Social media helped spread news, ease fears after Dexter tornado

Social media helped spread news, ease fears after Dexter tornado

2:29 PM, March 16, 2012


A screen grab from Jennifer Davis DeGregorio's Facebook page where she let others know how the Dexter tornado affected her and her family. / Jennifer Davis DeGregorio

By Ellen Creager

Detroit Free Press Staff Writer



Facebook became a lifeline Thursday in Dexter, not just a hobby.

Jennifer DeGregorio, 35, used the social network to let family and friends know that she, her 4-year-old son and her mother were safe after a tornado ripped off the siding and blew out all the windows of their house in the Dexter Crossing neighborhood.

The family fled to the Lamp Post Inn in Ann Arbor, where DeGregorio posted to Facebook: “Out of all the cul de sacs in all the world, a tornado had to demolish mine. Everyone is OK.”

Then she kept posting, communicating with people still in the storm’s path and with her relatives and friends, some of whom could not reach her any other way.

“I was getting a lot of phone calls. A lot of people had questions about what was going on,” she said Friday. “The neighborhood was very chaotic. My nephew who lives out of state couldn’t reach me on the phone, but he was able to reach me on Facebook.”

Just as social media has functioned during recent disasters worldwide, Facebook and Twitter also served as mini news bureaus this time, with citizen reporters letting others know what was happening on their rainy corners.

Lorrie Shaw was on her way home from her pet-sitting company in Ann Arbor when she saw a black sky and what looked like a funnel cloud. She ducked in to Country Market in Dexter just before the storm hit and searched Twitter for mentions of tornadoes in the area, using the hashtag #miwx.

“There was a lot of information there, and some of it seemed accurate, but I wasn’t finding out a whole lot,” said Shaw, 41. “But at the same time, the tornado hit about a block away from where I was.” Outside the window, the air seemed eerily calm, yet debris was flying through the air.

Despite the weather, her Verizon service never failed.

“I was surprised I had access. I could use my Twitter feed, my texts and my Facebook on my phone; the whole time it worked,” she said. She was able to contact her husband in the basement of their house eight miles away to learn he, their two dogs and a cat were safe. After the storm blew by, “there were so many emergency vehicles, so much standing water and so much debris, I didn’t want to get in the way,” she said. She stayed put, “and I started to contact family and friends and clients to see if they were OK.”

She also asked customers who were holed up in the store if they had gotten through to family or friends. Some reported their cell service wasn’t working.

Shaw’s posts of what she saw and heard during the storm were like news bulletins that night: “I had taken cover in Country Market, within mere blocks of the epicenter of the damage, and we heard nothing. Saw a lot... but heard nothing.”

Use of social media in and just after a disaster helped keep both women calm, they said.

In an emergency, “the main thing is be brief,” Shaw said. “Be succinct. If you are OK, put it on your Facebook page. If things aren’t looking so good, put that, too. I use Twitter and Facebook all the time as a safety tool.”

Were it not for Facebook, “it would have been a lot longer of a night trying to explain to people things individually,” said DeGregorio.

Contact Ellen Creager: 313-222-6498 or ecreager@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter, @ellencreager