A Case For Twitter

I have never been a fan of Twitter until now. I have always thought it stupid that the public would waste time following celebrities 140 characters at a time. I still feel the same way, however, recently I have seen some legitimate uses for the service.

At the end of September, there was a fire in Herriman, Utah. It became known as the Machine Gun Fire because it was started by practice rounds at a National Guard firing range. The dry grass and high winds caused the fire to spread rapidly and endanger many homes. Naturally the cell phone service in the area quickly became overwhelmed as people tried to check on loved ones and news media tried to inform the public. It was interesting to watch the news and see the news try to explain what was happening while anyone in the Salt Lake area could see the massive fires burning on the hillside.

In the end, the residents were evacuated with the help of reverse 911 (where the local government sends a message to every home in the area). A second tool that was incredibly helpful for sending information was Twitter. The news outlest and residents could get up-to-date information simply by logging onto Twitter.

Fast forward to this Thanksgiving weekend and Utah was supposed to have a major blizzard blanket the area on Tuesday. The massive storm turned out to be a dud. Then it started snowing Sunday morning at 3am. I got up and shovelled the walks. It continued snowing all day, through the night, and didn't let up until today. When I left for the airport this morning to catch my flight back to California, there was two feet of snow in my front yard. I had to shovel the walks again. Naturally there was the question of if the kids had school.

We turned on the TV, but there wasn't any news about school closures. We turned on the radio, but all they wanted to do was play songs. We even turned on a computer and checked if there was any news. The first place my wife visited was the superintendant's Twitter feed and it said something along the lines of "Thanks to our diligent staff, parking lots are cleared and school will be held."

While most kids would be disappointed to discover that school was still being held, mine breathed a sigh of relief. They know that a day off today just means a day taken away from their Spring break. It is amazing how such a small message was the information needed to continue the day's activities.