Thu, 08 Oct 2009 5:05p.m.
Opinion: By Liz Quilty
Recently there have been several large world wide emergencies, mainly relating to natural disasters.
Back when I was a child, if anything major happened, we would hear about it on the 6pm news long after it happened, and pictures would come the next day maybe in the news paper. These days it seems we hear about it live via one or many of several social networking sites.
I heard on twitter long before any radio, TV, or other way that there had been a major earthquake and probable Tsunami last week. I quickly fired off a couple txts to my mother who lives in Devonport, just to make sure she was out of the line of fire.
I watched as others rang their children’s holiday programs and let them know so they were able to move to higher ground, and similar. For hours the news roll just kept on, Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms, and very few people were unaware of what was happening.
Overall, was it worth it? There was a fair bit of mass hysteria which turned out to be a bit of a fizzer, and a lot of idiots camping out on the beach waiting for a 'wave'. I think it’s probably better to over react, and be prepared, than to under react and have deaths. I do wonder about the education needed for those fools hanging out at a beach waving for a 'wave' they can surf on, clearly a few people who never read wikipedia or learnt in school.
As it turned out, Samoa I'm guessing isn't as 'online' as other countries, so didn't get the warning very early, however it does make us wonder if the usual warnings should be centralised more into one place rather than having several places with conflicting messages.
For the most part, there are generally only a couple of places with information, but once the media gets in on the act and has their own take on events, and then several armchair experts, plus a bit of confusion thrown in, the story can become much like a game of Chinese whispers. Meanwhile, whilst talkback radio had a massive amount of information, the TV surprisingly had nothing at all regarding it. I checked all channels and there was absolutely no mention I could see at all, not even a ticker at the bottom.
Yet on Twitter, I had photos posted from a boat shop of the sudden tidal surge which caused some nice ripples down the marina, and maps showing how and where it was going and at what time. I had more information than I really needed, but I at least knew where I stood in regards to the threat on my own, and my family’s life.
On the plus side of the current unofficial 'Internet Warning System', when its cancelled we all know about it fairly quickly. I have easily seen the voices of those charities needing help, and I have an understanding what they are going through and what they need from me. I can hope those silly fools who sat on surf boards and on beaches waiting for the wave and see what happens to those who get stuck in it.
Tsunamis aside, there has also recently been the very vocalised missing girl Aisling which was published through internet sites a good hour or two before it was on any news site which I’m sure helped. There have been cases of people watching webcams and noticing and calling in burglaries, in fact even several police stations in NZ have Twitter feeds and Facebook pages to publicise things to the public.
This not only makes us feel more in touch with what’s going on, but we are now able to contribute by passing the word on to others.