As we've seen in other quick-breaking stories and tragedies, Twitter (and various Web sites plus Facebook) once again on Tuesday night proved to be a "hard news" godsend, with tweeters in Haiti supplying countless eyewitness accounts, images and video, ahead of most network and cable news.
Many of the early images came from Twitter, although some were later distributed by AP and Getty and carried those news service credits.
Here's a good wrapup of the Web coverage carrying the day with the apt title "Wired for Disaster."
As phone lines went down and darkness fell over Haiti, the full impact of today's massive earthquake was difficult to know. But like many recent natural disasters and emergencies, the extent of the chaos in the impoverished Caribbean island emerged quickly online.
Graphic pictures of Haitians covered in rubble, bleeding and in shock, purportedly taken soon after the quake bounced around Twitter, even ahead of anything similar coming via news wire services.
A report on Mashable added:
Photos taken by journalist @CarelPedre on his mobile phone are providing a glimpse into the devastation that has slammed the Caribbean nation. Another Twitter user, @MarvinAdy, shared those pictures through TwitPic, resulting in tens of thousands of view and countless retweets.
Several key sites provided ongoing feeds, with a good deal of video. Countless updates from the scene appeared via Facebook.
One of the most wrenching early shots came from "Morel" @morelphoto on Twitter, reminding me of so many photos from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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Greg Mitchell is editor of Editor & Publisher and author of most recently of "Why Obama Won." He blogs here.
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a paper during the 18th Caribbean Geological Conference in March
2008 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, stating that a fault zone
on the south side of the island posed "a major seismic hazard."
Albeit unscientific -- Eureka Times-Standard writer James Faulk predicted
the powerful 6.5 earthquake that shook Humboldt County in NorCal
five days before it hit on January 4th (especially unnerving cause this
area has been hit w/ a quake and sunami in the past. As one of the
newpapers' readers commented: "... Psychic powers--Nostradamus
incarnate? Not really, but WOW! What timing..".
It seems the need to take the prospect of predicting earthquakes has just
been raised a few notches.
We are looking for donations to boost our emergency relief fund for victims of the earthquake. We are also assembling a team of medical professionals and experienced travelers to assist in the aftermath of the earthquake – please contact lisa@pidonline.org for more information about this opportunity.
To donate, follow this link: http://pidonline.org/Haitian_Earthquake.html
http://www.monkeydollars.net/2010/01/haiti-earthquake-2010-video.html
Samaritan's Purse:
http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/articles/responding_to_haiti_earthquake/
https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?4306.donation=form1&idb=428732091&df_id=4306&JServSessionIdr004=yxa9a0v901.app194a
http://twitter.com/wyclef/status/7691790777