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S. Hrg. 112–390 

UNDERSTANDING THE POWER OF SOCIAL 

MEDIA AS A COMMUNICATION TOOL IN THE 

AFTERMATH OF DISASTERS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON DISASTER RECOVERY 

AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 5, 2011 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/ 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 

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(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

NICHOLAS A. ROSSI, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

JOYCE WARD Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee 

AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON DISASTER RECOVERY AND 

INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas, Chairman 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

JON TESTER, Montana 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

DONNY WILLIAMS, Staff Director 

AMANDA FOX, Professional Staff 

JUSTIN STEVENS, Minority Professional Staff 

KELSEY STROUD, Chief Clerk 

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(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statement: Page 

Senator Pryor .................................................................................................... 1 

Senator Brown .................................................................................................. 2 

WITNESSES 

THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011 

Hon. W. Craig Fugate, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security ....................................................... 3 

Renee Preslar, Public Information Officer, Arkansas Department of Emergency Management .............................................................................................. 12 

Suzy DeFrancis, Chief Public Affairs Officer, American Red Cross .................... 13 

Shona L. Brown, Senior Vice President, Google.org ............................................. 15 

Heather Blanchard, Co-Founder, CrisisCommons ................................................ 17 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Blanchard, Heather: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 17 

Prepared statement with attachment ............................................................. 58 

Brown, Shona L.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 15 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 53 

DeFrancis, Suzy: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 13 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 47 

Fugate, W. Craig.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 35 

Preslar, Renee: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 12 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 42 

APPENDIX 

Chart referenced by Senator Pryor ........................................................................ 92 

Chart referenced by Senator Pryor ........................................................................ 93 

Chart referenced by Senator Pryor ........................................................................ 94 

Questions and responses for the Record from: 

Mr. Fugate ........................................................................................................ 95 

Ms. Preslar ........................................................................................................ 98 

Ms. DeFrancis ................................................................................................... 99 

Ms. Brown ......................................................................................................... 101 

Ms. Blanchard ................................................................................................... 109 

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(1) 

UNDERSTANDING THE POWER OF 

SOCIAL MEDIA AS A COMMUNICATIONS 

TOOL IN THE AFTERMATH OF DISASTERS 

THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011 

U.S. SENATE,

AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON DISASTER RECOVERY

AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in 

Room SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Mark L. 

Pryor, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Pryor and Brown. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR 

Senator PRYOR. I want to welcome everyone to the Subcommittee. I want to thank you all for being here, and all of our 

witnesses for being here, and all the interested parties. I also want 

to thank Senator Brown for being here today, and I look forward 

to his service in this slot. It may be temporary, but we certainly 

appreciate you and all that you are doing. It has been a pleasure 

working with you and your staff on this hearing. 

Let me start by just saying that we have two panels today, very 

qualified witnesses. I certainly want to thank Director Fugate for 

being here. As busy as he is around the country right now, his time 

is very precious, and he has been generous with his time and always helpful to this Committee and Subcommittee and helpful to 

the Senate. So thank you for being here, and all the other witnesses as well, all the ones who are involved in various disasters 

around the country. We really appreciate all that you all have done 

and appreciate you being here today. 

Last week, a series of severe storms swept across the Southern 

United States causing immense damage and a historic loss of life. 

The storm system spurred powerful thunderstorms, tornadoes, and 

flooding, and it was the second deadliest day of tornado activity in 

U.S. history, killing 341 people in seven States, including an unimaginable 249 in Alabama. At least those are the latest figures I 

have. Fourteen people lost their lives as a result of the storm in 

the State of Arkansas, and I want to offer my most sincere condolences to the families of those impacted or killed during those 

storms. I hope that your families are comforted through this very 

difficult time. 

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2 

Today the Subcommittee has been joined by very insightful 

guests to talk about the increasingly important role that social 

media networks play during disaster response and recovery efforts. 

From search and rescue to family reunification, to safety updates, 

to communicating vital shelter information, to other critical or lifesaving information, and to all around situational awareness, social 

media is becoming a tool that people are coming to rely on and to 

use heavily during emergencies. 

In July 2010, the American Red Cross conducted a survey—and 

they are here today, and they will probably talk about this in more 

detail, but they conducted a survey of over 1,000 people about their 

use of social media sites in emergency situations. The results of the 

survey were striking: 82 percent of the participants used some form 

of social media at least once a day, and nearly half of those use it 

every day or nearly every day. The survey found that if they needed help and could not reach 911, one in five would try to contact 

responders through a digital means such as e-mail, Web sites, or 

social media. 

If Web users knew of someone else who needed help, 44 percent 

would ask other people in their social network to contact authorities. Three out of four respondents would expect help to arrive in 

an hour if a call for help was delivered over the Internet; 35 percent would post a request for help directly on a response agency’s 

Facebook page, and 28 percent would send a direct Twitter message to responders. 

More than half of the respondents said they would use social 

media to let loved ones know that they were safe. Their survey also 

said that respondents with children in households are more likely 

to use social media, 81 percent, versus 67 percent with those who 

do not have a child in the house. 

As we work continuously to improve our efforts to respond to and 

to recover from disasters, it is important that we find new and creative ways to communicate information to those facing the often 

chaotic circumstances that surround emergencies and disasters. I 

want to thank all of our witnesses for appearing today and contributing to an important conversation that I am certain will lead to 

more effective tools that will save lives and make delivery of assistance more efficient in the future. Senator Brown. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BROWN 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to serve with you on this Subcommittee today, and as 

you referenced, my thoughts and prayers go out to those in Alabama and the Southeast who are dealing with the loss of their 

loved ones and homes this past week. 

Clearly, there is no better time to discuss what we are discussing 

today. I know our witnesses will provide useful insight into the 

tools and technology that may assist in better response to the recoveries and, unfortunately, future disasters that may be forthcoming. 

I actually had an opportunity to go to Google and other types of 

social media companies to understand what they do and how they 

do it, and we have met here on Capitol Hill with the Facebook folks 

and others. And having kids, I understand how they have adjusted 

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3 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Fugate appears in the appendix on page 35. 

and adapted and really learned a lot quicker than me or other 

members of my family in using social media and related technology. And I have used it quite a bit myself in the last couple of 

years. So I think it is important to understand how it is being used 

and what the opportunities for future use are and how we can actually use this when we have natural disasters and other types of 

situations that we need to get out reliable, important, sometimes 

life-saving information. I think it is another tool in the toolbox, so 

to speak, and I am looking forward to the testimony of everybody, 

and I appreciate everybody appearing today. 

Thank you. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. 

Our first witness is the Honorable W. Craig Fugate, Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He 

was appointed on May 13, 2009, to serve as Administrator based 

on his highly distinguished career in emergency management. He 

will discuss FEMA’s short-term and long-term goals for enhanced 

use of social media tools, and I know that Director Fugate has just 

come off the road. He has been down in many places, and he may 

tell us about some of that as well. 

We do have a timing system today, and we will do 5 minutes on 

your opening, and all of your written testimony will be put in the 

record. Mr. Fugate. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. W. CRAIG FUGATE,1 ADMINISTRATOR, 

FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. FUGATE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member 

Brown. I think Senator Brown said it best. When we talk about social media, we need to understand it is another tool in our toolbox. 

But it is by no means the only way in which we need to be able 

to communicate with the public, both in warning and learning situations, but as well as communicating with them. 

But I think social media offers a new challenge to us. Previously, 

we have had the ability to communicate at the public, whether it 

is radio, TV, Web pages, even billboards that are going up across 

much of the Southeast where these tornadoes struck, inserts into 

bills and other things. But our ability to communicate with the 

public and have two-way conversations has always been limited. 

As we have seen in numerous disasters in recent years, we oftentimes have taken the approach in government of creating systems 

that people have to adapt to how we communicate. We do not always adapt to how they are communicating. And as we have seen, 

people began using these tools differently, many of which—or, in 

fact, almost everything that we use that we call social media was 

never designed with disasters in mind. But they became increasingly tools of how people were communicating day to day and sharing information with families and loved ones that began providing 

a role in a disaster in ways that for us in government we did not 

innovate this. We did not create it; we did not direct it. But we 

began observing it. 

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4 

I think for us at the Federal Emergency Management Agency as 

well as my peers at the State and local levels, as well as the volunteer agencies and other groups that are active in disaster response, 

we began to see a whole new group of volunteers emerge with skill 

sets of being able to apply this technology in real-time situations 

without necessarily a direction from a central location, but more of 

a term that is oftentimes used of crowdsourcing, many people 

working on similar problems, sharing information, oftentimes getting to better solutions. 

Mr. Chairman, it has caused me to realize that in some ways social media, and particularly volunteers and groups in the industry 

that are involved in this, I like to put it this way: We need to innovate faster than the speed of government. And they are doing it. 

And so instead of trying to make systems fit us, make the public 

fit how we communicate. We at FEMA are trying to meet that need 

and figuring out how to apply this. 

At this point if somebody says Craig, what is the performance 

matrix? What is the measurement of success? How are you doing 

this?, I would say we are still experimenting. We are still really 

just trying to understand how these tools could be applied. 

Mr. Chairman, most of the times when we come into these meetings, the first thing you do is turn off your cell phones, hide them 

and get them out of sight, but I am going to bring mine out because 

here is what I want to communicate in the short time I have. 

In most disasters, when you are displaced from your home, you 

no longer have access to your computer. You may not have WiFi 

access. But in many disasters, including being on the ground in 

Haiti where we had folks there within a day of the earthquake— 

I was down there a week later—the one thing that was working 

were mobile devices. And it is this that I think we in the Federal 

Government need to understand, that we are moving more and 

more away from a Web-based capacity to a mobile environment. 

So one of the things we did at FEMA was to start moving our 

information into mobile formats. We have a mobile Web page, 

m.fema.gov, because when you are a disaster survivor, you do not 

need pretty pictures, you do not need our org chart, and you certainly do not need all of our programs. You need information that 

will be low bandwidth, that you can go to a phone and get things 

you need. 

We designed our registration so that you could access it by your 

smartphone. But we are also learning that the public has tremendous information in disaster areas that oftentimes we have taken 

the approach that it was not official or not usable because it did 

not come from the traditional forms of communication. 

Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that we should look at these as 

data points, as sensors, that individually may not provide us the 

best information, but collectively oftentimes are the earliest and 

best reports of the severity of an impact and are telling us stories 

faster than any assessment team or any ability to get into an area. 

We have seen this in Haiti. We saw this in Japan, Christchurch, 

and even in the tornadoes across the South—pictures, stories, updates giving us information. 

I think we need to take the approach in the Federal Government 

that the public is a resource and not a liability and learn how to 

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5 

listen. But we also need to recognize that we are in a mobile environment, and the Federal Government needs to focus more upon 

developing the data to support our citizens in a way that they can 

use in a disaster rather than making them fit our traditional models. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator PRYOR. I think those are points very well made and well 

taken. 

Because Arkansas has had so many tornadoes, storm events, and 

floods in the last couple of weeks—and, again, you guys have been 

great about being down there and being on the spot, being onsite 

and helping people—I have been giving out that Web site that you 

are talking about, the disasterassistance.gov Web site, and your 

toll-free number. And pretty much everything I have done this 

week when I talk to Arkansas media, I have been giving that out 

and encouraging them to do that, because I think that it is just— 

people just communicate that way today, and you guys can provide 

such great tools for people to access immediately, and it just is 

really a game changer. So I appreciate you all being on top of that. 

At FEMA, do you all have people in office that are doing your 

social media focus here? Or is this just part of your overall effort, 

or do you have to have folks that actually focus on this? 

Mr. FUGATE. We do have dedicated staff that are working on 

what we call digital engagement. Initially, when I got to FEMA, 

the Web page, using things like YouTube to post update videos, 

and beginning to do partnerships with Facebook where we would 

do joint Facebook pages per disaster with the State to share information to the public. 

When I got there, one of the things that I asked early on was 

to begin tweeting, which I had done in the State of Florida, so I 

now tweet ‘‘@CraigatFEMA.’’ I actually do my own tweets. So many 

people keep asking me, Who does your tweets? I am, like, I do not 

have staff to tweet, I tweet. And I do not tweet about me; I tweet 

about things that I think are interesting. 

A lot of the people that I communicate with are my peers and 

practitioners. It is actually interesting. Not only is this useful in 

disasters, but it is helping build a community in the emergency 

management that traditionally had to go to course or conferences 

to see and hear across the Nation ideas. There are things that, 

when you get into the nomenclature of all of these terms, concept 

of what a hashtag is in Twitter, what it is, it is something that you 

build into a message that you can link on that can take-—everybody who uses that tag can link everybody else’s messages together, so very early emergence in the emergency management 

community that are asking these very questions about social media 

applications is a pound sign, social media emergency management 

(SMEM). That is not led by FEMA, but we have staff that participate. 

But this is the conversation taking place with local emergency 

managers, States, volunteers, researchers, the private sector, and 

we have never had those kind of—we never saw that interaction 

outside of conference settings or courses, which was limited. 

So we have a centrally directed effort, but it also is underlying 

some key principles, is give information all the way from high 

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6 

1The chart referenced by Senator Pryor appears in the appendix on page 93. 

bandwidth to low bandwidth to in-person. We cannot forget there 

are people who do not use social media. But communicate and provide tools the way people are communicating and using those tools, 

not limit them to what is just easy for us to administer. 

Senator PRYOR. All right. You may not have this available, but 

do you have examples of how social media has actually saved lives? 

Mr. FUGATE. There are examples. I think you are going to have 

some people in the next hearing that will talk about this. But some 

of the examples in Haiti where the wireless infrastructure came 

back on rather quickly, as people were trapped in debris and rubble 

and you did not have a centralized government system to receive 

those calls because of extreme damages to both the government of 

Haiti and to the United Nations, people were able to get out text 

messages that were being received by people outside the area. They 

were able to figure out where those people were, approximately, 

based upon the towers and went back and worked with the cell providers. And I think you are going to hear stories about how a lot 

of volunteers and people with a lot of technology experience were 

able to start mapping and providing data in a way that it allowed 

the United Nations (U.N.) and other forces from the United States 

Agency for International Development (USAID) to get Urban 

Search and Rescue (US&R) Teams and other resources where needed. And that was just one example in a country that many of us 

were kind of taken aback on the devastation, but also the resiliency 

of the Haitians themselves and how much mobile technology had 

actually been integrated into their country prior to the earthquake. 

Senator PRYOR. And I think back to Hurricane Katrina, and I 

think about all those folks in the Superdome and other places, and 

I guess—was the wireless network up and running at that point? 

You may not know this, but was it up and running in those early 

days? 

Mr. FUGATE. Mr. Chairman, I really do not know, but it is something that—one of the things we have learned in my experience in 

2004 and 2005—and I do not know if we have any of the wireless 

operators that could provide this information. But it has been my 

observation that the industry learned from those events and how 

it worked very hard to get in additional resources to both bring 

back up wireless but also increase capacity. We saw this in the tornadoes where they brought in additional equipment and worked to 

get cell coverage back up, get wireless back up. And because of 

that, we have seen—and, again, I kind of look at Haiti as a lesson 

learned. We actually were assuming until Haiti that wireless communications in areas of devastation would be unreliable and we 

really would not need to plan for it. Haiti taught me that the industry has learned and is becoming more resilient, and oftentimes 

it will probably be for many people in the public the first communication that comes back up is going to be the wireless services. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. We have a chart here—the second chart,1

Don, if you do not mind—and it shows Internet usage after four 

major events, and Haiti is one of those. Then you mentioned 

Christchurch, New Zealand; Chile; and Japan. And as I understand 

that chart, the peaks are the top Internet usage, and the valleys 

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7 

are usually at night when folks were sleeping. But you see that 

they keep using the Internet, and it is a great way to communicate 

with folks. And like you said, a lot of folks are out of their homes 

at this point, or they may not have electricity or whatever. They 

may not have access to their stationary device, but their mobile device they certainly can utilize. So I am glad that FEMA is on top 

of that trend and is really leading the way in that trend to try to 

communicate in that way, two-way communication, you are hearing 

from people, but also you are communicating back to people what 

they know. 

So in some ways, it sounds like social media is the emergency 

manager’s dream because it is such a tool that is so widespread in 

so many people’s hands. Is that fair to say? 

Mr. FUGATE. Mr. Chairman, some of my peers now equate the 

wireless combined with social media as a revolution in emergency 

management as powerful as wireless was to original public safety 

radio systems, except now this is far more reaching in the ability 

to communicate with the public. And so as we see this, again, I 

think our role here at FEMA is to keep up with the public and not 

necessarily fall back into what I call innovation at the speed of government, but really look to the technology industry, and as Senator 

Brown said, I have had the opportunity to go to Google, I have 

been to Facebook, I have been to Twitter, and really looking into 

their insights of how we better utilize the private sector as part of 

the team and not try to re-create things that they do better than 

us, but use those tools to better communicate and listen to the public as we deal with disasters. 

Senator PRYOR. Is it your impression that during a disaster the 

public will find you using social media? Or do they know where to 

go? 

Mr. FUGATE. No, sir. Again, those people that have had disasters 

do not, and so this is why we work so hard. And I appreciate every 

time—this is pretty much the drill, is to get people to register with 

FEMA, get the information out there. So it is always for us important to get people to know where they can get that information. 

Part of this is working with the States, things like joint Facebook 

pages. But I think, by and large, most people are not thinking 

about FEMA, and that is why trying to build systems that are government-specific tend to fail. It is our ability to use the tools they 

are using and then direct them to things they are used to using. 

I mean, if you think about it, when we tell people to go to a Web 

page that is our typical Federal Web page, it is not easy to find the 

information in a disaster. That is why we built the mobile page so 

that when you send them there, it is strictly about disaster information that they need, not, the traditional way that we oftentimes 

put information on a Web page. 

Senator PRYOR. Great. As you are going through this over the 

next few weeks, I hope you will keep the Subcommittee posted on 

how many folks are using your page and how that is going. 

Mr. FUGATE. We have that, and we will provide that back to 

staff. You can actually see some of the data of who is using the mobile page, who is using Web pages, versus the traditional calling 

into the 1–800 number. 

Senator PRYOR. That would be great. Senator Brown. 

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8 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I appreciate the fact that you have been trying to push out their 

home page Web page information, and when I was preparing for 

the hearing and seeing how we could help, our office could help, we 

are going to actually do the same thing. We are going to put it on 

our official site in the event of an emergency who you can contact, 

how you can do it through the various social media or the traditional as well as the new ones, and on our Facebook—I mean, I 

think I have 250,000—we are going to do the same thing there because I think it is so important to get the information out, because 

when you are having that natural disaster, you are not thinking 

about you want to just get in touch with somebody, and you are 

going to use any mechanism, any phone, land line, shortwave 

radio, whatever, to help your family and help the people that you 

care deeply about. 

So this hearing and being here as the Ranking Member triggered 

me to work with my office to develop a plan as to how we can, in 

fact, get that information out. I would encourage all of us as elected 

officials to do the same thing. 

I noted that the Washington Post stated that people frantically 

text 911 in an emergency, apparently, and they are unaware that 

their texts actually go nowhere because in all but a few cases it has 

not been modernized to actually receive the messages. And people 

have a lot of faith in 911. I mean, you hear the commercials. We 

hear regularly, we honor young children regularly for calling 911. 

But now they text 911. 

What are the biggest challenges actually to bringing the emergency services like 911 into the 21st century in your opinion? 

Mr. FUGATE. This is a project that the Federal Communications 

Commission (FCC) is heavily engaged in called Next Generation 

911, and it is a recognition that as technology has continued to 

evolve, it has evolved faster than the original 911 system design. 

When 911 was originally created, we used rotary dial phones. It 

was an analog technology. Over time, we have added the ability to 

give the address and the location and phone number that people 

were calling from. But then cell phones started to occur, and all of 

a sudden we realized that all of those phone lines were 

hardmapped; cell phones are not. And so the industry and the FCC 

worked to be able to map cell phones, so if you could not tell people 

where you were but you were calling for an emergency, they could 

find you with your cell phones. 

