Red Cross Wants Us To Use 9-1-1 In Crises, But That’s Not Social

The Red Cross would like us to use 9-1-1, not social tools in disasters:

Web Users Increasingly Rely on Social Media to Seek Help in a Disaster

A new American Red Cross survey shows many web users would turn to social media to seek help for themselves or others during emergencies—and they expect first responders to be listening.

The online survey asked 1,058 adults about their use of social media sites in emergency situations. It found that if they needed help and couldn’t reach 9-1-1, one in five would try to contact responders through a digital means such as e-mail, websites or social media. If web users knew of someone else who needed help, 44 percent would ask other people in their social network to contact authorities, 35 percent would post a request for help directly on a response agency’s Facebook page and 28 percent would send a direct Twitter message to responders.

Web users also have clear expectations about how first responders should be answering their requests. The survey showed that 69 percent said that emergency responders should be monitoring social media sites in order to quickly send help—and nearly half believe a response agency is probably already responding to any urgent request they might see.

And the survey respondents expected quick response to an online appeal for help—74 percent expected help to come less than an hour after their tweet or Facebook post.

“The first and best choice for anyone in an emergency situation is to call 9-1-1,” said Gail McGovern, American Red Cross president and CEO. “But when phone lines are down or the 9-1-1 system is overwhelmed, we know that people will be persistent in their quest for help and use social media for that purpose.”

Leaving aside the issue that police and emergency organizations aren’t oriented toward social tools for a minute, it should be clear that social solutions are inherently better than telephone calls, since they are social, and open.

Notifying other possible victims about hazards and issues is just as important as informing the authorities. Consider the following fragment of Bang Emergency Code, that tells everyone about the roof of Home Depot blocking the street in a hurricane called Bette:

!bette /home depot, hyannisport/: roof has blown off the main building and is blocking Main Street www.sto.ly/8797gd

One of the problems with closed solutions like 9-1-1 is that the police or emergency responders don’t share their information readily. Oh, and 9-1-1 is very mobile friendly.

So, we should retool and retrain the emergency response organizations to shift to social tools, especially ones that have been rejiggered to work in a crisis setting.

People will use what they are familiar with in a crisis, and they are strongly motivated to have their situation accessible to their friends and families, and 9-1-1 doesn’t fit that context very well.

related

• Red Cross: 74% of people expect rapid response from social media pleas for help (thenextweb.com)
• 74% of Social Media Users Expect Cries for Help to Be Answered Within an Hour (readwriteweb.com)