ABSTRACT
At approximately 5 p.m.on April 27, 2011, the city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was hit by a half-mile-wide tornado3 that resulted in 36 deaths, 990 injuries, and signi„cant devastation.1 e tornado’s path went close to a local high school and the campus of the University of Alabama, causing near total destruction of many homes, buildings, and businesses in the area.3 (See Figure 12.1.) e damage from the tornado was exacerbated by earlier storms that had saturated the ground, causing the heavy tornadic winds to uproot trees rather than just snapping them, which contributed to the nearly 335,000 customers who were without power in the region. Representatives from the Alabama Power Company stated that the number of outages was comparable to those ešects seen from Hurricane Ivan or Hurricane Katrina.3 Oœcials at the local hospital reported treating more than 600 injuries, with more than 50 children arriving at the facility unaccompanied. Upon visiting the disaster scene, President Obama stated, “I have never seen devastation like this.”1 e tornado that struck Tuscaloosa was part of a signi„cant tornado outbreak that struck the southeastern United States from April 25 to April 28, 2011, and killed 339 people in seven dišerent states.2 e exchange of incident-related information was signi„cant on the various social media streams. For instance, ultra-popular (20,000+ Twitter followers and 42,000+ Facebook followers) Birmingham meteorologist James Spann was utilizing Facebook, Twitter, and uStream to both post weather-related content and receive storm reports from the general public. During the Tuscaloosa tornado, the local cable television provider signal failed, leaving only Spann’s uStream feed for people to watch the developments of the storm. Likewise, when Spann’s television station radar temporarily became unavailable during the storm, he simply utilized his personal computer (that had been previously wired to broadcast Facebook and Twitter) to bring up an online radar system.4 It is this type of pervasive utilization of mobile and portable technologies that will continue to de„ne emergency and disaster response and recovery for responders of all types.
