The Power of Twitter and Sylmar Wild Fire News
I was working on another project this morning at my kitchen table with the window open. It’s a typical Santa Ana fall weekend in San Diego where it feels like the threat of fires. When you’ve lived here through both the Cedar and the Witch Creek fires, your sensors are up for that kind of stuff in the fall. Both of those fires came within a mile of my home. Luckily, we survived with minor damage and big messes from both. Comparitively speaking, over 400 homes in my community were lost last year. It was a devastating time.
As you may have heard on the news, fires are raging in Santa Barbara and north of Los Angeles. I’ve been consciously trying not to turn on the TV or Radio this morning to protect myself from the negative energy of the news. This is often my process when I’m writing or working as I’m more productive. However, I did pop onto to Twitter for a quick five minutes.
Within one minute, I knew that fire was threatening somewhere close the Santa Clarita valley (or so I thought). I quickly thought of three twitter friends I had met in Ventura a few weeks ago: @respres, @jesseluna and @lindaptaylor. I sent them a tweet to come to San Diego if they felt at risk. They responded within seconds that they were fine but another twitter freind @QueenofSpain was in more danger. I don’t know @QueenofSpain but because she’s in their twitter tribe, she’s now in mine. That’s how it works. Their friends are my friends and so on. Below is our twitter streams. Start from the bottom and read up.
So, cross your fingers for @queenofspain and everyone else in the fire areas.
I wrote this post quickly to show you the enormous power of twitter. It’s so incredibly useful in times like this and can give you news faster than any other source available to us. Just think what it could do for your personal brand or your business. Pretty incredible possibilities huh?
Understand why I’m still having an affair with Twitter??
- QueenofSpain: @ResPres yeah, um…..not liking the direction this puppy is moving
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amarquart: @Karoli so winds 2 not helping keep contained? worried 4 u & @queenofspain… no relief insight (weather)?about 1 hour ago · Reply · View Tweet
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meresgreen: @QueenofSpain can you get out?
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QueenofSpain: @tsalagi1 we’re ok. We’re not in any immediate danger. Fire is a good distance. Worse for my son to be in this smoke.
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QueenofSpain: I-5 between 405 and the 126 is now shut. SO yeah, that’s us. Don’t come visit
about 1 hour ago · Reply · View Tweet
4 Responses to “The Power of Twitter and Sylmar Wild Fire News”
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Hi Angie,
I can understand how Twitter can be so much better than News on TV. We used to live somewhat in that area (off 118 in Moorpark). Whenever there was a fire, there usually was other fires in other LA areas…..they’d never report on the one in or around Ventura Cty, since it was LA news they focused just on LA area, so that’s great that Twitter can step up and fill this gap in getting urgent information out to people! Great resource for all! I hope that everyone stays safe up there as we have friends still in the area!
Thanks for this – I’m one of your twitter friends in Santa Barbara. We escaped yesterday to Palm Springs, but I definitely packed up all my precious things just in case…. We know those who have lost homes. It’s very scary.
Hi Angie, thanks for offering your support. It was great hearing from you and feeling support from so many other folks. I’m actually at least 25 miles from any fires but knew that Twitter buddies were in danger so many of us stayed up super late to help spread information.
I started following a lot of local folks that evening including @Dreamented (http://twitter.com/Dreamented) who lost his house. You may cry as you read his Twitter stream and look at his photo links. There were lots of us trying to console him and his family on their loss.
Thanks again for the post and thanks for thinking of us.
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