Items tagged with Hurricane Sandy
The social networking scene isn't just about telling friends and family what you ate for lunch, it can also prove vital in emergency situations. To wit, microblogging service Twitter stood strong during Hurricane Sandy's brutal run across the Eastern U.S. Seaboard and delivered over 20 million tweets related to the storm between Saturday and Thursday, the company stated on its own Twitter account. In addition, Twitter said mobile usage from people in New York City peaked on October 29, 2012 around 9:00 PM (about the same time the city lost power), more than doubling usage from the previous two days. Between October 27 and October 30, Tweets mentioning the Red Cross increased 30 times, the microblogging...
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Recovery efforts are now in full swing for victims of Hurricane Sandy, which has left at least 55 people dead on the East Coast and knocked out power for millions of others. To make matters worse, many found themselves without cell phone or broadband service, both of which may sound like luxuries, but are capable of relaying critical emergency information in times like this. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Sandy took down 25 percent of the cell towers in 158 counties in 10 states sprawling from Massachusetts to Virginia. "Our assumption is that communications outages could get worse before they get better, particularly for mobile networks because of the flooding and...
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Hurricane Sandy has forced hundreds of thousands of people living along the Eastern Seaboard out of their homes, stranding others who ignored the evacuation orders. According to reports, some 60 million people live in the path of the 900-mile storm, which has been pushing 85 MPH winds and waters up to 11 feet tall. "This is the most catastrophic event that we have faced and been able to plan for in any of our lifetimes," Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy said, according to CNN. Hurricane Sandy is expected to wreak all kinds of havoc throughout New England and as far as the Appalachians. To help people prepare for and track the storm, Google's Crisis Response team (which was setup during Hurricane Katrina)...
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