About this time last week, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck L’Aquila, Italy, killing approximately 281 people in the region and injuring over 1000 others. With towns and homes destroyed, estimates of the number of displaced and homeless are upwards of 20,000.
via Breaking Tweets: "#earthquake" (Posted by @Buonaiuto in L'Aqulila, Italy)
As we’ve seen the immediacy of social networks like Twitter and Flickr in reporting past disasters (e.g. the earthquake in California this past summer, the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the airplane crashes in NY), local Italians were the first to break the news of the earthquake (or, #terremoto & #italy hashtags) via Twitter. Twitter user, @danybus1, tweeted about waking up to the earthquake. Much thanks to Global Voices bloggers for aggregating such great responses.
The following tweet reads (again, thanks Global Voices): "Awaken by the earthquake, look up immediately info on twitter (and I find them)"
Not only did Twitter help spread the word of the disaster in the hours following its initial destruction, but over 500 Facebook groups were created during this critical time, in which people offered their volunteer efforts, their homes for victims, and their support. It isn’t clear from the Global Voices post whether any of these people indeed secured housing for earthquake victims to live in, but Facebook was definitely used as a medium to help coordinate citizen action.
On the relief organization front, Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF) reported on its blog that it had deployed a response team by April 6th. TSF (or, “Telecoms Without Borders”) is a French organization with other offices in Nicaragua and Thailand. Priding themselves on being “deployable anywhere around the world,” TSF specializes in rapid disaster response by establishing ICT hubs in the worst affected areas. Through these hubs, they help connect victims with their family members in the country and abroad.
The TSF team set up mobile networks as well as camps in the Abruzzo region (of which L’Aquila is the capital city). They further assist search/rescue teams by providing access to broadband Internet and phones via mobile “satellite-based terminals.” And, since many homeless/displaced victims still have their mobile phones with them, TSF set up a generator in the largest shelter (Paganica) to allow people to charge their phones.
Not only did online communities like Twitter enable citizens to report the disaster, but this immediate reaction helped effect rapid response to an urgent situation. In that ICT means quicker newscasting, it also synchronizes quicker coordination and subsequent action by humanitarian organizations and dispersed individuals. Because of this ability, ICT tools will become increasingly integral to disaster response campaigns.
As I work to become more well versed in this area, many of my next blog posts will look at established groups like TSF (“In the past 10 years TSF has deployed to 11 earthquakes world wide”) and analyze the effectiveness of their work in saving innocent lives.
P.S. I’d love to hear any feedback you, my dear readers, might have about this new direction for my blog. Are you interested in the use of ICT for humanitarian relief? The role of social media in responding to disasters?
