The conflagration that is Southern California is overwhelming wireless phone networks, and residents are turning to text messaging, blogs, and Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter to keep each other abreast of the latest developments.

In San Diego, authorities have issued a ban on voice use of cellphones, although text messages are still permitted. The cell phone networks are crashing, David Stephenson, principal of Stephenson Strategies, said in a telephone interview. "Every time we have a disaster, people use their phones inappropriately," he said.

Conversations take a huge amount of bandwidth, compared to text messages, but one of the most useful services in disasters such as this is Twitter, Stephenson said, which allows messages to be broadcast to subscriber lists and posted on the Web. On Twitter, users such as Nate Ritter are keeping a steady stream of updates going.

Twittering the Latest Info

On Wednesday, Ritter twittered: "11:39 am: 5pm-6pm is peak usage, please conserve! 11:38 am: Updated list of homes burned from CBS 8. Witch and Poomacha converged, hotspots heading east to Julian, Palomar, etc. Yikes. Julian evacuating now."

Public radio station KPBS is also twittering updates and has created a Google Maps mashup of fire coverage, Stephenson said. Such media involvement with innovative technologies means that not everyone has to be up on the latest service.

"I'm not upset that everyone doesn't have access (to Twitter) since media and government agencies are monitoring and using it," he said. "But we still have a long way to go before all the media and agencies start doing it."

"More and more people are submitting eyewitness reports to CNN, which could be just as useful for emergency agencies, but they're not set up for it," he said.

Emergency Planning Wikis

One thing Stephenson said he hasn't seen is a Wiki for fire information, which he said was particularly appropriate for disasters. While the Twitter feeds are up to the minute, they don't provide a comprehensive compendium of critical information.

"One of the worst things in a disaster is to continue to distribute out-of-date information," he noted, adding that wikis are ideally suited for getting in information from many sources and being able to edit and update it.

"We need to start having communities create an on-the-shelf Wiki that they can quickly populate with specific information," Stephenson added. "Each of us may know some tiny piece of the pie and then others can update this information." But, of course, the I.T. work has to be done before the disaster strikes.

Ultimately, none of these innovative communication technologies is the be-all and end-all, Stephenson said. "But that's actually advantageous," he concluded. "If we all depended on one system and it crashed, we'd be up the river without a paddle."