But now we have, as you point out, people that are using text 

messages. As the Red Cross survey says, when people text or update or tweet for help, they expect there to be an answer. And this 

is something that Next Generation 911 is looking to address. 

Most likely the first part of that will be text messaging because 

it would be very similar to a traditional 911 call from a cell phone. 

The other types of social media are going to take more time, but 

I think it is a recognition that the FCC—that we need to do that 

to get that help, but also what it could provide to the responders. 

And I think in looking at what is done in Europe and other places, 

oftentimes they have the capability to take live video feeds from 

people on the scene and give it to the responders as they are en 

route. 

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9 

Part of our challenges are 911 was—essentially the architecture 

and the equipment and the investment was based upon rotary 

phones and push-button phone technology. And now as the FCC 

looks at Next Generation 911, how do we incorporate the new technologies and not limit ourselves to just the voice calls? 

Senator BROWN. And that is a good segue into my next question, approximately a $9 billion price tag to actually implement those potential changes in a time when we are in a fiscal emergency and 

dealing with a lot of issues. With Senator Carper, I am on a Subcommittee that deals with fraud, waste, and abuse, trying to zero 

in on all that stuff. Is there a way not to reinvent the wheel and 

work with companies like Google and Facebook and Twitter, wherever the social media? I know these entities did not reinvent the 

wheel and did not start at the base level and then have to spend 

a tremendous amount of money and maybe incorporate a lot of 

what is already out there so we can just, add on and potentially 

save dollars. Is that possible? 

Mr. FUGATE. Having served at the county level where I was actually responsible for the 911 system, and knowing that history of 

primarily the wired telecodes, as the providers of both the technology and equipment, I think this will be one of the challenges as 

we move forward to Next Generation 911, is to incorporate the 

other technology players and do that in a way that builds a system 

that we can continue to enhance without necessarily limiting ourselves to just what we know now. 

When we look at the architecture of these systems and we look 

at where we were and where we are going, it was—we still call 

them ‘‘public safety answering points.’’ It is not a network. It is you 

dial a phone, it goes to a dispatch center, and then they operate 

the call from there. And I think a network-based approach like we 

are looking at with public radio for public safety, looking at network-based radio systems, is the direction that Next Generation 

911, and that will open up, I think, a lot more of the technology 

companies. But I think you are correct in that this has to be done 

not just what the immediate needs are, but also building a system 

that we are going to be able to adapt to new technologies that we 

may—nobody knew about Twitter 5 years ago. 

Senator BROWN. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. And so in looking at systems that oftentimes take 

decades of capitalization to build is how do we build a system—— 

Senator BROWN. That is adaptable, yes. 

Mr. FUGATE [continuing]. That allows us to adapt to the new 

technology. 

Senator BROWN. I know with the storms and everything that has 

happened recently in Alabama and around the Southeast, when 

telephone and cellular service is interrupted, what are the Federal 

Government’s efforts to set up mobile cell towers, charging stations, 

Internet hotspots in disaster zones? And is this part of an SOP in 

times of major events? Do you have working partnerships with any 

of the mobile companies to do these sorts of things? 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes, sir. This was something that I have been pushing for a long time. Our primary focus with our Federal communication assets has been to get the public safety responders back 

on the air, and so that will continue to be the priority. But I have 

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10 

1The chart referenced by Senator Pryor appears in the appendix on page 92. 

also asked my staff to work with the industry that I agree with 

you, I think it is just as important that we get connectivity back 

to the public. And you brought up something that I asked our team 

about, and we are working with industry. We had oftentimes 

brought in phone banks into areas of devastation so that people 

could start making phone calls. We have asked and are working 

on—and I believe I had a report this morning that Verizon is starting this process—is to get cell phone chargers out there. 

Senator BROWN. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. So that people can charge their communication devices. And, again, I think this is—oftentimes we tend to be reactive, but, again, it points out the need for looking at how the public 

communicates in recognizing that, yes, phone banks are good, but, 

hey, also cell phone chargers for the variety of cell phones is also 

something that is just as much needed. 

Senator BROWN. Just a final thought. I would think that would 

want to be part of FEMA’s, mobile response, a lot of the—whether 

it is the cell charger units or whatever. So I would just—I am sure 

they are considering it. 

Mr. FUGATE. We are definitely going to be adding that to the 

toolkit, and it is being implemented as we speak now throughout 

many of these areas. 

Senator BROWN. Thanks for what you are doing. I appreciate it. 

Senator PRYOR. Director Fugate, before you run, I just have one 

or two followups. 

I am going to get you to put Slide 1 back up. 

One thing you will see on this Slide 1,1 it is great information, 

but 69 percent of people out there think that emergency response 

agencies should regularly monitor their Web sites and social media 

sites so that you all can respond promptly. I guess the question is: 

Are we building an expectation here that we cannot meet? And are 

we monitoring these as we should? Some of this may be State-byState or even city-by-city issues. But do you want to respond to 

that? 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes, sir, Senator. This is one of the questions that 

in some cases people are saying should we be doing this because 

we may create a false expectation. I think, again, as we do this, 

we are really trying to figure out how is the best way to direct people to the best information, which oftentimes is their local emergency managers and then their State emergency managers, and 

then what information we provide from FEMA. But we do agree 

that if you are going to post a blog, we do moderate our comments; 

we do not necessarily—what we do is we just make sure that whatever comments there are not offensive. But we do not self-censor 

any criticism. We post it. So the only moderating we do is to make 

sure there is not offensive material, but we will post the good and 

the bad and the ugly. And then as we see stuff, we will respond 

to it. 

But we also really need to make it clear that in many cases it 

is very difficult to have one-on-one conversations. In many cases we 

are listening to what the community is telling us. And we may not 

be able to directly respond one on one. So this is the concern and 

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11 

one of the reasons why we make it very clear. If this is an emergency, contact 911, contact your local responders. If this is information or opinions or what you are seeing, we want to look at it. But 

we may not be able to respond to each one of those postings. 

And so these are kind of the challenges. I said, we have to be 

able to listen to the community, but we may not be able to have 

that conversation one on one. Yet in one event I actually did. We 

had a tropical cyclone in the Central Pacific bearing down on 

American Samoa. I was updating and tweeting out that the forecast, which most people would think would come from the National 

Hurricane Center, actually had come from the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Hawaii. I had a person tweet back to me that he 

was on the island and these were the conditions. And I sent back 

and I said, ‘‘Thanks for the updates. Can you keep sending them?’’ 

So we kept using—and we were using the hashtag of the name of 

the storm, so he kept giving me updates. 

And so in real time I had a person that was down there in American Samoa giving me updates about the tropical cyclone. Then it 

was kind of a—it was almost humorous, but it gave a good sense 

of what was going on. 

Midway through the back end of the storm, he begins tweeting 

the Chicago Bears/Green Bay game because he was a Packers fan, 

and I realized that if he is getting information about the game and 

that was his new concern, maybe the storm was not so bad, and 

it turned out that fortunately it was minimal damage. 

That is a rare example, but it is also very telling of the power 

of looking at the public as part of the team and a resource and 

doing a better job of figuring out how to communicate with them. 

Again, all I was doing was trying to get information out about 

where the storm forecasts were coming from because this is not 

something many people were familiar with. But it is just one anecdotal example of how the public can oftentimes tell us more about 

what is going on than even our official sources. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. That is great and thank you for that. Senator Brown, did you have anything else? 

Senator BROWN. No, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator PRYOR. Director Fugate, thank you for being here today. 

We probably have some more questions for the record that we will 

submit, but thank you very much for being here. I know you have 

to hurry back to do your job, but thank you very much for being 

here. 

Mr. FUGATE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you, Senator 

Brown. 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. As Director Fugate is leaving, we will go ahead 

and set up the table for the next panel. 

We will go ahead and set up the witness table for the next panel, 

and I will go ahead and do a general introduction of folks as we 

go through this, as they are getting squared away. 

Our first witness will be Renee Preslar, public information officer 

for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management (ADEM), 

and she has had her hands full over the last couple of weeks, and 

she has been a vital resource in managing communications in some 

of Arkansas’s worst disasters. So thank you for being here today. 

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12 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Preslar appears in the appendix on page 42. 

And, second, we will have Suzy DeFrancis, chief public affairs officer of the American Red Cross. We appreciate you being here, and 

you guys have been very, very busy around the Nation, particularly 

in the South, but other places as well, and we really appreciate 

your time today. 

Next we will have Shona Brown. Thank you for being here. She 

is Senior Vice President of Google.org, and she has spearheaded 

Google’s people operations and business operations groups since 

2003. She will share some of her experiences with us today, and 

we appreciate that. 

Then we will have Heather Blanchard, the co-founder of 

CrisisCommons. She has helped establish CrisisCommons, seeking 

to connect people and organizations using technology to innovate 

crisis management and global development. She will detail her experiences with recent disasters as well as emerging trends in the 

use of social media in emergency response. 

So, again, I want to thank you all for being here. Ms. Blanchard, 

I understand your mother is in the audience as well. Is that true? 

Good. Thank you, Mom, for being here. We appreciate that very 

much. 

What I would like to do is if we could do 5-minute opening statements and try to keep those to 5 minutes as best as possible, and 

then we will ask a few questions. 

Renee, do you want to go first? Thank you. 

TESTIMONY OF RENEE PRESLAR,1 PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICER, ARKANSAS DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT 

Ms. PRESLAR. First of all, thank you guys so much for letting us 

come. I know all of us have been a little bit busy with the storms 

that have come through the Nation, but we feel like this was extremely important to kind of go through and explain what we do 

not only from the State’s perspective but also from the local perspective, so we can hopefully move forward with the social media 

presence in disasters. 

Arkansas have been using social media pretty much since 2008. 

We started a little bit with Facebook, but it was not just because 

it was something new and we thought this was amazing, it was 

something new we could do. It was because we physically saw documentation where our communities were coming together on these 

social sites in the wake of disasters, and we realized that, you 

know what? That was a venue and a media and an audience that 

we were not reaching directly because we were using our traditional sources, our print, our television, our radio stations. But 

using online, with the exception of our Web site, as a media outlet 

and as a tool we just had not done yet. And so we saw that was 

a vital resource, so we began with Facebook and used it on a preparedness stance before disasters, talking about what you can do. 

