How Social Media Saved Lives This Week in Massachusetts

This has been a devastating week for the folks in Western and Central Massachusetts.  It was announced today that multiple EF3 or stronger tornadoes touched down around Springfield and further east on Wednesday, June 1st, resulting in incredible damage to structures and the beautiful forest in the area.  For those of you not familiar with Massachusetts, this is a part of the state that has beautiful rolling hills, farms and the third largest city in Massachusetts, Springfield, a city of about 155,000 people.  The amazing fact, despite the devastation in highly populated areas, only four lives were lost.

This area is not used to such violent weather and do not have a warning system in place like the South & Midwest to warn people of the impending danger to their lives.  Also, most of the houses here have been built over 100 years ago and do not have the strong foundation of a stone or brick house like you seen in tornado prones area.

So considering how there is no warning system such as those sirens you hear, how did everyone prepare and take cover?   Most of the people I know that were affected or were in the storm's path have smartphones with Facebook or Twitter and even the Weather Channel application on their phone.  Back in the Metrowest at my house, I was connected to friends further west that kept updating their statuses of what is going on where they live and taking pictures of the storm and posting them.  This real time activity allowed people in potential danger to get prepared.   At one point, the Weather Channel was warning that the tornado which turned out to be an EF3 was making a beeline to my town!  Luckily the funnel lifted about 15-20 miles of so away and we ended up just getting a lot of rain, wind, hail and the most amazing lightning show I have ever seen.

Since most of us have smartphones w/ texting, we have communication like we have never had before.   We were able to warn each other of the pending danger and in the storm's aftermath, were able to locate missing people very quickly.  As of today, Friday, there are no more missing persons, which is amazing considering how bad the storms were.   Again, do you think that because people were able to communicate via Facebook, Twitter or text, that they were able to be prepared for the worst?

Now that the state is in cleanup mode, you are seeing a lot of relief efforts being posted and tweeted.  A lot of celebrities are posting messages about how we can all help.  With hundreds of millions Facebook and Twitter users, their message goes out to a tremendous amount of people with one short message.   This did not happen only 5 or 6 years ago.   Because of Social Media, we minimized the amount of deaths during and the after the storm.  Pretty incredible stuff, just like the weather.