Today, we break for an story from George Hall. Rather than give you analysis, I decided to let one of the active Victoria Bushfire tweeters tell the story in his own words.

George Hall covered the Victorian bushfires and acted as information conduit via twitter & social media during the bushfires, and is active in twitter and social media in Melbourne. Twitter: @geehall1& Video Website geehall1.blip.tv

An Introduction…

I’d been on Twitter only a short few weeks when the bushfires occurred, but the day the fires started, my niece was in one of the danger areas (Churchill).  I remembered how handy Twitter had been in the Mumbai and Hudson River situations and got on it initially to get quick, relevant information that might help my niece.

After her situation was more under control after first week, I stayed on the twitter hashtags #bushfires and #vicfires to see if I could help thebroader community, not just my family.  Over the course of the  situation, I helped retweet messages from @cfa_updates, @774melbourne and others.

The more helpful, timely information flowing thru theTwitter situation the better.  Even ex-pats overseas kept up-to-date via our (collective) Twitter feeds.

Twitter is a Quick Conduit.

It’s a brilliant conduit for quick, early information, but does still need occasionally to look for confirmation of some things.

Even during the bushfires, one or two items had to be independently verified and it was sensible to still look for that sort of confirmation.

Where telecommunications are still up, it serves as a much quicker way to know there is a bushfire right in one’s area.  The first tweets about any fire are almost instantaneous, as long as you’ve got your computer or mobile phone app monitoring.  This is obviously quicker than any other news source.

Bushfire Region Reactions.

I actually haven’t heard much from actual fire victims/survivors, except for one of my regular Twitter correspondents.  Most of the reaction to my use of Twitter came from other people involved in the volunteer/emergency effort over Twitter.

@cfa_updates, thanked me for retweeting, and generally, other people I worked with on Twitter during the bushfire time generally thought I was doing a reasonable job.

But there were a lot of people who were doing the same thing on other hashtags, like @bootload over on #kinglake.  Special commendation to @retrogrrl for heaps of tweets regarding relief efforts, etc.

Twitter as Attention tool.

It got a lot of attention for relief efforts and appeals.  Twitter helped keep people like Stephen Fry informed (@stephenfry) and kept relatives and friends overseas apprised of the situation.

In terms of direct help, we still have to hear from people who might have picked up a helpful tweet from Twitter in the actual crisis areas.

One real problem with the fires was that a lot of telecommunications in some fire areas was out of action.

Twitter, in the future.

It opens up new ways of keeping in touch, of being aware of opportunities and important issues,  and even works great just for simple get-togethers.  In that way, it helps bring a community together.

Used positively, it’s quite handy and helpful.  And in time, we’ll think up even more ways to utilize it better for helping the community.  It’s limited only by the imagination of the user.

Thanks to George Hall for the above first-hand commentary on twitter & bushfires.

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