You can get a kit, you can make a plan, you can get prepared. You 

can stay informed with all the information that is going on. 

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13 

1The prepared statement of Ms. DeFrancis appears in the appendix on page 47. 

And we used it a little bit also as a mitigation aspect of disasters, 

too, simply to show people different projects that they could do to 

protect themselves in wakes of disasters. 

And then after the storms, the severe storms, the tornadoes that 

came through the positions, we had the tornadoes on February 5, 

and then we dealt with a lot of flooding in May and March and 

April and then December I think again. And then we had more tornadoes that seemed—and we saw where there was a need for us 

to transition from the preparedness and the mitigation side over to 

response and recovery on the social sites. So socially we began putting out messages on Facebook and on Twitter talking about these 

specific areas need to take cover. We worked directly with the National Weather Service. They were not on any social sites at that 

time. So the information that we were receiving from them, we 

would go ahead and pass along information, too. 

In the State of Arkansas, the way that the locals can get the sirens, tornado sirens, things of that nature, it is governed by the 

local individual jurisdictions. So some jurisdictions use tornado sirens. Some use reverse 911 and things of that nature. But we 

wanted to make sure that people had an ability to get information 

from wherever they were going, and that is what we started using, 

because you might not be in your home listening to the television 

or you might have satellite television and so during severe weather 

the TV goes out, and so you need to have an additional outlet to 

get that information. 

So we decided that we would go to them and use that as a tool 

to go ahead and take care of them making sure that they still got 

their emergency information taken care of. 

In the recovery process it works fantastically because in some 

areas—all across the State we are dependent upon locals to get our 

information, the local emergency managers. But when they are 

dealing with life-saving resources, we go to those local communities 

that are individuals on Facebook and social media sites to get disaster information so we can then again take it to those emergency 

managers in their communities to make sure that they can get the 

resources that they need. 

Senator PRYOR. Ms. DeFrancis. 

TESTIMONY OF SUZY DEFRANCIS,1 CHIEF PUBLIC AFFAIRS 

OFFICER, AMERICAN RED CROSS 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and as you said, the 

recent deadly storms across much of the South and Midwest, including your home State, really underscore the timeliness and importance of this hearing. 

As you know, the mission of the American Red Cross is to help 

people prevent and prepare for and respond to disasters. But today 

I want to talk about how social media is enabling the public to play 

a much bigger role in helping us with that mission. 

I want to draw your attention, as has been referenced, to a gap 

that exists today between the public’s use of social media in a disaster and the ability of disaster response organizations and relief 

agencies to act on that information in a timely fashion. And, fiH605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

14 

nally, I want to offer some thoughts about how we can begin to 

close that gap. 

The American Red Cross is a 130-year-old organization, and tools 

we use to respond have evolved over the years. But perhaps the 

most exciting innovations are social technologies because they 

allow us to listen and engage with the public as never before. 

We saw this with our fundraising efforts during Haiti. When we 

rolled out our mobile giving campaign, ‘‘Text ‘Haiti’ to 90999,’’ it 

was people on social media who really took it viral. In the first 48 

hours, there were 2.3 million re-tweets of our text number as people sent it to their networks of followers. And before long, we had 

raised $32 million via text, $10 at a time, and 41 percent of our 

text donors were under the age of 34. 

We saw the same phenomenon with Japan. The earthquake happened at 2:47 a.m. east coast time, and before most of us even got 

into the office, our text number was trending on Twitter. Social 

media communities were way ahead of us in trying to give out 

ways to help. 

But new technologies are not just helping us fundraise. They are 

becoming part of our operational DNA. In Haiti, we sent out 4 million text messages to the Haitians about the symptoms of cholera 

and how to prevent it and treat it. Here at home we have built a 

dynamic shelter map with the help of Google to update our shelter 

information. We not only have this on our Web site, but we have 

built an iPhone app so people can find a shelter on their mobile 

phone. 

And we are also helping families connect in those first hours 

after disaster strikes through our Safe and Well Web site where 

people can post their whereabouts and update their Facebook and 

Twitter status. 

We are training Red Cross volunteers who deploy to disaster to 

use their smartphones and social media to let people know where 

they can go to find shelter, food, and other services. And, really exciting, we are creating a new digital volunteer role where volunteers can help us monitor, authenticate, and route incoming disaster requests without ever leaving their homes. 

We know that in a crisis—and it has been said—people turn to 

the communication tools they are familiar with every day, and disaster response and relief agencies must do the same. You referenced our survey, Mr. Chairman, and we found that more Web 

users get emergency information from social media than from a 

NOAA weather radio, a government Web site, or an emergency text 

message system. Not only are they looking for and seeking information, they are sharing it. One in five social media users report 

posting eyewitness accounts of emergency events. If someone else 

is in need, they are enlisting their social networks to help or using 

Facebook and Twitter to notify response agencies. And, they expect 

us to be listening. 

As you said, 69 percent said that emergency responders should 

be monitoring social media sites, and 74 percent expect help to 

come less than an hour after they tweet or post on Facebook. These 

are extremely high expectations, but, unfortunately, today they do 

not match reality. Most disaster responders are still not staffed to 

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15 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Shona appears in the appendix on page 53. 

monitor or respond to the flood of incoming requests during major 

events. 

At the Red Cross, we experienced a heart-breaking situation 

after the earthquake in Haiti. We began receiving tweets from people trapped under collapsed buildings. We did not have a good way 

to handle those pleas for help. We had to go through the messages 

manually and try to route them through the State Department and 

other places, and in some cases we were too late. These are lifeor-death situations, and we must find ways to respond more quickly. 

While we will not solve these issues today, we are making 

progress in collaboration with our partners, as was just demonstrated in Alabama. People affected by the tornado were posting 

needs to an online gathering point. Working with an organization 

called ‘‘Tweak the Tweet,’’ as well as with FEMA and 

CrisisCommons, we were able to share that information with the 

Alabama State Emergency Operations Center (EOC). For the first 

time, we were able to connect crisis social data with decision makers who can act on it. 

I believe you can help us continue to find ways to link up social 

data with response. We also believe, as you discussed with the Administrator, that the Federal Government does have a role in helping with the Next Generation 911. We agree that the first and best 

choice for anyone in an emergency is to call 911. However, 911 

should be compatible with text and social media. 

If I can leave you with one thought, it is this: Social media is enabling real citizens to play a role in helping their neighbors down 

the street, across the country, and around the world. What we do 

to help that process will literally save lives and help ensure that 

our country is as prepared as possible to handle any disaster. 

Thank you again for your leadership on this issue, and I am 

happy to answer any questions you may have. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. 

And now, Ms. Brown, I understand you have a video that you 

want to show. Is that right? 

Ms. BROWN. Yes, I would like to start with a short video, please. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. That is fine. If you want to start with a 

short video, that is great. Are we cued up on that? Sure, go ahead. 

[Videotape played.] 

TESTIMONY OF SHONA L. BROWN,1 SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, 

GOOGLE.ORG 

Ms. BROWN. Chairman Pryor and Ranking Member Brown, 

thanks for inviting me here today and for your attention to this important issue. I would like to apologize for my voice. I am the picture of California health. I oversee Google’s efforts to use the power 

of technology to deliver critical crisis-related information, and this 

includes the team that develops tools like Google Person Finder, 

which helps loved ones reconnect during emergencies. 

Our thoughts are with the communities that have just been hit 

by devastating tornadoes, as has already been mentioned, and 

across the United States which took the lives of, it looks like, over 

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16 

300 people—a stark reminder of the important role of relief organizations. I am here today because we believe technology can make 

their jobs easier. 

In the aftermath of last week’s tornadoes, we supported the Red 

Cross, as already mentioned, by providing maps that located nearby shelters. We updated satellite imagery for first responders, and 

we directed local users searching for ‘‘tornado’’ or ‘‘twister’’ to the 

maps through an enhanced search result. 

We are not experts in crisis response, and we play a modest role 

compared to the relief organizations and agencies. But our experiences over the past few years have given us a unique vantage 

point. In fact, in just the last 4 months, we responded to more crises than we did in all of last year. Based on this experience, I will 

outline three reasons why simple standard and open Internet-based 

technologies are critical tools for emergency responders and affected populations. I will also suggest how the government can support these tools. 

First, I would just like to tell you about a father who used one 

of these tools to find his son in Japan. Tom Stormonth’s son, Liam, 

was teaching at a school in Sendai, Japan, when the earthquake 

struck. Tom was unable to reach his son by phone because the networks were damaged and overloaded. So he turned to Google Person Finder. He posted a picture of his son and asked what any worried parent would: ‘‘If anyone has seen him, please let me know he 

is still OK.’’ 

A few hours later, someone responded and said that Liam had 

taken refuge at a local elementary school. A few hours after that, 

Liam responded to his father’s message saying, ‘‘Alive and well.’’ 

And not long after that, Tom was able to use the Internet-based 

Skype application to video-chat with his son. 

So what makes the Internet so useful following natural disasters 

and such a comfort to people like Tom? First, the Internet often remains available when other networks fail. In Japan, when other 

communications systems were unstable, the Internet was uninterrupted. Because of this we were able to get Person Finder up in 

Japan in only 90 minutes. 

Second, during emergencies people tend to turn, as has been 

mentioned, to simple, standard, and open Internet services that 

they know well. After the earthquake in Haiti, we sent a team to 

Port-au-Prince to better understand how relief organizations were 

using Google tools. Our team was embedded in a refugee camp 

with the 82d Airborne, and one of the officers explained that soldiers use Google Maps to plan patrol routes for the area because 

they use tools they are used to. 

Finally, the Internet scales and promotes openness. After the 

earthquake in Haiti, we found there were 14 individual missing 

person databases. They were not integrated, and they all ran on 

different infrastructures. We saw an important opportunity to leverage the power of crowdsourcing to create one common database, 

pushing and pulling feeds from all 14 databases. That idea became 

Person Finder. 

