Twitter And Facebook Can Save Your Life

In the middle of a quiet day in the lecture hall of a Midwestern university, the silence was pierced by a hail of gunfire.  Students dashed out of the room and ducked under tables.  Those who couldn’t move, tried to make themselves as invisible as possible until help arrived.    

That day at Northern Illinois University, five students lost their lives and many others were injured.  As the police and security struggled to control the situation, a few people were able to find out what was happening, in real time.  They were the only ones fortunate enough to know that their children or classmates had survived. 

On September 11^th 2001, in mere seconds, the world as we knew it plunged into utter chaos.  More so, for the people who worked in and around the World Trade Center.  Electricity and telephone service was gone and communications were rendered unusable, cutting victims off from the rest of the world.  But a few people were able to reach their loved ones, some for the last time, others to reconnect with them exactly as planned, once they made it back out into undamaged sections of Manhattan. 

What made the difference between the parents and friends at NIU who remained connected with their students and the majority who did not?  Or the difference between the World Trade Center workers who were able to connect with their loved ones immediately versus those who spent hours or days wondering if the people they loved were still alive?

One simple word – Communication  

At the sites of both shocking, unexpected tragedies, communication made the difference.  Some communication was improvised genius and other, the result of careful, thoughtful preparation.  No matter how those connections were born, you can easily tailor the lessons learned from those tragedies, to keep your own family in constant communication, no matter what happens. 

The NIU Shootings – Facebook and Twitter to the Rescue  

So how did some parents and friends have a real time view of the NIU tragedy?  Facebook and Twitter!  As unbelievable as it sounds, students ingeniously found a way to use their favorite method of keeping in touch with friends, as a tool to connect to the outside world in time of crisis.   

Students caught under desks and tables grabbed their smart phones and started communicating.  Tweets went out on Twitter, notes and messages went up on Facebook pages.  Messages told friends and family that the students who were literally in the thick of things, were all right.  Others told loved ones or security officers, where trapped students were located, facilitating their rescue.  Friends started texting each other to find out where everyone was and in the hours that followed, created Facebook pages memorializing the fallen.  

It was an amazing display of people, used to being in touch with friends 24/7, using that same technology to communicate, connect, survive and heal.  

Smart phones, cell phones and notebook computers are a GREAT way to stay in touch during an emergency.  Whether you send a simple email or text, or send tweets or post to each other’s Facebook walls, in seconds you can find out the location of everyone you love, discover if they’re all right, or need help, and even mobilize family and friends to be at the side of the ill or injured.  In a dire emergency you can even confirm or update emergency plans like meeting places, using real time information.   

Most importantly technology can bring your loved ones together, just when you need each other the most.  That was demonstrated in the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti.  Nothing could have prepared Port-au-Prince for that level of devastation.   

This is what CNN has to say about it: “Limited communications hampered reporting of casualties and destruction. But the quake had reportedly brought down The Hotel Montana, popular with foreigners visiting Port-au-Prince. French Minister of Cooperation Alain Joyandet expressed concern Wednesday for the approximately 200 French tourists staying there.   Night fell a few hours after the earthquake reduced buildings as grand as the National Palace to rubble and knocked down phone and power lines.  Communication with people in Haiti was, at best, sketchy and achieved mainly through social networking sites such as Twitter and YouTube and via Internet phone.”    

The same thing organically began to happen after the recent gas explosion in San Bruno and during the wildfires in Colorado.  People who were jarred from their homes, in many cases with nothing on them but a cell phone, began to get in touch with loved ones, neighbors and emergency personnel with the only thing they had – social media.  In fact just a few days ago, natural disaster experts at San Diego State University began a week-long fake disaster drill, using Twitter as the linchpin communications system, just to see how it would work as a disaster application.   

Not only are Twitter and Facebook already the go-to communications devices for people worldwide who need to get vital information out or answers in to their location quickly and easily, but experts hope to study how those applications, especially Twitter would function in a real-world emergency.  If it works as well as they think it will, more and more logistical updates, emergency notifications and critical decisions by disaster personnel may be conducted via social media.

 But what does that mean for your family?  In the last few years, the world has changed dramatically.  There are tools and resources available to you and your family that you were unimaginable in the last decade.  Now it’s time to put them to work for you.  

 So how can your family use technology in an emergency? 

The first step is to make sure that each family member has everyone’s email, text, user names and cell numbers on their cell or smart phone.  When you’re putting together your family’s emergency plan, be sure to list everyone’s information right in the plan.  Our books “Don’t Lose All Your Stuff In A Hurricane!” and “Ready In 10”, come with specially designed action plans to capture all of this information.

Once you’ve gathered all the information, give each family member has a copy.  Their “homework” will be to enter a contact for each family member, into their own cell phone or smart phone.  We’ll showed you how to do this in a past blog, but if you missed it, you can find it at this link. 

You would be surprised how many people have entries for every friend and colleague they’ve had since camp, only to be missing the most vital information for members of their own family!  I guess we just always assume that the people we love most, will be standing right next to us, the moment a disaster strikes.  But this exercise will ensure that even if they aren’t right next to you, that you’ll be reunited as quickly as humanly possible.

When your action plan is complete, discuss it with your family.  Before you sit down with them, come up with some sample scenarios, for example, if a disaster were to happen while your family members were at work, at school or running errands during a normal day.  How would you connect with each other?  Do you all text, or would calling be faster?  If you have teens or young adults at home, their natural proclivity may be to send out a tweet on twitter, to update everyone they know on their location or situation.  Don’t forget twitter can also be used to send personal messages, so you don’t have to worry about broadcasting your personal business for the entire world to read. 

