Power’s Out

The horrifying events of the past couple of days in Oklahoma have made me reflect on a few things. First that I’m lucky that all I suffered through on Monday was a power outage at my job. The death toll in Oklahoma is still rising last time I heard, and the pictures of the utter devastation are hard to look at. CNN featured video taken off the twister, and its astounding to witness the sky turning black and random objects being tossed around at lightening speeds. Reminds me of the movie Twister in fact, which bad dialogue aside did properly showcase what’s it like to be near or in the path of a massive storm system hell bent on wiping out everything in its wake.

Secondly the use of social media, such as Twitter and Facebook is interesting. When say, Katrina happened Facebook was still relatively young and Twitter wasn’t the force it is today, so being able to read the tweets of famous and not so famous posters reacting in real time puts a new focus on reacting to a natural disaster. Anyone can post real time video of what’s happening and it will be seen by tons of people on the Internet. Its how I found out about the Boston bombings-my Twitter feed was full of people talking about what was happening as it was happening.

I’m also hoping that the Internet can further lead to better rescue efforts, although with the power out and so many homes having been destroyed its probably not possible for people to be tweeting where they’re stuck at and if they need power restored. Better information though is always a good thing, and if it gets to people faster that’s a great thing, too.