The response has been overwhelming. Person Finder managed 

more than 600,000 records following the earthquake in Japan, and 

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17 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Blanchard appears in the appendix on page 58. 

there were more than 36 million page views within the first 48 

hours alone. 

Google has the infrastructure to handle that volume with ease, 

and the Internet remains stable, allowing people to connect. Before 

Person Finder, Tom Stormonth would have had to go to multiple 

Web sites and check and re-check in order to try to find news on 

his son. 

In addition, long before the recent flooding in Pakistan, two Pakistani Web developers noticed that available maps of their country 

were incomplete and inadequate, so they used Google MapMaker to 

add and update geographical information for millions of people to 

see in Google Maps and Google Earth. When 20 percent of Pakistan was underwater, we shared our MapMaker base data with 

UNOSAT, the UN’s primary mapping agency, to help them plan 

their recovery efforts. Similarly, our friends at Open Street Map 

created the most complete map of Haiti’s roads ever made by getting the Haitians to volunteer their knowledge. 

What can government do to support these kinds of tools? It can 

adopt simple, open, and standard ways of publishing and disseminating emergency information. Divergent standards make it much 

more difficult to collaborate and respond quickly in situations when 

speed is of the essence. 

For example, we have lost valuable time trying to gather and 

translate into open standards information kept in arcane formats 

on government Web sites. Also, critical information is sometimes 

spread across multiple Web sites. And in other cases, important 

data is not even online at all, but stuck on a spreadsheet stored 

on somebody’s desktop computer. 

In particular, alerting systems that leverage the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), standard could quickly inform users of impending crises such as tornadoes or tsunamis as well as everyday problems like transit delays. If alerts are implemented in an open fashion, governments can provide trusted information, and private actors like Google and others can publish updates that are easily accessible to people when they search for information on their computers or their smartphones. This work can be coordinated with a 

commercial mobile alert system, for example, so that people have 

the same opportunity to receive alerts through telecommunications 

providers or Internet providers. 

I would like to conclude by thanking Chairman Pryor and Senator Brown and this Subcommittee for holding this hearing today. 

We play a modest role, but we are committed to working to help 

users and relief workers instantly find the information they need 

during emergencies. 

Thank you. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Ms. Blanchard. 

TESTIMONY OF HEATHER BLANCHARD,1 CO-FOUNDER, 

CRISISCOMMONS 

Ms. BLANCHARD. Good morning, Chairman Pryor, Ranking Member Brown, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. My 

name is Heather Blanchard, and I am the co-founder of 

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CrisisCommons, a volunteer technology community (VTC) that connects people and organizations who use open data and technology 

to innovate crisis management and global development. Before this 

position, I spent 7 years at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including the position of Deputy Director of the Ready Campaign. On behalf of our community, it is a true honor to testify before you today. 

When a crisis occurs, it is not emergency responders who are 

first on the scene. It is everyday people who use everyday resources 

like their mobile phone and social networks to share what they 

know. This could be a road blocked by a tree after a storm or creating a map of where they see wildfires. Today there are many volunteers who leverage technology, like CrisisCommons, that can direct technical capacity, harness open data and collaborative tools to 

help first responders and communities make sense from the deluge 

of information that occurs in a crisis. We believe that information 

at the right time and right place can help response authorities and 

citizens make better decisions especially in a crisis. 

Since the spring of 2009, CrisisCommons has been an open forum 

to explore how information, including social media, can help in a 

crisis. Our community has supported organizations and citizens in 

the response to the Haiti and Japan earthquakes, Tennessee floods, 

and last week’s historic tornadoes which impacted the southeast. 

Just to share an example, during the blizzard which paralyzed Chicago this year, our volunteers through CrisisCampChicago in collaboration with Humanity Road supported the Chicago Tribune 

Snow Map to assure that public requests for assistance were routed 

to 311 and other local authorities. 

One challenge that we often see is that government agencies simplify the use of social media as a public affairs function when, in 

fact, during a crisis access to citizen-generated information is an 

operational necessity. As an example, this year during our support 

for the National Level Exercise, the situational awareness work 

group that we participated in struggled to define how social media 

information would be coordinated from an operational perspective 

as there is not a resourced function which connects open data, including social media, and leverages potential surge capacity from 

communities like CrisisCommons. We would like to recommend to 

the Committee that government create an operational liaison function which connects volunteer technology communities to our response systems at the Federal, State, and local levels and be 

resourced for support during steady State and in crisis events. We 

recommend that current emergency management doctrine be revised to include the capacity to harness technology volunteer expertise and collaborative systems. 

Another challenge we have observed is that in local Emergency 

Operations Centers the connection between social media information and operations is largely absent. We were shocked to find that 

some centers lacked high bandwidth Internet, technical skills, or 

collaborative tools. We were also dismayed to find that many agencies have stringent security policies blocking their workforce from 

using social media tools for operational purposes. Without this capability, emergency managers could be missing critical information 

in their operational picture. We recommend that emergency manH605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

19 

agement infrastructure be fully modernized. We also recommend 

that policy and incident management doctrine be modified to allow 

emergency management personnel to engage outside of their own 

organizational networks to take advantage of social media tools 

and capabilities. 

As you can see, emergency management may not be prepared to 

utilize social media tools and data to augment their operations and 

to inform their mission priorities. When there is a crisis, emergency 

management continuously find themselves overwhelmed with information. We recommend that resources be devoted toward helping 

emergency managers with data preparedness and filtering, increasing the level of digital literacy of the emergency management workforce, and empowering their ability to connect with technology support. 

In looking at the government’s role in this ecosystem, the days 

of agencies passively sitting on the social media sidelines from behind the firewall are over. The time has come to evolve to a more 

open and participatory crisis management model. We believe that 

the Federal Government has a leadership role to play, but, again, 

we feel that institutional support is needed to move us to the next 

level. To emphasize we recommend the following: 

Create an operational liaison function to coordinate with volunteer technology communities; 

Revise policy and incident management doctrine to incorporate 

social media and other technology capabilities; 

Invest in modernization of emergency management infrastructure and collaborative tools; 

Support data preparedness and filtering, increasing the level of 

digital literacy of the emergency management workforce and, 

again, empowering their ability to connect with technology support. 

In spite of these challenges, we know of many emergency managers who are pushing the envelope every day, sometimes at their 

own professional risk, to apply social media tools and data in their 

work. We are supportive of the enlightened leadership that Administrator Fugate displays every day. He has opened the door to discussion and experimentation that we see today. However, individuals cannot change institutional challenges by example. Today we 

are asking for your help to support the needed enhancements that 

emergency management needs to fully utilize social media information and providing connectivity to communities who can support 

their efforts just like CrisisCommons. 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before you 

today, and I look forward to answering any questions you may 

have. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. I want to thank the panelists. 

Senator Brown needs to slip out here in just a few minutes, but 

he wanted to ask a few questions before he goes. Take as long as 

you want. 

Senator BROWN. Thank you for that courtesy, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you. 

When introducing the first question, it should be noted that two 

of our four witnesses are actually public affairs officers, and with 

that, my question is: How do we start utilizing the tools that we 

are talking about beyond simply public engagement but to actually 

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20 

informing them of operations and actually respond, in fact, to what 

is happening? Ms. DeFrancis is probably the best one. 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. Thank you. You are right, we are public affairs. 

That is where social media sits today. We have a very small crew, 

two people. If I could introduce Wendy Harman, who is our director 

of social media and does a fantastic job. 

What Wendy and her team are now trying to do is get social 

media into our own disaster operations center right there at headquarters to make sure that the people who are actually setting up 

shelters and all that are getting this information and are integrating it. We now have Twitter feeds going on in our disaster operations center to pay attention to this. This is important. 

As I mentioned with what happened in Alabama, there are the 

first beginnings of being able to take this data—and I got to tell 

you, it does not come in a neat kind of easy-to-read format. It 

comes in a lot of places, different hashtags and symbols, and it is 

hard to read. But working with CrisisCommons and other groups, 

we are trying to understand what are the needs of these emergency 

operations centers. 

In Alabama, they told us to put it clearly: food, water, shelter; 

organize them that way so we can read them quickly and figure out 

how to act on them. 

So I think, like we said, it is trying to make it part of operational 

DNA. It is far more than just listening to people. It is really gleaning that information, putting it in a really simple format so that 

emergency responders, who are very busy at that time, can act on 

it. 

And there are also issues of authenticating it and verifying it, 

but it is more, I think, getting it clear to them how to use it. 

Senator BROWN. It must be interesting, too, the language that is 

used. 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. When we first took in the CrisisCommons data 

in Alabama to the emergency operations center, they said it looks 

like a spaceship. [Laughter.] 

Senator BROWN. Because I know when my own kids send me 

stuff, I have to call them and say, ‘‘What did you just say?’’ 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. Exactly. 

Senator BROWN. That being said, where is the potential for more 

innovation in this area? And what are some examples, if any, of 

some of the more exciting innovations in this area that have actually taken place so far? Either one. Anybody. It is really for either/ 

or. 

Ms. PRESLAR. OK. There are a lot of places to go, but the first 

and foremost thing we have to remember is that disasters are local. 

Disasters do not necessarily happen at the Federal level. They do 

not even happen at the State level. We are not first responders. It 

is those people on the ground, our local emergency management offices and things like that. And so I think where the new technology 

needs to come in is to where we need the government to work with 

these social companies to create something that our first responders can utilize on a ground zero level. Oftentimes, speaking for Arkansas directly, a lot of the emergency managers in the areas are 

a one-person staff, and then they rely on their amounts of volunteers that come in and help during those times. But we need someH605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

21 

thing to where they do not necessarily have to have that person 

that is sitting there 24/7 monitoring the social status of what is 

going on in these different areas. It needs to be able to work somehow with the companies, because like we had talked before, it was 

not created for disasters. And now that we see that it is being able 

to be used and used effectively in emergency response systems, we 

need to be able to work with those companies to see how we can 

utilize and kind of narrow it down so we can incorporate it at that 

local level first and then move up from there. 

Senator BROWN. And, Ms. Brown, if I could ask you a question, 

I know—and I appreciate the video and everything Google is doing. 