Suppose cell phones were out, but electricity was working.  Or vice versa.  The best way to plan, is to give yourselves as many ways as possible to stay connected.  Then if one or two normal methods are unusable, you’ll all simply turn to a different method to reach each other.  Another idea is to create a Family Emergency Code or Word.  This is a code or word that only you and your immediate family know.  When a family member says it, texts it or emails it to the rest of the family, it signals that they’re in trouble or need help immediately.  It’s only to be used in extreme emergency and means that everyone needs to drop what they’re doing and establish contact immediately.   

And remember that it’s not just the contact names but the contacts themselves, who can save your life or provide lifesaving information in an emergency.   

Recently there was a fire in our neighborhood, which began on the 32^nd floor of a high rise condo building.  It was 1 am on one of the coldest nights of the year.  The electricity, elevators and regular phone service were cut off.  One woman, not only afraid for herself, but for the ninety year old couple she cared for, who sat huddled nearby.  The apartment was quickly filling with smoke.  The problem was, the caregiver had no idea where the fire was.  She picked up her cell phone and called her husband who was in a different state.  He got on the internet, found live local news coverage and was able to tell her what floor the fire was on and that the fire department was on the scene.  She knew she would be safe for the time being, and was able to wait until the firefighters knocked on their door to lead her and the couple to safety. 

The moral of the story is, you need to have as many connectivity options available to you as possible.  You never know which one might save your life.

Earthquakes, Wildfires and a Gas Explosion

It’s been quite a week!

It began with the Christchurch New Zealand 7.0 earthquake last Saturday. Buildings crumbled, facades lined the main streets and shaken residents have had to endure more than 100 aftershocks, a few in the range of 6.0. Thanks to tight building standards after a devastating 7.8 quake in the 1930s, incredibly no one was killed. But the damage to businesses and homes will reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more.

And then there were the continuing wildfires in Boulder Colorado. Fires that sprung up and altered their path so quickly that residents — some of whom are experienced firefighters themselves — had little warning to evacuate their own homes. Breathless and shaken, residents grabbed what they needed, and in some cases only what they could grab, to get to a temporary location and wait for news on their neighborhood and their homes. As of yesterday, the fire, still only 30 percent contained, has charred nearly 6,400 acres and has destroyed 169 homes.

Then on Thursday night the small community of San Bruno, California, just a few miles from the San Francisco Airport, was rocked — a more accurate term would be obliterated — by the sudden explosion of a natural gas pipeline. At least four people have died, many more are hurt or burned, some seriously. The fire itself was so hot that car bumpers melted two blocks away. The fire was finally contained on Friday, but those surveying what is left of the once quiet, lushly green neighborhood, described it as Kosovo after the war, or a charred moonscape. Block after block of nothing left except concrete foundation after foundation. Nothing left.

Now that the original disaster is behind them, the time and energy that it will take for the people affected by each of these disasters to recover, is just beginning to sink in. Think about it for a moment. These people were running to get out of their homes. They had little if ahy time to grab what they needed, let alone stop and think about it.

For those who lost their homes, do they have the vital information they need, with them? If they’re injured, do they or the physicians treating them have access to their medical or allergy history.

Let’s say they are all right physically. Do they access to their insurance documents for their home, cars and other property? Do they even know their policy numbers or the contact names so they can get started on filing claims.

Do they have what they need financially? Do they have their credit cards, bank account numbers, know their credit limits or who to call if they need an emergency extension? Do they know where to send their mortgage or rent payment or have copies of the deed to their home, their birth certificates or citizenship or benefit papers. Can they even prove who they are and what they own?

Do they have any idea where they are going to go when they evacuate? Will the things that they need be at that location waiting for them? Do family members in different locations know where to gather? Do they all know what to do when they get there? Can they reach their family and friends quickly and easily?

Do they have access to or copies of the things that mean the most to them? Their keepsakes, family photos and papers, the things around them that inspire memories and make them laugh, smile or just feel good.

Yes they’ll have a home for a few days, along with water and food. The Red Cross will see to that. But what happens after that. What happens if they go back to their home and there’s nothing there but a foundation? Yes after months, maybe even years of hard work, they will survive. They’ll find a way and little by little their life will return.

The thing is, they don’t have to just survive. With a little planning, a little thought and a few hours work, they can do more. They can actually thrive after a disaster. They can have their vital information, papers and medical information in a few different locations, at their fingertips 24/7 from any location. They can have evacuation and Get Back To Life Plans guiding them through those first hours, days and weeks, helping them to restore — as much as possible — their lives back or nearly back to where it was before the disaster occurred.

Of course you can’t replace a home completely, you can’t replace entire neighborhoods and you can’t bring back those who have been lost. But with a little work now, you can build yourself a roadmap, ensuring that you have what you will need during the twists and turns of recovery. With that map survival turns into recovery and recovery turns into restoration.

It seem fitting on this ninth anniversary of 9/11 to talk about restoration. We all know how hard it can be. But we here at the Ready In 10 Network, want you to know that a little bit of planning can make it a lot easier.

The one thing we’ve all learned this week is how quickly a normal evening can turn into disaster filled nightmare. Last week the people of Christchurch and the people of San Bruno were just sitting around their houses surfing the internet just like you, without a clue that in just a few hours or days, their lives would be forever changed.

Do yourself a favor, do your family a favor. Take an afternoon and get ready. Our downloadable Ready In 10 Get Ready Kit is only $9.95 and has everything you need to get ready in one afternoon. Ready In 10 is a great start, and we also have a disaster page, filled with videos and guides on preparing for different types of disasters.

Whatever you do, whether it’s from us or from another great disaster plan provider, don’t let another day go by without being ready. It’s so simple and once you do it, you can toss your plans in your plastic emergency bin and forget about them. Unless you need them. And when you do, they’ll be there waiting for you to Grab Them & Go.

Take care and please, be safe.

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