Social Media 4 Emergency Management

Creative Commons via article.wn.com

Have you been watching all of the devastating wildfires in the United States this week on Twitter or other forms of social media?

If you have been monitoring the breaking news, you’ve probably also seen a proliferation of hashtags that have not only tracked fires by states, but also by specific names. One practice that has emerged this week is use of the 2-letter state abbreviation plus the word fire as a hashtag which looks like #AZFire, #COFire, #MTFire, #NMFire, #NVFire, #SDFire, #TXFire, #UTFire, and #WYFire.

In wildland firefighting, the key website that compiles the known fire information is Inciweb which is located at http://www.inciweb.org/.  While Inciweb has take criticism this week for creating hashtags that the community is not generally using, it has been nice to see fires updates along with their active social media sites.

To help you check to see if you’re catching all of the fire-related hashtags, here is a short list of just the ones I was able to find in a few minutes tonight, organized by state.

Arizona

• #AZFire

Colorado

• #COFire
• #WaldoCanyonFire
• #LittleSand
• #LittleSandFire
• #ColoradoFire
• #ColoradoFires
• #PrayForColorado
• #ColoradoSpringsFire
• #PineRidgeFire
• #Boulder
• #COGRD
• #Pine_COGRD
• #CO
• #Boulder

Montana

• MTFire
• #IndexCreekFire
• #AshFire
• #AshCreekFire
• #DahlFire
• #CorralFire
• #ash_mtcnf
• #MTCNF
• #CookeCityFire
• #Corral_MTMTS
• #MTMTS
• #AntelopeFire
• #PonyFire
• #PlumCreekFire
• #BadHorseFire
• #BearTrap2Fire

New Mexico

• #NMFire
• #HorseCanyonFire
• #NMWX (WX = weather, but often included in fire information)

Nevada

• #NVFire

South Dakota

• #SDFire
• #WhiteDrawFire
• #MAFFS (side incident relating to C-130 reported down on 7/1/12)
• #SDWX (weather tag, but active)

Texas

• #TXFire

Utah

• #UTFire
• #UtahWildfire
• #ClaySpringsFire
• #ShingleFire
• #MillvilleFire
• #SeeleyFire
• #RoseCrestFire
• #DumpFire
• #WolfDenFire
• #PoleCreekFire
• #NewHarmonyFire
• #ChurchCampFire
• #WoodHollowFire

Wyoming

• #WYFire
• #ArapahoFire
• #ArapahoTrailFire
• #Arapaho_Wymbf
• #SquirrelCreekFire
• #PrayForWyoming
• #PrayFor719
• #Wheatland

Now, I am sure that I’ve missed a few hashtags, so feel free to add others that I’ve completely missed here in the comments and I will update this list.  Primarily, I wanted to illustrate how many hashtags can spawn during active incidents.  What is more important is that a global community is talking about these #Wildfire incidents.  Are you listening?