The impact of disaster response and the dedicated crisis response 

team that you have, is this a full-time group within Google? 

No. Press it again. 

Ms. BROWN. I am failing Microphone 101, obviously. 

Senator BROWN. That is OK. 

Ms. BROWN. Yes, we have a dedicated team that is based in 

Mountain View and New York. However, it is important to note 

that when a crisis occurs, it actually brings together, in addition 

to that team, a lot of Googlers who otherwise have other jobs. For 

example, in Japan, we are fortunate to have an office there, and 

so it was not difficult to have a lot of people drop their current activities and literally live in the office day and night, certainly for 

the first 4 or 5 days. So we supplement that core permanent team 

as needed with resources around the world. But it is a permanent 

team based in the United States. 

Senator BROWN. Was there any specific philosophy or reason for 

Google to set up that dedicated team that you saw a need and you 

wanted to go in and zero in or you wanted to be a leader in the 

area? And with that, do you see an expanding capacity and dedication of additional resources in this area in the future? 

Ms. BROWN. In terms of why it entered the area, I mean, quite 

simply it was an area consistent with Google.org’s philosophy of an 

opportunity for us to take some of our technology and deploy it for 

social good. We did not spin the roulette wheel and pick crisis response, but it looked like something where, quite frankly, information and communications are critical, just, of course, as food and 

water are after a disaster. And we seemed very well positioned to 

help around communications and information. 

In terms of increasing our resources, it has grown over the last 

couple of years. Actually over the last year, since Haiti, we realized 

the power of it, and at the moment the team is continuing to respond to natural disasters and continuing to focus on making the 

tools more applicable and scalable. 

So, for example, when there is not a disaster happening—which 

has been small windows of opportunity this year, unfortunately. 

But when there is not one, they are actually working on, OK, what 

sorts of data might we aggregate ahead of time so we could respond 

faster and so on. 

Senator BROWN. Thank you. 

Ms. DeFrancis, is there any area where you may need Congress’ 

help in legislation to streamline, consolidate, make better, more efficient, anything like that, that you or anyone else maybe can think 

of? 

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22 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. Senator, if I could respond just quickly to your 

last question about innovation, one of the things we are learning— 

I mean, none of these tools were available back during Hurricane 

Katrina—Twitter or Facebook. And so here we are 5 years later. 

Then we think, well, what is the next 5 years? So I would say 

whatever solutions that we all are working towards, we need to be 

careful not to tie it to one particular application or technology because they are changing so rapidly. 

I think in terms of the help we need, I think just holding this 

hearing is really great because it raises the prominence of these 

issues so that people begin to think about them, begin to work 

around them. We are having great success working in collaboration 

with FEMA and other government entities. As Heather said, Administrator Fugate has been terrific in that regard. We are working with all of these groups here, Senator, and Twitter and 

Facebook, and I think there is kind of a crowd mentality that 

comes together with this medium. And so I am not sure that I 

think government should jump into the middle of it or try to interfere with what is happening. But I think that there are places 

where probably government is needed to provide the resources, and 

we mentioned the emergency 911 as one of those examples and 

bringing together wireless companies to do that. 

Obviously at the Red Cross we will need to continue to invest in 

new technology. We want to get this where it is not just a manual 

thing, where we have to have people monitoring every second, but 

where it begins to become a stream that is automatic, that goes 

into the right places in these operations centers. We will have to 

invest in training—— 

Senator BROWN. Can I just ask kind of a followup to that? 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. Yes. 

Senator BROWN. Not to interrupt, but is there a point where it 

is too much information? It seems like it is overload. You have a 

crisis. Everyone wants to do the right social thing to help and be 

helpful. At what point, though, is it, like, OK, we get it? How do 

you draw that line? 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. Yes, Senator, I think it can be overwhelming, 

and that is why we are trying to find the common standards and 

ways in which we can feed this information so it just does not all 

come in at once in different ways. I think Heather is working on 

that. Heather, I do not know if you want to address that aspect. 

Ms. BLANCHARD. Sure. I think that when we talk about information overload, what we are really talking about is a lack of filters. 

You really need to be able to look at the body of information. It is 

kind of like a river, if you will, and the river is flowing. And during 

a disaster, the river is overflowing. And what you really need is filters. 

And a lot of times those filters really operate based on data 

standards, and data standards is something that is really important in this area. And the question is, like in an operations center, 

who is sitting in the seat that is creating the filters for that information? And so being able to kind of have that eye for the kind 

of information that needs to come in to be able to augment the 

operational picture to better make decisions for the people that— 

from the incident manager all the way up to Craig Fugate. And I 

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23 

think that there is a common misperception is that—there is a 

term called ‘‘common operating picture,’’ and in a way, like what 

you really want is a user-defined operating picture, because what 

an incident manager needs to see on the front lines is very different than what Craig Fugate needs to see. But they need to be 

able to have access to the same pool of data. So open data is really 

important. It is really the backbone of what we are talking about. 

And social media is information that becomes points of data. So if 

you have a tweet and that tweet has—you turn your geolocation on 

your phone, well, that tweet can be mapped now. But a lot of times 

people when they tweet, they do not have their geolocation on their 

phone, so we cannot say, OK, here is a damaged building unless 

they give you context to say it. But if they did not give you any 

context and they have their geolocation on, we can automatically 

pull that into a map, and that gives emergency managers better information. 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this 

hearing. I appreciate the opportunity to participate. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, everybody. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you for being here today. See you Monday. 

Thank you all for all your testimony. Let me dive in with a few 

questions. I actually have about 10 pages of questions. I am not 

going to worry about—— [Laughter.] 

But I do have several questions, and in the interest of time, I 

may submit some for the record. I do not really know where to 

start, so, Ms. DeFrancis, let me just start with the Red Cross. 

Something you said in your testimony—everything that you all said 

caught my ear, but something you said in your testimony that 

caught my ear is in Haiti the Red Cross sent out 4 million texts 

to people, which I think is a great tool and a great resource. I am 

curious about how you got all those phone numbers to text, and 

also I am curious about do you have that capability in the United 

States with various privacy concerns, et cetera. 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. Thank you for that question. In Haiti, cell phone 

use is incredible. I think it is like 90 percent of the people in Haiti 

have cell phones. And as they were going into these camps and tent 

areas, we were registering them. We actually piloted a program to 

see if we could actually give money to families through their cell 

phones so that they would go to a particular place, a disbursement 

place, and get money right into their hands so that they could provide for the needs of their families. 

So there we had people going into tent communities where they 

were registering, and that is how we were getting those cell phone 

numbers and were then able to push out the right information. 

To be perfectly honest with you, Senator, I do not know that we 

have that capability right now here in the United States. It is certainly something that we are looking at. I know that certainly 

emergency management agencies are looking at that. But, when a 

crisis strikes, the first thing you grab is your cell phone or your car 

keys. And so to be able to have that ability to push that information out would be terrific, and maybe that is an area that we can 

all work together on. 

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24 

Like I say, I know government is working on some of the things, 

but we at the Red Cross do not have all those phone numbers by 

any stretch. 

Senator PRYOR. Did you have any success with your pilot project 

about texting people some sort of voucher or a code where they 

could then go get money? 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. Yes. 

Senator PRYOR. Did that work? 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. It worked in the pilot phase. For a number of 

reasons, the Haitian Government decided, at the end of the day, 

that was not the best thing to do. But we certainly think that it 

will work in future operations because most people are familiar 

with where to go to a bank or something. You will get a code 

through your cell phone, you will be able to take it to the bank, 

and, immediately, the bank can verify that and give the money to 

you. So it is a very fast way to do it, and there is kind of a synergy 

here between people who are now texting to give money to help 

people and people using their cell phones now to be able to take 

that and get that immediate help. 

Senator PRYOR. All right. You mentioned in your testimony also 

the Alabama experience where you guys have had a lot of success 

there using social media, and it seems to be working well and it 

seems to be fairly well integrated. What steps do you have to do 

to set that up? Or does it just happen spontaneously? 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. Heather is probably more the expert on this, but 

it happens pretty spontaneously. What happened was that a personality in Birmingham set up, kind of, a Web site and said, ‘‘Hey, 

send me all of your needs.’’ He was a radio personality right? 

Ms. BLANCHARD. Yes. 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. And so people began to text all their needs. And 

they are everything. They are everything from, ‘‘I need baby food, 

diapers,’’ things like that. Someone needs tree removal at their 

home. Others, shelter, a church is setting up a shelter, they need 

volunteers, they need, diapers, these kinds of things. And all these 

needs started pouring in. And, so what the emergency operations 

center said was, ‘‘Can you begin to put those into a more orderly 

catalogue so we can digest it and then get the help?’’ But, really, 

these things grow up organically, and people are looking at that 

site to say, ‘‘Maybe I can go run some diapers over to that site. I 

am nearby.’’ And that is great. We want to encourage that. That 

is really neighbors helping neighbors. 

Senator PRYOR. Ms. Blanchard, did you want to comment on 

that? 

Ms. BLANCHARD. Sure. Part of the project really, the genesis of 

it, the Red Cross had come to us, and also Humanity Road is a 

nonprofit that utilizes technology to also be able to take information and be able to help people in crisis. There were two projects, 

one, again, with the emergency operations center and the other 

was Tuscaloosa News. Tuscaloosa News actually launched a 

Crowdmap, which is basically an open platform where you can actually take pieces of public information like Twitter, and it can go 

on a map. And so we heard of that project and this project, and 

what we wanted to do is merge the projects. And so now we have 

probably about 50 volunteers associated with another organization 

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25 

called the Standby Task Force. And these people are all over the 

world, and they are basically combing the Internet right now as we 

speak to find needs that people are saying in Alabama. And so they 

are taking that information and they are cataloguing it and they 

are putting it on the Crowdmap that Tuscaloosa news had generated. Crowdmap is a product of Ushahidi, and Ushahidi is an 

open mapping platform, and that is the platform you saw that was 

deployed during Haiti. It was also deployed during the Japan crisis 

that we just saw earlier this year. 

Part of what we see is that a lot of times a Crowdmap is deployed, but Crowdmap may not be exactly the right tool because 

you really need a full instance of a Ushahidi platform because you 

are dealing with a lot of load, a lot of information, a lot of 

customization that needs to happen behind the scenes. 

