On Nov. 27, two large grass fires flared up near Lethbridge. About 125 people were evacuated from their homes on the west side, but no major damage was done.
The emergency response teams acted quickly and effectively to control the flames, and the fires were mostly extinguished by the following day.
This is what’s known now, but if you had logged on to Twitter on the afternoon of Nov. 27, it was a different story.
Both citizens and local media outlets provided updates on the status of the fire and evacuation reports, with the information ranging from accurate, to slightly skewed, to false.
Some media outlets were reporting mandatory evacuation of west-side homes, while others were saying to wait for the police to knock on your door before taking any action.
Due to a lack of official sources providing information via Twitter, and few corrections on the false information being passed around, citizens relying on Twitter were left to fill in the blanks.
The City of Lethbridge website is a source of accurate information, and many people visited the site during the fires to keep updated. However, Mayor Rajko Dodic says that the information, once posted on the website, is out of the city’s hands.
“The information on our website was accurate. Our tweets were accurate and the information we disseminated to the media was accurate. How they re-disseminated it was not under our control,” said Dodic.
The City of Lethbridge also provided information through their Twitter account, at an average rate of one tweet every 20 minutes. Ald. Faron Ellis says the city’s use of Twitter was satisfactory, considering how many people use social media.
“Despite the fact that (young people) are into social media, it is a tiny, tiny fraction of the communication that you have for governments. We have a larger chunk of citizens that don’t use the Internet than use social media,” said Ellis.
Ellis says the city had three communications experts working on providing the community with information during the fires. In regards to placing more importance on the use of social media in times of emergency, Ellis says the city does not have the resources.
“We could staff an army of an extra 1,500 people at city hall for these types of scenarios. But then again, your taxes wouldn’t be limited to a 2.89 (per cent tax) increase.
“It is good for targeting a specific demographic, but social media is not, and it will be years before it is, the main form of communication. If we focused all our resources on social media, we would be missing the broadest spectrum of the population.”