NFPA Journal - July/August 2019 - 63

The information pouring into digital
coffers can come in every conceivable
form: A Facebook photo of a blocked
road after a hurricane; a tweet from a
frantic homeowner who falsely believes
the fire is just over the next ridge; a
politician mistakenly blogging that a

commander in the Pacific Northwest
area of the US. Schulte's communications teams have worked with a VOST
the past several fire seasons. "If you can't
control the flow of information, false
information spreads faster than the fire
you're working on, and it becomes more

ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE
The social media information gathered by VOST efforts is a valuable
tool for public information officers like Brad Pitassi, center, who use
it to inform their messaging to the public in emergencies.

wildfire has been extinguished; a tweet
for help from a mother inside a flooded
home. Taken as a single data point or
woven together to form a big-picture
narrative of how a disaster is unfolding, this online community chatter is
often filled with valuable nuggets that
can make disaster response nimbler,
more tactical, and more efficient for
both victims and rescuers, according to
emergency managers.
Conversely, ignoring it comes at the
responding agency's peril, said Chris
Shulte, the longtime Type 1 incident

of an issue than the fire you're working
on-it consumes the entire operation
and you'll never catch up again," said
Schulte. Left unaddressed, the wrong
kind of information has potential to
fester, sow confusion, erode public trust,
and potentially cost lives. That's why it's
essential to monitor the social media
pipeline in emergencies, whether the
information is good, bad, or somewhere
in the vast swath in between.
"Social media has become such an
extremely critical part of what's going
on that there's no way you could do this

BRAD PITASSI

HUGE POTENTIAL

2.4
billion

FACEBOOK USERS

job anymore without it," Shulte says. "It
would be impossible."

'Minute by minute
intelligence'
However useful, effectively monitoring
the cacophony of virtual noise and then
turning it into meaningful,
actionable intelligence is
a significant challenge for
undermanned aid groups
and government agencies.
Public agencies "just
don't have the bandwidth
to do this kind of social
media monitoring on our
own," said Brad Pitassi,
public information officer
for the Southwest Area
Type 1 Incident Command
team. "I can't pull a 500pound sled down the road
by myself. If I have people
who are willing to do that
and are eager to help us
solve this problem, why
wouldn't I let them help?"
In his day job, Pitassi is
deputy fire chief in Maricopa Fire and Medical
Department in Arizona,
but a few times each wildfire season
he's pulled away for weeks at a time
to help manage the public outreach to
some of the worst disasters in the country. Like all Type 1 Incident Command
teams, the Southwest Area IC team is
made up of some of the most highly
skilled emergency responders across
the region, and is deployed to manage
the region's most complex, and often
most devastating, natural and manmade
disasters. For the past few years, the
team has mostly dealt with large-scale
wildfire events, where multiple fires

The VOST model draws on the magnitude of the
global social media community, including:

1.3
billion

YOUTUBE USERS

320
million

TWITTER USERS

Source: Google

76
million

INSTAGRAM USERS

N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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NFPA Journal - July/August 2019

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