And so we recommended to the Tuscaloosa News and to the Red 

Cross, hey, let us get together and see if we can kind of put this 

in a platform that will really be able to work long term. And so 

right now we have volunteers working basically around the clock, 

and we are actually reaching out to local universities to see if they 

want to host the platform long term to make sure that we have 

local grassroots engagement on it. 

So what the platform seeks to do is it seeks to pull in all the 

needs that people are talking about, and the local EOC is going to 

look at those needs. The people that are planning in the planning 

section, and they are going to be able to say, OK, we are planning 

that these folks over here—we have feeding stations in this town, 

but we are seeing on Twitter that people need food. We want to 

make sure that we are closing the divide, closing the gap. And so 

in a way they are using it to double-check their planning and operations, which is really fascinating. 

So we are really happy to support the Red Cross, and we are also 

really happy to support Tuscaloosa News, and we are really hoping 

to be able to help them over the next coming days. 

Senator PRYOR. Is it fair to say that in what you are doing, the 

larger the disaster, the larger the need? Because with the larger 

disaster, there is more devastation and more of the sort of local 

systems go down and more people are impacted. Is that fair to say? 

Ms. BLANCHARD. It is fair to say, but I will give you something 

that is really great to see. In a way, the biggest the disaster, the 

more that people really want to help. And sometimes there are 

really large disasters all over the world that people do not even 

know about. And so what has really been amazing is that we have 

seen this rise of what we call the crisis crowd. So a lot of times 

people talk about the wisdom of the crowds and people being able 

to use crowdsourcing. 

What we have seen and really what Haiti demonstrated was this 

massive ability for people all around the world to connect to each 

other using basically the global platform of the Internet and being 

able to work on common projects. Like missing persons, that is a 

really great example. Missing persons that became—after Hurricane Katrina, the community of volunteers got together and created actually their own technical standard because there was no 

technical standard that was available. And so they actually felt, 

well, no one is creating it, we are going to create it. So that is what 

H605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

26 

created the People Finder Interchange Format (PFIF) Standard, 

and we would be more than happy to submit more information 

about that. And that evolved—during Haiti, that evolved into basically a lot of technology volunteers that had experience during Hurricane Katrina came together and said, hey, there is a data standard that is already available, and Google was able to take that data 

standard and actually create their missing persons database based 

on that. 

And so now for CrisisCommons, what we are trying to do is that 

later this month we are actually holding a missing persons data 

summit in Paris to be able to kind of work further on privacy 

issues, being able to figure out how people can be able to better utilize this information. 

So there are lots of different pieces, but the crisis crowd during 

every crisis really wants to respond, and what we really want to 

kind of look to see is like how can we make the response smarter. 

How can we make, getting information to a map for local needs 

quicker? How can we have—for example, during Alabama, you 

were talking about categories. What if we had predetermined categories? We do not need to even think about it. We just go. And 

so that information, that river of information could go ahead and 

flow into a map and be able to really automatically provide information that is critical to emergency management. 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. And, Senator, could I just also add, on the local 

front, though—you talked about major disasters. As you probably 

know, at the Red Cross most of the disasters we respond to are 

house fires, and they do not get a whole lot of coverage. But what 

we are discovering, through our chapters, who are also now 

tweeting and using Facebook, is that we are able to bring the local 

community—make them aware that this has happened down the 

street, and that these are neighbors of theirs who need help. 

And so I think it does not just have relevance for the big ones 

that get all the media attention, but it also has relevance for the 

everyday emergencies people go through. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. So, Ms. Blanchard, let me ask you—I 

want to talk about the mission persons program or application that 

you offer. How does someone in Tuscaloosa find out about the 

availability of missing persons—or someone in Utah, for that matter, wanting to find someone to make sure they are OK in Tuscaloosa, how do they know that is out there? How do they know that 

exists? 

Ms. BLANCHARD. So there is actually—coming from—being at 

DHS for over 7 years, I really kind of got familiar with the emergency management protocols, and during disasters in the United 

States, the Red Cross is the lead for missing persons, and we really 

seek to support that. But there are other efforts such as Google’s 

missing person finder, which is great, because that really condenses the amount of missing persons databases that currently are 

created. 

So when there is a crisis, a lot of people create well-meaning 

technology tools, like missing persons databases. And what Google 

did during Haiti was able to collapse those down basically into just 

one that was able to really be propagated all over the Internet, 

which was really helpful. But I think that when you talk about if 

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27 

you have a missing persons—if you have a family member that is 

missing, the American Red Cross is the place, and the Safe and 

Well is what FEMA asks people to go toward. And we want to support the local response efforts. 

Senator PRYOR. And, Ms. Brown, tell us about the need for universal data formatting. I mean, I think I understand that, but tell 

me sort of in layman’s terms what that means. 

Ms. BROWN. Is that working? There we go. Good with databases. 

Bad with microphones. 

So PFIF, which is the standard that Heather was referring to, 

was, as she described, created out of the genesis of the Haiti experience and is a standard that we are continuing to iterate on today. 

But the concept is essentially that if you receive data, rather than 

as Suzy was describing it is a spaceship and all sorts of different 

order, it would be an order with a field name that you would understand. So everybody would call something ‘‘first name’’ as opposed to ‘‘family name’’ or ‘‘F name’’ or something. And so that 

would mean that when data was coming in, it could be interpreted, 

and you can have actually different databases easily talking to 

each other. That is the premise. 

Ms. BLANCHARD. Yes. 

Ms. BROWN. So if everybody made the word ‘‘data’’ compatible 

with PFIF, then the speed with which everyone could talk to each 

other during a crisis and, therefore, as an end result the speed 

with which someone could be looking for something and be able to 

look into a whole bunch of different data sets rather than just one 

silo here and one there would be dramatically increased. 

So that is the basic idea of the data standard. 

Senator PRYOR. And so are most people on the same data standard? Or are they all over the board? 

Ms. BROWN. No, not most, but increasingly there are. 

Do you want to comment, Heather? 

Ms. BLANCHARD. Yes, we are very much promoting the active use 

of the PFIF Standard, also with basically data interoperability. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. 

Ms. BLANCHARD. Making sure that different databases can talk 

to each other. And today, like, that is definitely able to happen. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. And, Senator, could I just add? We are not the 

Missing Persons Bureau, but during a disaster we do obviously register people in our shelters, and then we take them to our Safe and 

Well Web site and make sure they post there. 

But what we are really about with all these technologies is kind 

of like Craig Fugate said, let us not try to fit people into our systems, let us try to work with the other systems. That is why we 

became compatible now with Facebook and Twitter. We are working with Google on People Finder. Because whatever is the easiest 

way for that person, that is the way we want to go. It is not proprietary Red Cross, Safe and Well. It is not proprietary. But can we 

all work together so we get this data together and get help? 

Ms. BROWN. And just to your question about who is using it, I 

mean, for example, in Japan, we did find that many organizations 

did use this standard, particularly the police, and so when you are 

talking about missing people. But you need more organizations 

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using the same—you need all these organizations that identify people to be using the same standard for it to work perfectly, and we 

have a ways to go. 

Ms. BLANCHARD. And the great thing is that everyone here is actually—we have monthly calls on missing persons data, and so we 

have been trying to create some kind of continuous improvement 

processes on that. So we are sharing information, and we are looking at the standard, and we are hoping to be able to contribute 

something meaningful to it. 

Senator PRYOR. Ms. Preslar, let me ask you a question about Arkansas and the specific experience you have had in the last few 

weeks in our State with all of our storms. 

Do you feel like that our citizenry and the various government 

entities are using the social media effectively? Do you feel like we 

are sort of following this trend that some of these other folks have 

talked about? 

Ms. PRESLAR. It is very diversified across the State. You will find 

in the urbanized or the areas closer to the urban—central Arkansas, there is a large group of people that actually do utilize this. 

In northwest Arkansas, there is a large group. There are some in 

the northeast centered around Jonesboro and then some around 

Texarkana. And then everywhere else across the State, Fort Smith 

included, it is just kind of scattered. People may use it, people may 

not. But I think that also has to do with the fact that you see the 

areas that it is followed around right now. It is also the areas that 

have a large media center. You have the television stations and 

things that are localized around there, so you have people that they 

can follow. 

I think that is why I stated earlier, when we talked about getting 

groups of people or getting companies together to decide how we 

can actually use this for emergency management in mind will help 

the local areas, because when you have smaller counties that do 

not much less have a budget, much less, an actual county government Web site, social media provides them that opportunity not 

just to do things during the response and the recovery phase, because before you can do that, they have to know where you can go 

to get that kind of information, and that is where the preparedness 

phase steps in, is that when you have your local emergency managers utilizing this stuff in advance of a particular disaster, during 

that disaster people know where to go to ahead of time, and that 

is why it is so important that we go ahead and work on that obviously ahead of time to make sure that we can get that together, 

we can get that set in place. And I think that you would see a lot 

more involvement once the individual emergency managers at the 

county level that do not obviously have a budget much less, fulltime status are able to do this without any, Web training or Web 

experience or know how to do any type of HTML coding. They can 

pretty much enter things into specific sites via a blog that is already laid out for them or a Facebook account that is already laid 

out, where they can just put in the information and they do not 

have to worry about how that information actually gets to where 

it is going. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. And you are at ADEM. 

Ms. PRESLAR. Yes. 

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Senator PRYOR. The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management. Do they have a designated person for social media? Is 

that you? 

Ms. PRESLAR. ‘‘Designated’’ is very loosely defined. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. 

Ms. PRESLAR. Yes, I am the one that does it, but it is not my sole 

responsibility. It does fall under the public affairs staff of the side 

of things where it belongs, and there are two of us on staff, and 

I am the one who handles the social media things. In fact, actually 

tomorrow we are training additional staff to be able to make sure 

that it is timely and it is congruent and that we are not just involved in social media when I am awake. [Laughter.] 

