Craig Fugate of the Federal Emergency Management Agency spoke to the Senate Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery and Intergovernmental Affairs on Thursday, painting a glowing picture of the successes and opportunities of social media and wireless communications in disaster relief efforts.

Subcommittee Chair Sen. Mark Pryor established a positive picture by citing an American Red Cross survey which found that fully 75% of those surveyed believed that Internet calls for help would be responded to within the hour, and over two-thirds had faith in the vigilance of emergency response agencies regarding postings on official websites. Additionally, after a crisis, 50% would utilize social media to contact and reassure relatives and friends -- a welcome change for anyone who remembers the frustration of landline communications in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Fugate found the response to the Haitian earthquake of 2010 considerably more sophisticated, and had praise for the cell phone providers' rapid return of service following the disaster. "We assumed until Haiti that wireless communications would be unreliable," Fugate said. Through the use of texting and social media, many of those trapped and stranded were not only able to call for help, but also to provide a precise location for rescuers.

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This pattern was even more pronounced in the case of the recent tornado crisis in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, where social media played a major part in early warning, tracking, precise pinpointing of rescue needs, and follow-up information dissemination. Additionally, survivors are increasingly applying for federal assistance funds via smartphones; over 800 had people registered using FEMA’s smartphone applications by Thursday.

Among Fugate's innovations since taking office in 2009 is FEMA's recently-launched mobile website (m.fema.gov), which offers rapid assistance registration and provides low-bandwidth information more suitable for smartphones than the typical multimedia-rich webpages. FEMA has also launched a program of sending cell-phone chargers to disaster-stricken locations, allowing personal devices to supplement the communications capabilities of the all-too familiar landline-equipped FEMA trailers.
Fugate highlighted the shift from FEMA's more traditional one-way communications approach. "Previously, we have had the ability to communicate AT the public -- whether it is radio, TV, web pages and even billboards," he said, "but our ability to communicate with the public and have two way conversations has been limited."

Fugate urged government to embrace the public's widespread use of communications channels such as Twitter (@CraigatFEMA admits to being a prolific user himself) and Facebook rather than waste time and money with traditional types of government communication. Fugate has urged emergency managers to embrace Twitter and especially hashtag #SMEM (Social Media Emergency Management).

 Fugate confirmed that social media has become the prime source of information in disaster situations, with those directly affected typically providing "the earliest and best reports as to the severity of the impact of a disaster" -- often before responders and traditional media agencies have arrived or are even aware of the situation.

"The public is a resource, not a liability," Fugate commented.