel, @geehall1 & @strictly for monitoring #bushfires and just doing what you have done and @BigPondTeam for jumping on board so quickly to give Telstra/Bigpond updates on current outages and repair status. There are many more Twitter users who have contributed and to many to mention so thanks to all and lets get these fires out and start rebuilding Victoria.

Lastly, the ABC 774 Melbourne and ABC Victoria and everyone behind the scenes – Keep doing what you are doing - Thank You.

Posted by Stephen at February 16, 2009 07:26 AM

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Comments

Posted by: W. David Stephenson at February 16, 2009 10:50 AM