We are trying to make sure it follows the timeframe, and we are 

actually doing some of that training tomorrow. So we do have 

someone that does take care of that stuff, but it is important for 

it to be done on all aspects and all levels. In the State’s Emergency 

Operations Center, I will sit in and I will monitor things as they 

come in, and then I will go out and directly talk to the people that 

are positioned in the EOC that deal with the counties on a firstname basis to where, if I see something is coming through for Prairie County or I am getting reports that roads are flooded and they 

are concerned about an evacuation, I will go to that event manager 

that is in the EOC that is going to be discussing things with the 

Prairie County emergency manager to make sure, OK, is this true, 

is this going to happen? Because like we said before, the emergency 

managers are so consumed with their life-saving responsibilities, 

which is where they need to be, but they do not necessarily have 

the time to come back to the State and say, OK, this is going on 

now, and this is going on now, and this is going on now. So to be 

able to have that additional side where we see what the citizens 

are saying or maybe what the citizens are receiving, we can say, 

OK, they are actively getting the message, and they are getting the 

message effectively. OK, this area does not seem to be getting the 

message that the county wants to display, so we need to figure out 

how else we can best get this information to that local community. 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. We saw that a lot in Alabama, sir, where people 

would say, ‘‘I am in this particular area’’—I think it was 

Hackleburg—and ‘‘We do not have any food, we do not have any 

water.’’ Well, they did. They just did not know where it was. So social media allowed us to put out to them. ‘‘Well, no, go to the corner 

of X and Y and that is where you will find it.’’ 

Senator PRYOR. It seems to me that also something we have not 

talked a lot about today is the local media, especially the local TV 

stations in our State, and probably the newspapers and radio as 

well. But the local TV, because we have had such bad storms, say 

they pretty much would just discontinue their normal programming 

just do weather all the time as these terrible storms are rolling 

through. But it seemed like they were getting a lot of social media 

information as they were covering this. 

Ms. PRESLAR. Absolutely. 

Senator PRYOR. I think that helps bring awareness to some of 

this as well. 

Ms. PRESLAR. Like I said before, we use it as a tool not only to 

get information out to our public, to the citizens of Arkansas, but 

H605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

30 

also to get information out to that media standpoint. On a public 

affairs side of things, especially in a disaster, by the time that you 

put out that initial press release, it is already old information. It 

is already delayed, and you have already got the new information 

that came in while you were going through the sector to get the 

original one approved. 

The way the media puts the expectations of all responsibilities in 

getting information out, social media allows us to put out a simple 

statement within roughly 15 minutes of something happening. 

Even if that is simply stating, the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management and the State of Arkansas has activated its 

State Emergency Operations Center; we are monitoring what is 

going on; as we get information, we will give it to you. It lets citizens know and taxpayers know, OK, the State is not doing nothing, 

they are doing something, and we know that now. Whereas, before, 

they had to wait an hour or 2 hours to get that potential information. And even though the message does not really change, it justifies and I think it validates the fact that they know that people are 

doing something about what is going on . 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. We actually have observed that if something is 

on Twitter or trending on Twitter for about 24 to 48 hours, the 

next jump it will make is to CNN. So it is definitely happening, 

both mediums. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. Let me ask a Federal, State, local government question, and that is on budget. Does social media cost 

money? Is this adding to your overhead? 

Ms. PRESLAR. Not at this time. But at the same time, in me saying that, we are very limited in what we actually do at the moment. It could justifiably cost money. When you talk about the opportunities that there are out there for, the mapping purposes— 

and mapping is excellent, especially when we were just so recently 

talking about a potential New Madrid earthquake. An earthquake 

of that level, of that intensity that could happen, being able to map 

things like that through social media would provide instant information and a source of information—roads, bridges, gas lines, fires, 

things of that nature—where it might—we are discussing still how 

are we actually going to get into these affected areas. But if people 

are able to have that capability inside, that would affect it. 

Obviously a lot of these things can cost money. Actually, analyzing what is coming in and using analytics to determine, OK, 

which of your messages are being effective, which of your messages 

are not being effective, and how do you need to rework the ones 

that are, are not being out to the audiences that you need. It can 

cost money. At this time, we have not spent a dime on it, but we 

have always got places that we can go to make it improve where 

we currently stand. But at the same time, without spending a 

dime, I think that we have very effectively used what we have been 

able to take care of. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. Ms. DeFrancis, let me ask you—I am 

going to put up Slide 3 here, which is a pie chart,1 and it is about 

your survey. I would like to know a little bit more about the surH605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

31 

1The chart referenced by Senator Pryor appears in the appendix on page 94. 

vey. As I understand it, you asked 1,000 people around the country. 

How did this work? 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. Yes, as I told you, during Haiti this was the first 

time we were sort of stunned by the fact that we were getting 

tweets from people trapped under collapsed buildings, and we had 

no way to answer them. So we decided we wanted to convene a 

summit on all of this, which we did last August. But in advance 

of the summit, we wanted to be informed as to how much the public really is using social media, and so that was the genesis of the 

survey. We surveyed about 1,058 Web users, so these are people 

who are already pretty well on the Web. But I think, like you said, 

we are seeing a huge—we would love to do the survey again each 

year and see where this is going, because we expect that it is growing and that more and more people are turning to it. 

We are also seeing demographically, obviously, we are seeing 

younger people using it more. But as they get older, then it will 

become more the way that people operate. 

So it was very useful in giving us a baseline, if you will, for how 

social media is becoming such an important player in the disaster 

space. 

Senator PRYOR. Good. That is helpful. 

I actually do have a lot more questions, but in the interest of 

time, I think what I will do is submit those for the record. But I 

would like to finish with one just general question, which kind of 

goes back to the mission of this Subcommittee, and that is, I would 

like to get your thoughts on what, if anything, the Federal Government can do to help make the use of social media more effective, 

more available, more accurate, just a better tool for all of us to use 

before, during, and after these events. And your answer could be 

the government needs to just stay out of the way and let this just 

happen. If that is the answer, then that is a fine answer. But I am 

curious about your thoughts on what, if anything, the government 

can do or should do better. 

Ms. Blanchard, do you want to start? 

Ms. BLANCHARD. Sure. I actually think that government can do 

a lot, and I think that the private sector has definitely a huge role 

to play, but I think government always takes a really great leadership position. The government has different types of mechanisms 

such as advisory councils. FEMA has a national advisory council. 

It would be really great to see a technology committee on that. In 

addition, to inventory the resources that could be brought to bear, 

to support local and State authorities. For example, being able to 

provide imagery, aerial and satellite imagery, during disasters so 

you can do remote disaster assessments, and you can actually harness technology volunteers to be able to do that. So just being able 

to inventory a lot of those assets. 

The other thing is that the Federal Government does data really 

well, NASA and NOAA, the Weather Service, I mean, there are 

some really great agencies that work with data all day long. In a 

way, being able to share their lessons learned just as it is applied 

to emergency management I think would be really helpful. 

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32 

Again, data standards is always something I know that FEMA 

is working on. A couple of crisis data standards, that would be 

helpful. 

Guidance, I think it would be also helpful, and then, of course, 

looking at the grants, because, we definitely want to build capacity 

so you do not have kind of a—it is great that you have one super 

star person, but you really need—in a way, it is not the technology 

tool. It is the data behind it, and it is the people that are behind, 

being able to coordinate that information across not only public affairs but also in an operational sense. 

Senator PRYOR. Ms. Brown. 

Ms. BROWN. Thanks for the question. I will keep it simple, which 

is to say I think that if the Federal Government were to encourage 

all of its agencies and bodies to use tools that are simple and 

standard and open, that would really be helpful in all the ways 

that it can do that. 

For example, NOAA as well as USGS have been using in their 

alerting mechanisms the Common Alerting Protocol and that is terrific. And if everyone used the same protocol as per our earlier discussion, then our ability to be helpful to the government on aggregating for alert purposes would be immensely enhanced. So that is 

one example, but there are many. And simply encouraging that behavior in all the ways that it can would be most useful. 

Thanks. 

Senator PRYOR. Ms. DeFrancis. 

Ms. DEFRANCIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We struggled with 

social media at the Red Cross when we first broached it because 

we did not know how we could control it. I guess in a way it is a 

medium that you cannot easily control. As we discussed here today, 

it is very organic. It is people/citizen input coming in. So I am not 

sure that we would see government stepping in to set standards or 

come up with hashtags or things like that, because it seems to be 

a much more fluid type of medium. 

I do think that by drawing attention to the issues here, I do 

think there will be resource issues, particularly, as Renee was talking about, with local and State governments who are trying to staff 

emergency operations centers and have the technology and have 

people trained. There may be issues there of how can they afford 

that, and certainly we have already discussed that with the new 

Next Generation 911 there are issues there, too, because even if 

the FCC were to say here are the rules, you still have to resource 

local and State governments that have their own 911 systems. So 

there may be a role for grants as well in this area. 

But I think what you have done today by convening the various 

organizations and groups and drawing attention to this problem 

and this opportunity is really important. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Ms. Preslar. 

Ms. PRESLAR. I have said it several times already about the importance, and I cannot stress it enough we would like the Federal 

Government to work with these private companies on how social 

media platforms can be created to allow the responders to utilize 

it in an operations standpoint, and then from that have toolkits 

that those local emergency managers would be able to use fairly 

easily, and then the guidelines—because it always gets back to 

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33 

guidelines and regulations, but allow those to be flexible enough to 

allow the new technology to work instead of having to continuously 

go back and edit legislation and guidelines as the new technology 

becomes available, just allow it to be able to be flexible enough in 

the beginning that it can go ahead and integrate into the system. 

Senator PRYOR. Great. I want to thank you all for being here, 

and like I said, we are going to have some more questions for the 

record. We had a couple members that could not make it today. 

We do want to thank you all for being here, and we are going 

to leave the record open for 2 weeks, and again, thank you for 

changing your schedules and making time to be here. And if you 

have ideas as you all continue to do what you do, please do not 

hesitate to let us know because it helps us understand what is 

going on out there, and, maybe we can prod the Federal Government to do better in some areas and to allocate more time and attention and resources to this. 

So, again, thank you for your time, and I appreciate all that you 

do, not just here today but all that you do around the country to 

help save lives and put this country back together after a disaster. 

Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 11:47 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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