Tag: earthquake in Van

The following is a guest post from TIME’s Turkey correspondent Pelin Turgut.

The last devastating earthquake Turkey experienced was in 1999, back when it was still largely an analogue world, email was in its infancy and Mark Zuckerberg was just another high school dreamer. As a reporter I had to lug a satellite phone around to dictate bleak daily missives from disaster-stricken western Turkey (20,000 people had died, entire avenues were wiped out) because there was no other means of communication. Official relief took days to arrive. And when it did, it was often inadequate and poorly planned.

Contrast that to yesterday’s disaster. Hours after a 7.2 earthquake struck Van, in eastern Turkey, technologies whirred into motion that would have been unimaginable back then. Google has already reconfigured the person-finding tool it used in Haiti and Chile, allowing people to both request and post information about the safety of loved ones missing in the rubble. (Their system is currently tracking some 2,000 records.) Hashtags like #van, #deprem (earthquake in Turkish) trended instantly, and are being tweeted hundreds of times per second as people share information on how to help and what to donate. Groups like the Red Crescent (the Turkish equivalent of the Red Cross) and AKUT, a search-and-rescue organization have enabled one-click SMS donation services. On Facebook, users share updated information on aid requests – winter clothing, insulin, diapers — as filed by people on the ground in Van and have started pages listing bus and freight companies that are delivering aid packages free of charge.

The sheer number of people with their eyes on the wire creates pressure on companies to respond –and quickly. ‘Van needs drinking water. Still waiting for a water company to step up!’ read one tweet on the #van page. Shortly afterwards three water firms announced pledges of shipments to the region. Under similar pressure, several airlines have lowered fares to Van while a heater company said it was sending 1,000 electric heaters to the region.

Then there are the homegrown initiatives. Ahmet Tezcan, a Turkish reporter with close to 16,000 followers, posted a tweet offering his spare flat to a family in need and suggesting others do the same. Within hours, 20,000 people had emailed the ‘My house is your house’ (#EvimEvindirVan) campaign, offering their homes or spare rooms. The campaign’s success has been such that the Istanbul governor’s office has taken charge. There is now a 24-hour hotline where people can apply to stay or host.

Social media is not, of course, a substitute for the long-term and difficult work that undoubtedly lies ahead in Van where thousands are now homeless and winter is fast encroaching. One telling tweet asked for Kurdish-speaking volunteer psychologists (the region is largely Kurdish) to get in touch. Nor should it make us complacent as to the impact of our efforts. But as a reminder of what human kindness can achieve, it too has its place.

via Turkey’s Earthquake: Social Media to the Rescue – Global Spin – TIME.com.

Following every recent disaster, press reports have chronicled the role of Twitter and Facebook in coordinating relief efforts

Following the devastating earthquake in eastern Turkey yesterday, reports emerged about a variety of technology-enabled responses to the disaster: One tweet garnered 17,000 responses, many of which from people offering their homes to people who had lost their own. Google quickly made its Person Finder service, which was developed following the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, available in Turkish. Facebook became a place where people coordinated aid requests and deliveries.

These stories can be quite powerful, but they are not unique. For every recent disaster — e.g. Haiti, Japan, Vermont, Missouri — there have been reports of people banding together over social media to lend a hand.

If the day-after reports of social media relief efforts are now a routine part of disaster reporting that’s because these efforts are now a routine response to disaster. But although people are using new tools to coordinate this work, the basic urge to help is not new: As Rebecca Solnit explored in her 2009 book, A Paradise Built in Hell, crises and tragedies have a tendency elevate people and forge bonds otherwise impossible. Solnit wrote, “Disaster throws us into the temporary utopia of a transformed human nature and society, one that is bolder, freer, less attached and divided than in ordinary times.” She chronicled the “temporary utopias” that emerged in San Francisco after the quake of 1906, Mexico City after an earthquake there in 1885, September 11th in New York, and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

What Solnit saw in those places is exactly what has played out in Vermont, Haiti, Japan, Missouri, and now Turkey, aided by modern communication tools. That people should turn to Twitter and Facebook to facilitate an older instinct should come as little surprise — these tools are how we communicate, after all. What social media changed is the quantity of people who can be reached, how easily that can happen, and the creation of a public record of these efforts, which lets us all look on.

Image: Reuters.

via Why Are We Surprised When People Use Social Media After Disasters? – Rebecca J. Rosen – Technology – The Atlantic.