Survivors of quake use social media to reach home

Mar 14, 2011 5:48pm

(NECN: Greg Wayland) - In the early going, quake survivors were cut off from outer world and from the far-off world of Japanese students studying at Bridgewater State University south of Boston -- all of them worried about their families.

Students -- we spoke with a half dozen --  quickly bridged the miles and broke the silence --  by Email, Skype and MSN.

"Some of my friends text me about the tsunami," said Saki Kano, an exchange student from Osaka, Japan

Yuka Mombara, another student, told us: "I came back last Friday from my vacation and i got email from my mom."

The social media they'd mastered in their young lives let them  quickly learned that their families were fine.
     
Then there was the life-line known as Twitter.

Joe Gabriel, "hadn't done a lot of tweets", but that quickly changed for Joe Gabriel who was traveling in Asia for the Bedford, Mass-based software security company RSA.

Joe says, "We were taxing down the runway, getting ready to depart." Then the quake struck Tokyo's Narita Airport.

Joe says, "I turned to look out to my right out the window and said, we're not moving. And I could see the wings of the airplane you know, shaking violently, almost touching the ground."
 
During six hours trapped on the tarmac, Joe tweeted and received dozens of tweets in return.

Joe says he, "Just sort of let people know -- more importantly, let my family know -- what was going on.... and found people started to interact with me -- asking, 'I have a relative on that flight. is everybody okay?'"

Everybody was -- and was able to let the world know it. Quickly.

"Not only via Twitter but via the internet. we were able to get internet access on the plane. I had an i-pad. We were able to go to the various news outlets to see what was going on around us."
     
It was an example of the new social media making a difference in a crisis.

Tags: Japan, Twitter, earthquake, tsunami, social media, Greg Wayland

Your Comments