Professional Documents
Culture Documents
HARNESSING
EMERGENCY MANAGERS ARE INCREASINGLY TAPPING SOCIAL
MEDIA TO CONNECT WITH COMMUNITIES.
W
hen the skies dumped 20.2 inches of snow on Chicago in February 2011
the third-largest storm in the citys history emergency managers rushed to
their computers.
Using a combination of Facebook and a homegrown texting system called Notify
Chicago, managers pumped out a steady stream of information on school closures, city
services, weather updates, car towing and, eventually, cleanup eorts.
is gave us the ability to communicate quickly and eectively, said Roderick
Drew, director of media aairs for the Chicago O ce of Emergency Management and
Communications. It allowed us to tell people to exercise caution, to not travel unless
they had to [and] to leave work early if they had to go to work. We needed to let them
know that this was not a run-of-the-mill snowstorm.
Drews o ce is not alone in its eorts to harness the power of social media in times
of crisis. Across the nation, emergency managers are striving to tweet their way into
the public eye and to put their best Facebook forward .
36
SOCIAL
MEDIA
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