Do you have everything you need should a natural disaster or other emergency strike?
Well, according to the infographic posted below by Eton, you should add social media enabled cell phones to the list of necessities.
See Also: How to Use Parts of a Broken Cell Phone as Survival Tools [Infographic]
The first section of the infographic depicts statistics from natural disasters in the United Sates and Caribbean from 2005 to 2011.
The second section lists common things needed in an emergency preparedness kit. Things like water, food, batteries, radio, and flashlight. Then it goes on to include medication, a whistle, and a cell phone, with charger (hopefully solar powered).
The third section is when it really gets into the social media aspect. The three platforms it highlights are Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, with Twitter being the fastest communication platform to use during an emergency or disaster.
The infographic then goes on to explain the benefits of using social media before an emergency / disaster, to prepare for emergencies and disasters, during emergencies or disasters, and after emergencies or disasters.
The list of United States government agencies that use these social media sites is surprising, as are the social media usage statistics during the Japanese earthquake and hurricane Irene.
These statistics and other information provided by this infographic really shed a lot of light onto how important staying connected via social media is during a crisis in today’s World. I wonder how communication and relief efforts during previous natural disasters would have been benefited had social media existed at that time.
