Technophilia

KPBS, San Diego’s public broadcasting branch, is using Twitter to send out news updates.

Considering how saturated the cell network gets during emergencies and how little bandwidth it takes to send SMS text messages, this is a great way to inform the masses. I hope emergency management departments realize this and start including text messages to cell phones on top of its reverse-911 protocol to inform residents of evacuation procedures.

One of the biggest lessons we have to learn from this fire is to better distribute the information in a multi-site emergency. While good I believe the response could be much improved in reducing the information delay. I had to really dig to find out what was happening *now*, refreshing news websites, comment threads, etc.

My thoughts are out to everyone who has been displaced. May they be safe.