Thunderstorm
These new technologies are at a place
where they can be used as a tool. A tool
where volunteer organizations and groups
and people can find those who need help
and go to them instantly whether or not
you're with an organization or not and
rescue them and bring them out. As it's
portrayed in the media or by politicians
may look like one Cajun in a boat as
Noah but as a movement it's not. This
movement is huge, and behind the scenes
we have hundreds and hundreds of people
who can volunteer because of technology
across the country and across the world
by doing crowdsourcing, by using social
media, and actually most of the leaders
of these volunteer rescue groups are not
your traditional outdoorsmen. They are
people with marketing skills, they are
people who are really good at social
media, they are computer developers like
crowdsource rescue which was two computer
programmers who had never done anything
in disaster before that built an Uber-
like rescue app during Harvey that's
continued on now for other disasters.
What does this mean for emergency
management moving forward? How will we
use this tool to provide needs for
communities? My other research on social
media and Twitter shows that Twitter is
more often used in disasters in higher
income white neighborhoods that probably
don't need rescue help. So are we missing
out the people who really need rescue
support by relying on social media? Are
we also encouraging people who want just
fame, who want to run to the most
harrowing rescue and do Facebook live or
live tweet their rescue app and then
potentially get hurt in the process
because rescuers did volunteer rescuers
lost their lives in Harvey because they
went into areas that were too dangerous
for what they could handle with their
boating skillsets or will we use this
tool to promote altruism in disasters
and promote a real movement that
addresses the large needs of climate
change, the large needs of increasing
hazardous risk and increasing flooding
across all of our different communities.
